St Francis & St Clare Catholic Worker

09/03/2026

***Because I’m a terrible capitalist, here’s a great 25% off discount for new paid subscribers.

09/03/2026

Members of the Pentagon 27 who got arrested for the first time at the Pentagon in honor of Catholic Worker Patrick O'Neill's 70th birthday party, reflect on what they learned from civil disobedience

09/03/2026

09/03/2026

Dorothy Day and abortion via theo the catholic worker
Sometimes conservatives comment on my posts asking accusatorially, “Why don’t you ever post about Dorothy and abortion?”

The thing about it is Dorothy almost never mentioned abortion. That she was some sort of ardent anti-abortion crusader is a fiction, one that only grows as a conservative US Church which is uncomfortable with Dorothy’s plain, radical, and prodigious condemnations of war and capitalism continues their efforts to see her canonized.

She was perhaps the most prodigious US Catholic writer ever and edited her own paper but it’s difficult for the anti-abortion folks to quote her directly. She mentions war hundreds of times in her writings in The Catholic Worker newspaper but abortion only a few times. Yet some still act like this is the issue we should remember her for.

A few years back when I lived at the LA Catholic Worker it came to our attention that the archdiocese had put out a Dorothy Day prayer card against abortion. We reached out asking to collaborate on creating a card dealing with the issues Dorothy actually addressed such as poverty or ending the military-industrial complex. They acted surprised to hear there was even a Catholic Worker community doing the works of mercy in their city and it might not surprise you to hear they never came out with an anti-poverty card.

A CW friend of mine told me about going to a conference on Dorothy some years back where a bishop was giving the keynote address (why a bishop would be selected for such a thing is worth it’s own screed). The bishop got up there and told the audience “A lot of people think of Dorothy for her politics but we’re not going to talk about politics today…” and went on to talk the entire time about abortion as if that topic wasn’t political and as if hiding Dorothy’s critique behind that issue wasn’t an attack on her actual politics.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Dorothy was a fan of abortion. But at the same time she knew how difficult life can be. Criminalization hadn’t stopped her from having the procedure, it only made it more dangerous for her and people like her who found themselves in desperate straights. Her solution was always love and the works of mercy.

09/03/2026

"When keepers of status quo talk about property destruction as form of violence please note they exempt items key to the survival of poorest neighbors. They consider smashing windows at a bank violent, but when cops throw away unhoused people's tents it's not."