This blog explores both historical and current events guided by the thought of the leading thinkers, past and present, of this school or movement of theology. Refer to the Classic Posts, Great and Contemporary Thinkers, various links of all kinds, in addition to the Archives themselves. David is the founder and manager of this website, but many friends contribute to it on a regular basis.
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Saturday, September 24, 2011
Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement - PART II
I wish to respond to Mary Lathrop’s account of how thugs were “defused” from being violent after the people they intended to rob invited them to dinner. The experience of the Dalai Lama was not so happy. Despite his peaceful disposition, the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet in the early 1950s and His Holiness was forced to flee in 1959, as Steven Talty recounts in his 2010 book, “Escape from the Land of Snows.” This book includes the Dalai Lama’s descriptions of the acts of terrorism, torture, imprisonment, and executions Tibetans (including his colleague the Panchen Lama) endured under the Chinese Communists. The Red Chinese did not wish to coexist with the Tibetans, but to absorb Tibet, which is now a part of China. Dorothy Day was not concerned with such terrorist or violent acts when they were done to further Communism. Even after it was known publicly and generally that Castro was a Communist dictator, she visited Cuba, extolled its “social advances,” and insisted that the religious and clergy who fled did so voluntarily, not under force. (This is true if it means that they “volunteered” to live outside Cuba rather than to be imprisoned or killed if they remained in Cuba.) She continued to praise Communist Cuba after Castro was excommunicated by Pope John XXIII in 1962—a detail one of your panelists seemed to be unaware of. At best, Day was a “useful idiot,” duped by Communist subterfuge like those described in Paul Kengor’s “Dupes” (2010). But it seems the truth is worse than that. Carol Byrne in “The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis” (2010) provides documented evidence that Day continued to participate in Communist activities and meetings long after Pius XI declared in “Divini Redemptoris” that Communism is inherently atheistic and Catholics must not cooperate with Communists. (see pp. 65-68 for Day’s praise of Castro). Day’s writings reveal that she never gave up her beliefs in revolution and class warfare, but sought to graft them onto the Catholic faith. She was a strange pacifist who opposed violence, but condoned it when it further the aims of Communist governments such as Cuba—an issue one of the questioners of the panel brought up.
1 comment:
I wish to respond to Mary Lathrop’s account of how thugs were “defused” from being violent after the people they intended to rob invited them to dinner. The experience of the Dalai Lama was not so happy. Despite his peaceful disposition, the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet in the early 1950s and His Holiness was forced to flee in 1959, as Steven Talty recounts in his 2010 book, “Escape from the Land of Snows.” This book includes the Dalai Lama’s descriptions of the acts of terrorism, torture, imprisonment, and executions Tibetans (including his colleague the Panchen Lama) endured under the Chinese Communists. The Red Chinese did not wish to coexist with the Tibetans, but to absorb Tibet, which is now a part of China.
Dorothy Day was not concerned with such terrorist or violent acts when they were done to further Communism. Even after it was known publicly and generally that Castro was a Communist dictator, she visited Cuba, extolled its “social advances,” and insisted that the religious and clergy who fled did so voluntarily, not under force. (This is true if it means that they “volunteered” to live outside Cuba rather than to be imprisoned or killed if they remained in Cuba.) She continued to praise Communist Cuba after Castro was excommunicated by Pope John XXIII in 1962—a detail one of your panelists seemed to be unaware of.
At best, Day was a “useful idiot,” duped by Communist subterfuge like those described in Paul Kengor’s “Dupes” (2010). But it seems the truth is worse than that. Carol Byrne in “The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis” (2010) provides documented evidence that Day continued to participate in Communist activities and meetings long after Pius XI declared in “Divini Redemptoris” that Communism is inherently atheistic and Catholics must not cooperate with Communists. (see pp. 65-68 for Day’s praise of Castro). Day’s writings reveal that she never gave up her beliefs in revolution and class warfare, but sought to graft them onto the Catholic faith. She was a strange pacifist who opposed violence, but condoned it when it further the aims of Communist governments such as Cuba—an issue one of the questioners of the panel brought up.
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