Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.
Dorothy Day
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Dorothy Day quotes
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
All the work of the Campion Propaganda Committee, its study and its activities against extreme nationalism, against racial hatreds, against social injustice has its basis in an understanding of the liturgical movement and a participation in it.
As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.
Certainly we disagree with the Communist Party, as we disagree with other political parties who are trying to maintain the American way of life.
Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.
First of all, let it be remembered that I speak as an ex-Communist and one who has not testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works on the Communist conspiracy.
Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.
I believe that we must reach our brother, never toning down our fundamental oppositions, but meeting him when he asks to be met, with a reason for the faith that is in us, as well as with a loving sympathy for them as brothers.
I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor.
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
If we do not keep indoctrinating, we lose the vision. And if we lose the vision, we become merely philanthropists, doling out palliatives.
It is easier to have faith that God will support each House of Hospitality and Farming Commune and supply our needs in the way of food and money to pay bills, than it is to keep a strong, hearty, living faith in each individual around us - to see Christ in him.
Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.
Living the liturgical day as much as we are able, beginning with prime, using the missal, ending the day with compline and so going through the liturgical year we find that it is now not us, but Christ in us, who is working to combat injustice and oppression.
Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.
Men are beginning to realize that they are not individuals but persons in society, that man alone is weak and adrift, that he must seek strength in common action.
My radical associates were the ones who were in the forefront of the struggle for a better social order where there would not be so many poor.
Our common action in the Sacrifice of the Mass, impersonal, anti-individualistic is the best weapon against the world.
Our faith is stronger than death, our philosophy is firmer than flesh, and the spread of the Kingdom of God upon the earth is more sublime and more compelling.
The age of individualism, laissez faire industrialism and self-seeking capitalism is dead and gone.
The basis of the liturgical movement is prayer, the liturgical prayer of the church. It is a revolt against private, individual prayer.
The bridge - it seems to me - is love and the compassion (the suffering together) which goes with all love. Which means the folly of the Cross, since Christ loved men even to that folly of failure.
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.
The Liturgy, then, is common worship, concorporate worship, worship in one mind and with one heart, and with one mouth.
The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war.
There is plenty to do, for each one of us, working on our own hearts, changing our own attitudes, in our own neighborhoods.
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
Together with the Works of Mercy, feeding, clothing and sheltering our brothers, we must indoctrinate.
Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.
We and the Communists have a common idea that something else is necessary, some other vision of society must be held up to be worked for.
We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world.
We believe in loving our brothers regardless of race, color or creed and we believe in showing this love by working for better conditions immediately and the ultimate owning by the workers of their means of production.
We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.
We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.
We must recognize the fact that many Nazis, Marxists and Fascists believe passionately in their fundamental rightness, and allow nothing to hinder them from their goal in the pursuit of their mission.
When we have spiritual reading at meals, when we have the rosary at night, when we have study groups, forums, when we go out to distribute literature at meetings, or sell it on the street corners, Christ is there with us.
Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.
Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.
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