Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 1995

Publication Source

Horizons

Abstract

Dorothy Day has received a great deal of attention from contemporary scholars of U.S. Catholicism. This article makes a unique contribution to this growing literature by offering a close reading of Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness. The purpose is to highlight the narrative's integrity as a sustained argument in defense of Christian faith transformed by wrestling with the Marxist charge: religion is the opiate of the people. Day deserves credit for a daring approach to Catholic apologetics in the 1950s. The article presents the narrative as a dialectic between the personal and the political, the material and the spiritual, and the natural and the supernatural that resolves itself in a creative synthesis through the Catholic Worker Movement. Day embraces Marxist aspirations and acknowledges their criticism's truth in defending the authenticity of her Catholic commitment. Day simultaneously demonstrates that the Incarnation's reality informs traditional Catholicism with its radical political character.

Inclusive pages

198-213

ISBN/ISSN

0360-9669

Document Version

Published Version

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Volume

22

Issue

2

Download

Included in

Religion Commons

COinS