Re: DMCW - your missing 4 min interview with Dimitri . . . .
Frank Cordaro
Catholic Workers Organize in Cyberspace
Jerry Windley-Daoust shares an update from the CatholicWorker.org's maintenance project; Renée Roden has the story of how the Catholic Worker archives came into existence; updates from LA, Des Moines
READ IN APP How Should Catholic Workers Use Digital Technology? We’re Still Answering the Question
I've been AWOL from the pages of the Roundtable newsletter in the past few weeks. No one can say I've been a “Catholic Shirker,” though; I’ve been spending way more time than I would like setting up the process documents, video tutorials, FAQs and spreadsheets needed to manage our big project to update the directory and Dorothy Day library at CatholicWorker.org.
I know—not very exciting, and not very Catholic Worker-y, all this sitting in front of screens. But at bottom, the whole point of this digital ditch-digging is to help people better connect with local Catholic Worker communities and to preserve and propagate the “program” of the Movement as laid out by Dorothy and Peter. (You can read an article about the scope of the CatholicWorker.org update project here.)
In the course of getting all of this underway, I've had the opportunity to interview Jim Allaire about how the online Catholic Worker directory and the “Dorothy Day Library on the Web” came to be. Did you know that it took some 50 volunteers about five years to manually input more than 800 of Dorothy’s writings in The Catholic Worker? They worked from photocopies of the newspaper provided by Phil Runkel, at that time the archivist at the Dorothy Day collection at Marquette University. It’s an amazing feat, when you think about it, and anyone who has appreciated being able to search Dorothy’s writings over the years owes that team of volunteers a debt of gratitude.
When Jim first floated the idea for a Catholic Worker website at the Sugar Creek Midwest Catholic Worker gathering in 1995, he got a lot of pushback. He summarized the opposition in a 1997 essay:
The most frequently cited objections maintain that computer technology displaces workers, increases alienation, fosters consumptive and addictive behavior, reduces human freedom, harms the environment, and is the principal tool of modern warfare. Furthermore, this group says, it is an illusion to confuse cyberspace communication with personal encounters and to substitute virtual communities for the real thing.
These early critics may have “lost” the debate—virtually every Catholic Worker community now has some sort of online presence—but man oh man, they sure were on point. All of their predictions have been realized, far more than they could have imagined.
Screenshot of CatholicWorker.org from May 1, 2000.
Obviously, Jim moved ahead with CatholicWorker.org, but not before seriously engaging these concerns. He kept up a dialogue with other Catholic Workers for the next year or so and dug into some of the source material for the Movement, particularly the writing of Emmanuel Mounier, the personalist philosopher whose thought deeply influenced Peter and Dorothy. He produced two essays synthesizing that discernment, one in April 1995 (“Engaging Technology as a Personalist”) and one in October 1997 (“Engaging the Internet as a Catholic Worker”).
As someone who shares the concerns of those early CW “prophets of the digital age,” I appreciated reading through these essays; it seems to me they offer some helpful insights as we continue to navigate the challenges posed by new technologies. The essays are worth reading in themselves, but I’ll share three of my own takeaways.
First, a surprising insight from Mounier’s “The Case Against the Machine.” Wrestling with the new technologies of his age, Mounier concluded that the abuses brought about by machines were not intrinsic to the technology itself, but the result of “the directives imposed on the machine from outside by the dominant economic regime” (p. 32). Fire, knives, printing presses, lasers—all of these things can be used for good or ill; it is how humans decide to use them that is good or evil. “Underlying Mounier’s thought is Christian hope, not optimism or pessimism,” Jim wrote. “Hope is a sense of the solid possibility that good can prevail because we partake of the Spirit in Christ. We will not be saved by our machines, nor will we be damned by them.”
(I wonder, though, whether there is a case to be made—and maybe both Mounier and Jim would agree—that a technology’s design intention matters. A bandage is designed in a way that constrains its use to good purposes; a nuclear weapon, not so much.)
Working from Mounier’s principle, Jim articulated a simple test to help discern the use of technology in specific instances in a Catholic Worker context: Does it aid hospitality or impede it? Does it enable the works of mercy or short-circuit them? In the case of CatholicWorker.org, Jim concluded that the benefit of disseminating the Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker and connecting people to local communities was a positive use of computer technology. The Movement began with a newspaper, he pointed out, and Peter enthusiastically urged every parish to acquire a mimeograph machine to disseminate Catholic social teaching. It seemed reasonable to assume that Dorothy and Peter would approach the Internet with a similar attitude.
But: not uncritically. Jeff Dietrich, co-founder of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, contributed another insight that Jim incorporated into the project:
Discernment about how and why we engage technology must continue. We need thoughtful and prayerful reflection on what points toward the realization of the Reign of God versus what merely indicates the progress of culture.
As we move forward with this project to clean up CatholicWorker.org, it's important that we continue to wrestle with this tension. On the one hand, more than 300,000 people have used the resources on the website in the past two years alone. On the other hand, just as we have learned to be careful around fire and knives, it is important that we remain vigilant—and, like Jim Allaire’s early dialogue partners, prophetic.
Jerry
P.S. We’re still looking for volunteers!
It's not too late to join the team of volunteers working on the CatholicWorker.org update project! If you're interested in reading Dorothy Day's writings and proofing them against the original version in The Catholic Worker newspaper, or if you're interested in reaching out to Catholic Worker communities to help them update their listings, you can sign up here:
FEATURED
Raynor Library, Marquette University | Photo by Renée Roden
Midwest Archivists Preserve 90 Years of Catholic Worker History
How did the Catholic Worker’s archives end up at Marquette University, a Midwest Jesuit university, nearly a thousand miles away from Dorothy Day’s stomping grounds in New York City’s Lower East Side? Renée Roden shared the story in Thursday’s CW Reads:
William Ready, the director of libraries at Marquette University from 1956 to 1963, had a mandate to collect prestigious Catholic collections for the newly constructed library at Marquette. Ready acquired two sets of papers from Catholic authors: J.R.R. Tolkien’s and Dorothy Day’s. Fliss said that Ready scooped up both Tolkien’s papers and Day’s at a crucial time, before they each catapulted to new levels of fame in the late 1960s.
Ready had met Dorothy Day a decade before the first boxes arrived, when she gave a lecture at Stanford University in 1952. “She made a disciple of me,” Ready wrote in “Flies on Parade,” his autobiography, “I became sure that I was in the company of a saint.”
COMMUNITY NEWS & NEWSLETTERS
Photo courtesy of Frank Cordaro
Many Meetings at the Des Moines Catholic Worker
A new issue of Via Pacis, the newspaper of Des Moines Catholic Worker in Iowa, has hit the stands. The July issue of Via Pacis featured a new friend and an old friend coming by: Carmen Trotta, a former community member, visited his old stomping grounds, and Dmitri Kadiev, a muralist who has worked in Los Angeles, painted a technicolor version of Fritz Eichenberg’s Christ in the Breadlines on the side of Bishop Dingman House. Read online here.
Catholic Workers Dig Deep Wells of Grief and Joy
The August Issue of The Catholic Agitator, the newspaper of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community, has arrived in the inboxes and mailboxes of subscribers. Inside, Becky McIntyre reflects on the essential witness of Mary Magdalene, Matt Harper writes about the shocking images of masked ICE agents terrorizing city streets, and community updates include weddings, house rehabilitations and holding impromptu protests of ICE’s violation of U.S. citizens’ and immigrants’ rights. Read online here.
Chicago Catholic Worker Shares Dramatic History
A new issue of St. Francis Catholic Worker’s At the Door thematized on the theatrical elements in the life of a Catholic Worker. Articles include the memories of Larry O’Toole, a former Catholic Worker who cycled 1,500 miles around Lake Superior, and Karl Meyer, who dragged a mock electric chair from Chicago to Springfield to protest capital punishment. Read the full newsletter online here.
Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm Moving
Larry and Carmina Chapp, who have operated Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harvey’s Lake, Pennsylvania, for more than a decade, announced they are selling their farm and moving their house to Scranton, Pennsylvania.
After long and careful prayer, we have decided that it is time to sell our farm and move our Catholic Worker ministry to an urban setting. […] We are moving our Dorothy Day Catholic Worker to Scranton, PA. We put a bid in on an old rectory and it was accepted by the diocese, contingent upon us selling the farm before the end of September.
Read more on their website here.
The Catholic Radical Covers Hypocrisy of the Present Moment
The August/September edition of The Catholic Radical shared a report from a Catholic Worker witness for Gaza at the Christians United for Israel conference at the end of June; an essay on the repeal of the U.S. Refugee Admissions program; an editorial from a former law enforcement officer on how to document and stop police misconduct and an announcement of Scott Schaeffer-Duffy’s new book, “Against All Odds,” coming out next month. Read more online here.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
D.C. Catholic Worker Holds Witness for Hiroshima-Nagasaki
Washington, D.C. — The Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C. and Pax Christi USA are holding two days of witness to mark 80 years since the U.S. dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“We call on the nation to repent for the nuclear sin, abolish all nuclear weapons, ratify the TPNW [Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons], and redirect exorbitant military and nuclear expenditures to meet urgent human needs,” writes Art Laffin, of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in D.C.
The first action will take place outside the Pentagon on August 6, from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m., at the Pentagon designated protest zone on the southeast side of the building, a short walk from the Pentagon Metro Stop. They will repeat their vigil on August 9 at 10 a.m. at the White House. The group will gather at the north end of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Walk in Dorothy Day’s Footsteps in New York City
New York City — The Dorothy Day Guild is organizing walking pilgrimages on Sunday afternoons in New York City, to visit places of significance to the life and legacy of Dorothy Day in Manhattan. The tours begin at 2:00 PM on the north side of Union Square, near Sixteenth Street and run two and a half hours. There are upcoming tours on August 10 and August 24. You can sign up to participate through the Guild here.
Sugar Creek Catholic Worker Gathering
The Midwest Catholic Worker gathering at Sugar Creek will be held the weekend of September 11, 2025. Anyone interested in attending or donating to the costs of the weekend gathering can contact Eric at catholicwo...@gmail.com.
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WORDS FROM THE ELDERS
“Engaging the Internet as a Catholic Worker”
by Jim Allaire, from a 1997 Essay, available on catholicworker.org.
At this year’s Easter Vigil, during the Easter Proclamation, I was again reminded how Christ, the Morning Star that never sets, dispels all evil and sheds his peaceful light on all humankind. No one, anywhere, is excluded—that includes “Netizens.”
While the above arguments and principles are convincing to me, I know that many Catholic Workers are at best ambivalent about these issues and remain perplexed about where they stand. And some Catholic Workers cannot reconcile any involvement with computers and the Internet with their own image of the movement. No doubt every Catholic Worker has an image or set of beliefs about what constitutes the authentic meaning of the movement, shaped by each person’s Catholic Worker experience. The Catholic Worker movement is “large, highly diverse, diffuse, and decentralized—not to mention anarchistic” one letter said. I believe that within the movement there are many roles, gifts, and ways to communicate.
Read the full essay here.
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Roundtable is independent of the New York Catholic Worker and The Catholic Worker newspaper. Roundtable is produced by Renée Roden and Jerry Windley-Daoust. Monica Welch assists with art.
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