Catholic — or Nothing

The aim of humans is to worship God and to enjoy him forever, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But practically, what are we meant to do with our time? 

The early Christians provide a model of community for the Church, an ideal that we are always to be striving toward.

As we continue this month to introduce the ideas of the Catholic Worker Movement, I want to pick up once again the theme of “personalism” from the December column.

Many of us have experienced firsthand the growing trends of loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression in our society and in the Church.

St. Chrysostom, the fourth century Archbishop of Constantinople and doctor of the Church, thundered away at his congregation one Sunday morning.

In the past few columns, I've been introducing key aspects of the Catholic Worker Movement, founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. This month, I want to begin to focus on the way the movement emphasizes the importance of community in the Christian life. 

Last month, I wrote about hospitality houses as schools of virtue. My point there was that within the Catholic Worker tradition, which we are introducing in these columns little by little, encountering the poor is not about what we can do for them, but what they can do for us. Because we find Christ in the poor, we are not their benefactors — they are ours.  

Two months back, I wrote about the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day and their vision for agenda-less hospitality. I wrote that this was just the first difference between their Catholic vision of hospitality and more conventional visions of social service. This month, I want to reflect on another difference.