Catholic Worker
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I CATHOLIC WORKER ONE CENT AT C. W. OFFICE Vol. XI. No. 6 June, 1944 Two Cents at News-st:rnds and S tor es Charity Come Out and Random Reflections( of the Poverty By Dorothy Day Grandstand Peter Maurin We are all oppressed these days from life, from what they con B y David Mason by a sense of guilt, of sin. Ar ceived as evil. They buried a young man from thur Koestler brings this out in Today there is this preoccupa Mulberry Street last week. I I. Wisdom of Giving tion· with pain, . with suffering. his latest book, Arrival and De- stood on the sidewalk in front of 1. To give moriey to the poor The very publication of such the Church of the Most P recious is to enable the poor to buy. parture. Abbott Marmion ad- books as Jan Valtin's Out of the Blood and watched the procession 2. To enable the poor to buy vised one of his penitents to cul- Night, as · Koestler's, as Vicki of black cars disappear down is to improve the market. tivate a sense of compunction. St. Baum's Weeping ~ood with their Baxter Street, carrying bis rela detailed description of torture, at 3. To improve the market Augustine talked of the wicked- tives and friends to the final scene tests to this. When such details is to help business. ness, the turning towar d evil that of a tragic story. It was one of are mentioned by hagiographers, the saddest funerals ·1 have ever 4. To help business exists even in little children. We the world accounts the martyrs witnessed, for the passengers in is to reduce unemployment. must all do penance, and the de- psychopaths for enduring such one of the cars were a mother / 5. To reduce unemployment sire for penance is instinctive in evils for so slight a cause. Oh, and a father who had to bear a is to reduce crime. God! so unknown, so unrecog every human breast. double burden of sorrow and 6. To reduce crime 1 nized. shame. Their son had been. elec is to reduce taxation. I think it is in the encyclical Folly of Love trocuted by the State of New 7. So, give your surplus of Pope Pius XI, quoted in the This blindness of love, this York. to the ~or Breviary for the lessons- on the folly of love-this seeing Christ The newspapers called him a for business' sake. feast of the Sacred Heart, that in others, everywhere, and not "gangster " and the State charged for humanity's sake the Holy Father brings this out. seeing the ugly, the obvious, the l1im with the fatal shooting of an for Christ's sake. One desires to share in the suf dirty, the sinful-this means we other "gangster." He had been 8. And don't forget ferings of Christ. One desires to do not see the faults of others, reprievea three times, but the that "when man dies share in the sufferings of the be Only our own. We see only State had finally exacted the he carries loved-hunger, cold, thirst, vigils Christ in them. We have eyes death penalty, and Louis Parisi's in his clutched hands -and, since in times like these, only for our beloved, ears for His life 'was ended at the age of 24. only that which we here in this country are so voice. .. far removed from the scene of This is what caused the saints • • • he has given away For twenty-four years he had in his lifetime." combat, then it is necessary to do to go to what writers like Aldous it by self- imposed deprivations, lived in this neighborhood, a boy as Jean Jacques Rousseau Huxley (not to speak of our own mortifications. Catholics) called repulsive ex indistinguishable from the thou used to say. sands who are crowded.into these To some the word mortification tremes. Perhaps hagiographers were too prone to dwell on the tenements and grow up in the U. Then and Now is repellent. But it_ is dying to city streets. His parents are de self, in order to li.,ve for others. physical detail-one gets it too 1. In the beglnning in Hemingway-in some of the cent, respectable people. They of Christianity St. Paul wrote, "always bearing have a modest basement restau about in our body the mortifica writers of this present war. But the hungry were fed, it is all "to make their point," as rant on Mulberry Street near tion of Jesus that the life also of Grand where you can get very the naked were clothed, Jesus may be made manifest in Peter Maurin would say. The the homeless were sheltered good home-cooked Italian food. our bodies." It is love that gives saints rose above the natural, the ignorant were instructed the human, a nd became super There is a small bar in the restau these desires and love is a glow rant, and some moralists might at a personal Sacrifice. ing, happy thing, a radiant warm natural and superhuman in 2. And because of that, their love. Nothing was diffi consider that as a possible con ing fire. We wawt to strip our tributing factor in the downfall speaking about the Christians selves to clothe others. We want -Ade B e lhune cult to them, all was clear, shin the pagans used to say: -ing and beautiful on the path of Louis Parisi. I don't know to fast because of the hunger of dle ages to cast themselves over anything about that. However, I "See how they love each cliffs, a religious revival which way of love. others, and if we cannot feed do know that the same evil influ other." led to mass suicide in an effort to - There is that prayer of them, we will share their suffer ences surround and crowd in escape from matter, from flesh, thanksgiving after Communion, 3. Speaking about the Christians: ings. upon all the boys and girls in · the pagans do not say today The very instinct that propels written by St. Bonaventure. There is that chapter from the sections like this, no matter what •·see how they love each people into war, that makes them business or trade their parents other,"· · accept conscription like sheep, is Following of Christ, Book III, chapter five. are engaged in. Drunkenness is They say on the contrary a profound feeling that we must OUR FRIEND JOE a common spectacle, and the •·see how they pass the buck suffer with one another. It is as What mother ever considers Dear Friends: the ugliness of cleaning up after temptation and opportunity to to the taxpayers." perverted, however, as that de engage in unlawful activities are (Continued on page 6) sire of some heretics in the mid- This has been a very pleasant her baby or sick child or hus couple of weeks for me indeed. band? These things are not ever present. I have been working on' a farm mentioned by critics. But to the • • • and enjoying myself thoroughly. saints everyone is child and This is not going to be a ser My employer (I rather think of lover. Everyone is Christ. mon, though the temptation to ''A Farm In Ireland '' him as a friend) calls himself an Bodily Infirmities moralize is very strong when one "isolationist" from city life. He I have been reading New begins to consider stories like that · Father Duffy bas never been~ cessful, even when there has (Continued on page 2) (Continued on page 7) the man to take an active part been plenty of capital to back was raised in a big city and in discussions about how to get them. • didn't move to the country till he was thirty years old and was the people to go back to the land Perhaps a majority of such at "You don't need to worry about tempts fail and many families father of two chilc\ren. Getting out was tough, he said, because Aid For llfllY it," he will sa?'. "'.fhe sins of that tried without experience or he was "city ridden." He told me man and the Just Judgment of money to go back· during the This article is all the editor's the campaign. The priest with God will take care of all that last depression, ended up back that getting out of the city is best done by gradual steps. fault. He asked me to write whom I spoke asked if I had a for you." in the city again, back on the No doubt there are many mar a bout the National Catholic big bundle of clothes and I "People will have to go back very relief rolls they left the city ried couples and small families Welfare Conference Clothing laughingly said no, but I was to the land," he says, "whether in the first place to escape. that could follow the example Campaign for Italy for this writing an article about it. they want to or not, and the (Father Duffy has always in issue. While riding home on the Father gave me a clipping from reason is very simple. They sisted that some capital and of my friend. He first figured that he had paid enough rent to N. Y.-New Haven one Saturday the Catholic News which gave will have to go back in order some experience, or cooperation night, I spotted CATHOLICS details of the drive which took to eat." And that has al- with people with experience are landlords to ~Y for a real farm.