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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page essay that discusses the stance of Dorothy Day in regards to the Catholic Church and poverty in the Great Depression. Day was one of the co-founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, which began in the 1930s. With co-founder Peter Maurin, Day established the newspaper The Catholic Worker, started the Paulist Press and by 1936 had opened 33 Catholic Worker houses across the country, which offered a home and place of refuge to the poor. Day was originally attracted to Catholicism (she was not born Catholic) because she "felt that the Church was the Church of the poor" (Day 150). However, actual experience taught Day that the attitude of official Catholic organizations was that only the "deserving" poor should receive help and charity. As this indicates, Day felt that there was a distinct conflict between the Catholic Church, her religious belief, and the needs of the poor. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khdaypor.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Catholic Worker, started the Paulist Press and by 1936 had opened 33 Catholic Worker houses across the country, which offered a home and place of refuge to the poor. Day
was originally attracted to Catholicism (she was not born Catholic) because she "felt that the Church was the Church of the poor" (Day 150). However, actual experience taught Day
that the attitude of official Catholic organizations was that only the "deserving" poor should receive help and charity. As this indicates, Day felt that there was a distinct conflict between
the Catholic Church, her religious belief and the needs of the poor. In her autobiography, Day speaks of the "scandal of businesslike priests" and the "lack of a sense
of responsibility for the poor, the worker, the Negro, the Mexican, the Filipino" (Day 150). These factors, as well as "consenting to the oppression of them by our industrialist-capitalist order,"
caused Day to feel that many priests were more "like Cain than Abel" (Day 150). According to Day, such priests appeared to be saying, in respect to the established
social order, "Am I my brothers keeper?" (Day 150). As this indicates, Day firmly objected to the ideas presented to her by more traditional authorities that there were the "deserving"
poor and the "undeserving." Day and Maurin shocked traditionalists by welcoming drunkards and other men down on their luck, which were plentiful during the Great Depression. Day comments that
at the time she knew nothing about the social teaching of the Church. She had never heard of the encyclicals, yet she believed the history of the Catholic Church indicated
that it was the "Church of the poor" (Day 150). She writes, "St. Patricks (Cathedral) had been built from the pennies of servant girls...it cared for the emigrant, it established
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