It's sometimes hard for us to imagine now, but Milwaukee -- thanks to its immigrant past and its industrial heritage -- was long associated with radical movements.
From the German immigrants that fled political persecution and came to Milwaukee, to the marchers shot dead in in 1886 in Bay View as they protested peacefully for the eight-hour workday, to anarchists shot dead a block away in 1917, to the long tradition of sewer socialism to Father James Groppi, Milwaukee has a storied history of radicalism.
Even the founder of The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, is represented here because her diaries are part of a special Catholic Worker collection at Marquette University's Raynor Memorial Libraries. Day, who sought to wed her religious devotion to her passion for social justice, has been floated as a candidate for canonization.
Those diaries have been edited into an anvil of a book by Robert Ellsberg, who was himself part of The Catholic Worker community. He served as that newspaper's managing editor for two years. Based in Ossining, N.Y., Ellsberg talked to us about Day, about The Catholic Worker and about Marquette University Press' recent publication of "The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day."
OMC: Can you tell us briefly about The Catholic Worker newspaper and how it got started?
RE: The Catholic Worker was founded in May 1933, 75 years ago, by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Day was a recent Catholic convert, a single mother, who had spent her youth engaged in various radical causes, as both a journalist and activist. After the birth of her daughter she felt a strong attraction to the Catholic church, but she felt a great longing to connect her faith with her commitment to the poor and the cause of social justice. There wasn't a clear space in the church at that time for making such connections.
But then she met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant and self-styled "peasant philosopher" 20 years her senior, who convinced her that they should start a movement to proclaim and live out the radical social message of the gospels. They began with a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, and soon after established "houses of hospitality" in New York City and elsewhere to practice the "works of mercy"--feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless.
This was based on the gospel text where Jesus says "Inasmuch as you have done these things for the least of these, you have done them for me." The Catholic Worker combined direct service of this kind with protest against the social structures that cause so much poverty. Over time, a commitment to peace and nonviolence became prominent themes of the movement, and Dorothy was arrested many times over the years for acts of civil disobedience. She died in November 1980, but the movement and the paper live on, and her influence in the church has never been wider.
OMC: So Dorothy really was the spark that created The Catholic Worker?
RE: Although she gave credit to Peter Maurin for providing the big ideas and the inspiration, there is no doubt that Dorothy Day was the driving figure in the movement. She set the editorial policy and the overall tone, and her writings were the heart of the paper. But her role ultimately transcends the CW movement. At the time of her death, Commonweal magazine called her the most interesting, influential and important figure in the history of American Catholicism.
OMC: What is it about her life and her involvement that makes her diaries of interest to those interested in The Catholic Worker and in Catholicism and theology in general?
RE: For those who know her through her books or writings in The Catholic Worker, I think what is most important is what the diaries reveal about her interior life and her struggles to cope with frustration, depression and sorrow. I don't mean that in some clinical sense. But people have the idea that because Dorothy Day chose this very difficult life of living among the poor and marginalized, that she must have found it all very easy. In fact you see how much will and discipline went into her vocation -- and how much this was sustained by her deep faith and her spiritual practice.
She rose early every morning to go to Mass. She reflected on scripture. She prayed the monastic hours from a breviary. All of this was the foundation for a spiritual practice that consisted largely of responding to the duties and encounters of everyday life with a spirit of love, patience and forgiveness.
OMC: Did Day -- and do others in the movement -- have difficulty finding room in her life for both radicalism and Catholicism? At times, they're likely to be at odds with one another and create some conflict, I imagine.
RE: Dorothy really invented this way of combining traditional faith and a radical attitude toward society. She saw no contradiction. She believed that human beings were created in the image of God, that life was sacred, that how we treated the poor was directly related to our salvation. And so this inspired her to perform traditional works of charity while also setting herself against a civilization based on violence, materialism, and greed. While her stance was quite exceptional 50 years ago, today that is much less the case.
OMC: Tell us a bit about "The Duty of Delight." How did you come to the project?
RE: Dorothy Day's letters and diaries are part of The Catholic Worker collection at the University of Marquette. They were sealed for 25 years after her death. In 2005 the university approached me and asked me to serve as the editor. I had known Dorothy for the past five years of her life and had served as managing editor of the newspaper. I also edited an anthology of her writings and, as editor-in-chief of Orbis Books, had published many books by and about her. This project--which will be followed later by a collection of her letters--involved first transcribing all the contents of her diaries from a period of almost 50 years, and then editing it down a book of reasonable length.
OMC: What was the most rewarding part?
RE: The person who emerges from the diaries is very much the person I knew -- funny, a wonderful storyteller, a great observer of detail. But I was very moved to learn more about her personal struggles, how much she confronted the sense, at times, that her life was just too overwhelming, too full of impossible demands, surrounded by so many hurt and broken people.
She was immensely sensitive to suffering. And yet she disciplined herself to find God in all things and to find reason for rejoicing. The title, "The Duty of Delight," is a phrase she repeated frequently in her diaries. She believed that in a world of so much sorrow we have a responsibility not to add to the burden of others but instead to increase the balance of love.
Many people associate her with her public protests and acts of civil disobedience. But one sees in her diaries that her life was mostly taken up with unremarkable and ordinary activities. She believed that everyday life was the true arena of holiness. Before we try to change the world, we should try to be more kind and forgiving toward the people closest at hand. When you try it, it is harder than you think.
OMC: Finally, what lessons do you think Day's life -- as we can access it through her diaries -- are especially useful to us in 2008?
RE: Like many great saints of the past Dorothy tried to respond faithfully to the challenges of her time in history. She really had to invent her own path. She reminds us that we all face that challenge. In her case, she confronted the problems of the Depression, war, the struggle for racial justice, the Cold War, the problems of revolution, freedom, the rights of conscience and a right relationship to the earth.
These continue to describe some of the challenges of our own time. And I think she continues to offer a challenge to live out the radical implications of the gospel -- not to be content with our own spiritual peace or personal salvation, but to struggle for a future in which God's will is better realized "on earth as it is in heaven."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
