Catholic Worker Movement marks 75 years of social activism
Catholic Worker Movement marks 75 years of social activism

Comments 0

From Religion News Service

Published: May 3, 2008

NEW YORK — The Catholic Worker Movement marked its 75th anniversary Thursday.

Founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin on May Day 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, the Catholic Worker began as a radical newspaper and grew into a wider movement of hospitality and social activism. It now includes nearly 200 communities in the United States and eight other countries.

It remains committed to a "firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person” and to the ideals of "nonviolence, voluntary poverty (and) prayer,” protesting "injustice, war, racism and violence of all forms.”

Day was a one-time radical Greenwich Village bohemian who underwent a conversion experience and became renowned as a Catholic writer and social activist.

Another constant for those involved in the Catholic Worker Movement is its cornerstone newspaper, the Catholic Worker, which still remains a penny a copy (excluding mailing costs) and has resisted going online.

Related Topics: Public Finance, Social Issues, Racism and Bigotry, Recessions and Depressions, Racial Issues