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6 Insights from the Life of Dorothy Day from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.
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"Dorothy Day is one of the most significant women in the life of the Church in the United States." That's how Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York began a moving and inspiring talk about the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement on the anniversary of her birthday Nov. 9 at St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich Village. The video clip above is worth watching to the end. I had tears in my eyes by the time it was over, but I'll give you the synopsis of what Archbishop Dolan labeled the six "insights" we can take from Dorothy Day.
1. "She was quintessentially American." The archbishop went on to emphasize that Dorothy's faith was freely chosen. She was raised Protestant and converted to Catholicism. Her faith was "her free choice," something Archbishop Dolan said should resonate particularly well with Americans who more and more reject the faith of their births.
2. "Dorothy was from the beginning a social critic and activist in the best prophetic sense of American Christian spirituality, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox." The archbishop said that Dorothys' vision and her intellectual contributions may well have "foreshadowed" what Pope John XXIII, Vatican II, and Pope John Paul II tried to advance "relative to the dignity of each person as a worker, as a human being created in the image and likeness of God."
3. "Dorothy's mission to the Church in every area -- social and legal reform, workers' rights, publications, her renowned pacifism, the ability to prophetically challenge even Church authority -- all of that found its taproot in prayer," something the archbishop said is too often reversed by reform-minded leaders. He stressed that Dorothy began and ended each day with prayer and rarely missed daily Mass, adding, "Her activism was the fruit of a profound prayer that I would say bordered on the mystic."
4. "Dorothy lived through two experiences of her day that are particularly enlightening for us today. Experience one: loneliness, alienation and disconnection to foundational institutions such as marriage and family. Secondly, the sexual revolution..." Archbishop Dolan called her life one of "upheaval," but said that her Augustinian model of faith reminds us that our sexuality cannot be cast aside as a weakness but is integral to our lives as an expression of our likeness to God. "She invites us to watch her grow in integrity in this most precious act of being human," he said.
5. "Dorothy neither hid from sin nor would allow any person, no matter their motives, to be simply equated with the sum of their sins. We are not ever or only the sum total of our sins, are we?" The archbishop said that Dorothy's life was "ever in process" and she was ever more converted to Jesus Christ every day. "Holiness of life, Dorothy would tell us, would have no chance without honesty at its base," he said, stressing that we cannot deny or lawyer up when it comes to our mistakes.
6. "Dorothy was a woman of the Church. She loved being a Catholic. She loved the Catholic Church. I'm not talking about some nebulous, generic Church. She loved the one, holy, catholic, apostolic, Roman church...She was proud to be Catholic."
Finally, Archbishop Dolan went on to say that our greatest pastoral challenge as Catholics today is to "respond to those who want Christ without his Church, and their name is legion." Saying that many people don't have a problem with Jesus but have "tons of problems" with his Church, he pointed out that Dorothy knew full well the flaws of her Church and loved it anyway:
"She loved the mystical body, but she new the mystical body had warts galore...Here's one of her saltier quotes, and there were many: 'Yes, the Church is the spotless bride of Christ, but at other times, she's the whore of Babylon.' Dorothy was well aware of the flaws, the wounds, the imperfections, the ugly side of the Church, but she loved it all the more."
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About a year ago, Archbishop Chaput wrote a column about the Mission of Catechesis…. he starts with a reference to Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” and a conversation he had with a teacher who taught the story over a nearly 20 year span. In the 70s (and 80s - I remember it in my college lit class) students expressed shock and indignation… discussed the meaning of sacrifice and tradition —in the 90s… students just found the story ‘boring’. When pushed to discuss it… they excepted the story as accepting different cultures.
the article is here: http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/4728
The point being… no one is teaching the difference between right and wrong (or critical thought for that matter). An exercise as Drake describes (my plug in won’t let me watch the video… ) is critical for our society at any age to understand self and sacrifice…
Myself…. I’m not afraid to die. I long to see my heavenly father’s face… and my sister and dad. So I’d take the bullet - particularly to save others . Easy.
This movie is really powerful. I highly recommended watching it and sharing with your friends.
This video is a powerful way to see the two worlds in which we all live in tension: the one of devil and the one of the Holy Spirit. Our daily life is made, in fact, of struggle and choice. But the Holy Spirit can give us the hope of success even when we lose the game, thanks to our trust in Him. Veni creator Spiritus!
180 Movie: Interviewing Ray Comfort, The Man Behind The Film
The pro-life community has been buzzing for a week now about the “180? documentary. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it for free at 180Movie.com. I had the opportunity to interview Ray Comfort, the author and filmmaker behind “180,” to ask him some questions about the movie. You can listen to the full audio interview (12 minutes) by clicking here, or you can read the transcript below.
Josh Brahm: Ray, how did you come up with the idea for “180?”
Ray Comfort: Well, I was – actually it wasn’t planned. I wrote a book called Hitler, God and the Bible and told the publishers, WorldNetDaily, that I was going to create a video called Hitler’s Religion and go with it, took part of the manuscript and made it into a TV script and found it was just too big, too long, and too confusing and I actually gave up. I said, “Look, I’m taking a camera out in the streets to find out what people believe about Hitler” and we just abandoned the script. And I came back with 14 interviews of people who didn’t know who Hitler was. That really, really blew me away. And then I bumped into a guy named Steve who was a neo-Nazi, black-hating, Jew-hating, Hitler-loving, America-hating atheist who had a 14-inch blue Mohawk and that was very colorful footage. And then I was heckled by a German neo-Nazi, Jew-hater and we managed to get him on a hidden camera and a hidden microphone and then I bumped into a Russian Jew who happened to have lost his relatives in the Holocaust. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/10/05/180-movie-interviewing-ray-comfort-the-man-behind-the-film/