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Dorothy Day: Love for One's Daughter and Love for the Poor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Katherine M. Yohe
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Abstract

Because of how often Dorothy Day (1897–1980) was away, helping to co-found the Catholic Worker movement, her daughter Tamar nicknamed her, “Be-going.” Others have called Dorothy a neglectful parent. This article provides an overview of Tamar's life, and for each period of Tamar's life it examines what Dorothy wrote during that time about motherhood and her relationship with her daughter. It seeks to clarify to what extent Dorothy's efforts to serve the poor led to a neglect of her daughter, and if there was any change in how she balanced these different relationships over the years. It also explores whether or not Dorothy understood and experienced motherhood as a holy and sanctifying vocation.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Fall 2004 , pp. 272 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2004

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References

1 Tamar Hennessy, interview by Towalski, Joe, “New York Activist's Journey to Catholicism was Filled with Potholes and Sharp Turns,” Saint Cloud Visitor, 27 February 1997, p. 10.Google Scholar For showing me this article, I am grateful to Phil Runkel, Archivist at the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University. Marquette houses a large special collection on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.

2 Hennessy, Tamar, interview by Riegle, Rosalie, Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 109.Google Scholar

3 Kate Hennessy, “Memories of Passion and Abundant Love,” Foreword to Riegle, , Portraits, x.Google Scholar Originally published in The Catholic Worker, October-November, 1997, p, 1. All Catholic Worker articles by Dorothy Day that are referenced throughout this article are available at the Catholic Worker web site: http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothday/browsewritings.cfm

4 Larry Holben, as quoted by Zappia, Evelyn, “Day Wasn't a Good Role Model for Parenting,” National Catholic Reporter, 29 October 1999, p. 4.Google Scholar Zappia's article is based on a talk Holben gave at a Catholic Worker conference in San Bruno, California.

5 Dorothy Day, “Death of Father Onesimus Lacouture, S.J.,” Appendix 2 in Hugo, John, Your Ways are Not My Ways: The Radical Christianity of the Gospel, vol. 1 (Pittsburgh: Encounter with Silence, 1986), 300Google Scholar, originally published in The Catholic Worker, December 1951, p. 1. While she focused on these two men, Dorothy read widely and found valuable ideas in many authors. For a sample of the diverse persons she quoted see the collection edited by Quigley, Margaret and Garvey, Michael as The Dorothy Day Book (Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1982).Google Scholar

6 Hugo, , Your Ways are Not My Ways, 1: 7.Google Scholar

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8 Hennessy, Kate, “Memories of Passion,” x.Google Scholar

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10 It is not always easy to determine with certitude the dates for the events in Tamar's life. Dorothy's biographers even have different years for Tamar's birth. The 1926 dates seems correct because it fits the very clear dating of Tamar's marriage on April 19, 1944, shortly after turning eighteen (Day, , “Notes by the Way,” Catholic Worker, May 1944, p. 1–2Google Scholar). Brigid O'Shea Merriman notes that some of the confusion around dates is due to “Dorothy's penchant for forgetting precise dates long after the fact and sometimes, not so far removed from the fact” (Searching for Christ: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994], 234, n.4). Miller, likewise writes, “Dorothy wrote of what touched her, but she was often vague, confusing, and even incorrect about dates” (Dorothy Day, 171).Google Scholar

11 The baptism was conditional as Dorothy had already been baptized in the Episcopal Church.

12 Tamar Hennessy (in Towalski), 10.

13 According to Miller's account, the marchers left Union Square on November 30, 1932. Dorothy left “several days later” and returned on the evening of December 9 (Miller, , Dorothy Day, 224, 227Google Scholar).

14 Day, Dorothy, From Union Square to Rome (Silver Spring, MD: Preservation of the Faith Press, 1938), 120–21.Google Scholar In this book, Dorothy was working closely with the journal entries she wrote during the time of the events described.

15 For more on this relationship and her abortion, see Milller, , Dorothy Day, 119–42.Google Scholar

16 Day, From Union Square to Rome, 121–22.

17 Day, Dorothy, “Having a Baby,” The New Masses, June 1928Google Scholar; as quoted in By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day, ed. Ellsberg, Robert (New York: Knopf, 1983), 32.Google Scholar

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21 Miller, , Dorothy Day, 221.Google Scholar

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23 Day, Dorothy, “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, November 1933, p. 3.Google Scholar

24 This anonymous agnostic is likely her brother John who would have been twenty-one at the time.

25 Day, Dorothy, “Another Letter to an Agnostic,” America 51 (1 September 1934): 491.Google Scholar

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27 Years later, Dorothy had stated that Tamar “returned home week ends and holidays,” but also made reference to the children who boarded there helping with Saturday chores (The Long Loneliness, with an introduction by Coles, Robert [New York: HarperCollins, 1997], 238).Google Scholar When one takes into account Dorothy's travels, it seems most likely that Tamar did not come back to the Catholic Worker home in the city every weekend.

28 Day, Dorothy, Houses of Hospitality (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1939), chap. 13.Google Scholar All citations to this book are from the text which is divided into chapters in the Dorothy Day Library on the internet http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/index.htm; last accessed in January 2004. See also “Day After Day–With Those Who Labor in South's Vineyards,” Catholic Worker, January 1940, p. 1.

29 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, November 1941, p. 4.Google Scholar See also Long Loneliness, 239.

30 Miller had Tamar going to Ade Bethune's home during the 1939–1940 school year as well as the 1942–1943 school year (Dorothy Day, 334, 355–59). From my reading of Dorothy's work, however, it seems that Tamar only spent one year at Ade's and it was the 1942–1943 school year. See Day, Dorothy, On Pilgrimage (New York: Catholic Worker Books, 1948), 15Google Scholar and Long Loneliness, 191, 239–40.

31 Day, , “Notes by the Way,” Catholic Worker, October 1943, 1–2Google Scholar; and Miller, , Dorothy Day, 365.Google Scholar

32 Tamar Hennessy (in Riegle), 109.

33 Tamar Hennessy (Towalski), 10.

34 Tamar Hennessy (Riegle), 111. In this interview Tamar added, “My father is responsible for who I am. He kind of turned away from the world, and I'm not much of a people person either” (111). In the interview with Towalski she made similar comments about her high school years.

35 Ibid. See also Tamar's comments about “a period when I was in my teens” when she suffered from Dorothy becoming “very religious and severe and giving everything up,” as quoted by Loney, James in “Remembering Dorothy Day,” The Mustard Seed, Christmas 1997, p. 5.Google Scholar

36 Riegle, , Portraits, 112.Google Scholar See also Julia Moran's description of Tamar's year at Ade Bethune's as quoted in Miller, , Dorothy Day, 356.Google Scholar Julia described Tamar as pretty and very shy, one who liked to dance and was happy learning crafts, lettering and painting.

37 Day, , “Day after Day,” Catholic Worker, April 1935, p. 3.Google Scholar

38 Day, , “Day after Day,” Catholic Worker, November 1941, p. 4.Google Scholar

39 Day, , “Day after Day,” Catholic Worker, May 1943, p. 4Google Scholar; and Day, as quoted by Miller, , Dorothy Day, 361.Google Scholar

40 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, November 1941, 4Google Scholar; and 15 March 1942 postcard as quoted by Miller, , Dorothy Day, 351.Google Scholar

41 Day, Houses of Hospitality, chap. 9. The date for this is obtained by comparing details in this section of Houses of Hospitality with her columns in the August 1936 and October 1936 Catholic Worker.

42 Day, Dorothy, “Visitors Criticism, CIO Convention,” Catholic Worker, October 1938, p. 4.Google Scholar If Dorothy's recollections written fourteen years later are correct, things did not stay this happy. She described Tamar as “miserable” at a new school she attended in her grade-school years and returning to the boarding school on Staten Island when the term was over. Then when she was fourteen, she lived at the Mott Street House of Hospitality while attending a local high school (Long Loneliness, 238–39).

43 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, November 1941, p. 4.Google Scholar

44 Miller outlines the content of these cards which continued through the next two years (Miller, , Dorothy Day, 346–66Google Scholar).

45 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, September 1943, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

46 Miller, , Dorothy Day, 378.Google Scholar In addition to visits with Tamar, Dorothy was visiting her sister Della on several weekends, meeting with David Hennessy for talks, getting together with Peter Maurin, and talking with Forster (ibid., 378–79).

47 Day, as quoted by Miller, , Dorothy Day, 367.Google Scholar

48 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker,” February 1935, p. 3.Google Scholar

49 Day, , From Union Square, 132.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., 151.

51 Day, Houses of Hospitality, chap. 1. Dorothy called Tamar by her middle name, Teresa, from the time she was two until the summer of her seventeenth year. The last time she used Teresa, in a publication seems be “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, July-August 1943, p. 3.Google Scholar

52 Day, , Houses of Hospitality, chap. 2.Google Scholar

53 In the July-August 1943 issue of The Catholic Worker, pp. 2–3, Dorothy printed her detailed notes from one day of the retreat, and in 1944 the Catholic Worker press in New York printed Hugo's retreat notes, entitled Applied Christianity, to make the material more widely available. For a history of the retreat, its content, and the controversy surrounding it see both volumes of John Hugo's Your Ways are Not My Ways; Merriman, , Searching for Christ, 131–69Google Scholar; and Miller, , All Is Grace: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987) 39–49.Google Scholar

54 Through her friend Sister Peter Claver Fahy, she had already seen some of the notes from the retreat. Merriman finds evidence in Roy's correspondence with Dorothy that they had met before February, 1940. The Labor Day weekend retreat, as explained by Merriman was a “retreat within a retreat” in which “Roy spontaneously began to preach the Lacouture doctrine between [Paul Hanly] Furfey's regular conferences” (Merriman, , Searching for Christ, 140Google Scholar).

55 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, September 1941, p. 3.Google Scholar

56 Day, , “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, January 1943, p. 6.Google Scholar See also “Day After Day,” Catholic Worker, April 1942, p. 1.

57 Day, as quoted by Miller, , Dorothy Day, 362.Google Scholar

58 Day, “Farming Communes,” Catholic Worker, February 1944, p. 8.

59 For Hugo's description of his relationship with Dorothy, see Your Ways are Not My Ways, 1: 229–41.

60 Miller, , Dorothy Day, 360.Google Scholar

61 Day, , “Notes by the Way,” Catholic Worker, May 1944, p. 1.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., 2.

63 Miller, , Dorothy Day, 460, 463.Google Scholar

64 Tamar Hennessy, (Riegle), 112. For similar comment, see the Tamar quotations in Patterson, Margot, “An Extraordinary, Difficult Childhood,” National Catholic Reporter, 7 March 2003, p. 14.Google Scholar

65 Tamar Hennessy, (Towlaski), 10.

66 Tamar Hennessy, (Riegle), 112.

67 Day, , Long Loneliness, 237.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., 239.

69 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, May 1956, p. 7.Google Scholar

70 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 9Google Scholar; see also 50. Hugo closely associated the love of children and the love of self (Applied Christianity, 30, 132, 196). Fr. Joseph McSorley was one of Dorothy's earliest spiritual advisors. For more on her relationship with him, see Day, Dorothy, Loaves and Fishes, with an introduction by Coles, Robert (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), 16, 128Google Scholar; and Portier, William, “Dorothy's First Spiritual Director,” Houston Catholic Worker, September-October 2002, pp. 1, 4, 7.Google Scholar Note, too, that Hugo also advocated the “duty” and “sacrament of the moment” (Applied Christianity, 97, 167–71).

71 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 166.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., 9. Mrs. Jellyby is a character in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. For more comments by Day on the significance of this character for her, see Coles, Robert, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley, 1987), 155–56.Google Scholar

73 Day, as quoted in Miller, , Dorothy Day, 393–94.Google Scholar

74 Day, , Long Loneliness, 231.Google Scholar In this work, Dorothy still thought it might be possible to have groups of families living at Catholic Worker farms if extra subsidies were provided (234).

75 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 17Google Scholar; see also 102.

76 Day, , Long Loneliness, 247.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., 280.

78 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 115Google Scholar; Long Loneliness, 116, 139; “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, December 1953, p. 7; and “Mid-summer Retreat at Maryfarm,” Catholic Worker, July-August 1954, p. 6.

79 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 83.Google Scholar

80 Day, , Long Loneliness, 239.Google Scholar Lk 14:26, according to Day, was one of Roy's favorite Scriptures.

81 Day, , Long Loneliness, 134, 157–58, 224, 243Google Scholar; On Pilgrimage, 6; “Advice to a Lonely Person,” quoted in Miller, , All is Grace, 108–09.Google Scholar For a further analysis of Day's use of the term loneliness, see Coles, , Dorothy Day, 62Google Scholar; and Merriman, , Searching for Christ, 60–61, 83.Google Scholar

82 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 10, 41Google Scholar; see also 111.

83 Day, , Long Loneliness, 135.Google Scholar While Dorothy has a long history of using the term co-creator for humans when they work, there are a only a few places where she clearly used “co-creator” for humans when they procreate children. See also On Pilgrimage, 61; and Thérèse (Notre Dame, IN: Fides, 1960), 103–04.

84 Day, , Long Loneliness, 236.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., 243.

86 Ibid., 236.

87 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 174.Google Scholar Italics are Day's.

88 Ibid., 52; see also 128–29.

89 Ibid., 53.

90 Dorothy had thought for years before the retreat that good-hearted Communists might be saved because of their love for others, especially “the least of these.” For an early reference to this belief see Day, , “Why Write About Strife and Violence,” Catholic Worker, June 1934, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar She seemed to continue to hold this belief for the rest of her life. See, e.g., “Beyond Politic,” Catholic Worker, November 1949, pp. 1–2; “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, May 1974, p. 2; and her discussion with Coles on this topic, Dorothy Day, 25–35.

91 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 9.Google Scholar

92 Ibid., 9–10.

93 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, April 1955, p. 7.Google Scholar

94 Day, , “Poverty is the Pearl of Great Price,” Catholic Worker, July-August 1953, p. 7.Google Scholar

95 Day, , Thérèse, x.Google Scholar

96 Ibid., xii. The first mention by Dorothy of Thérèse's “little way” that I am aware of is in her March 1938, “Day After Day” column for The Catholic Worker, p. 4. Here she spoke of the importance of the small ways of serving the poor. By January of 1948, she was connecting it to the work of mothers. She quoted one of “the group” as telling her, “We talk about the little way, and mothers especially know how one meal follows on another and daily there is washing, and the house to pick up” (“Letter on Hospices,” Catholic Worker, January 1948, p. 8).

97 Day, , Thérèse, 7.Google Scholar Yet Dorothy also noted the Martin family's concern for the less fortunate: they “taught their children that it was a privilege to serve the unfortunate with their own hands and do the works of mercy directly” (30).

98 Ibid., 103–04.

99 Ibid., 18; see also 103–04.

100 Ibid., 55.

101 Ibid., 31.

102 Ibid., 138; see also 56.

103 Ibid., 129.

104 Thérèse of Lisieux, as quoted by Day, , Thérèse, 131.Google Scholar Italics and capitals are in Day's text and copy Thérèse's style.

105 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, April 1955, p. 7.Google Scholar

106 Day, , Thérèse, 88Google Scholar; see also 87, 134, 143.

107 Day, , On Pilgrimage, 51.Google Scholar

108 Day, , “To Die for Love,” Catholic Worker, September 1948, p. 8.Google Scholar According to Miller, one could often find in her notes the “prayerful wish that she could be less dominating” (Dorothy Day, 463).

109 Day, as quoted by Miller, , Dorothy Day, 464.Google Scholar

110 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, March 1966, p. 1.Google Scholar

111 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, March-April 1975, p. 2.Google Scholar

112 Tamar Hennessy (Riegle), 184, n. 2.

113 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, May 1961, p. 3.Google Scholar

114 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, June 1961, p. 6.Google Scholar

115 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, May 1971, p. 7.Google Scholar Yet there did not seem to be a total loss of faith among the family members. E.g., Dorothy, described one of the grandchildren singing grace before meals and Jubilate Deo at school (“On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, October-November 1974, p. 2).Google Scholar

116 Day, Letter to “Nina, December 8, 1975,” in Miller, , All is Grace, 191.Google ScholarPubMed

117 See Miller, , Dorothy Day, 491–92.Google Scholar On these pages Miller wrote that Dorothy “once said to a person close to her,” “I have buried Tamar.” Working from Miller's text, Hugo saw this burial of Tamar as part of Dorothy's ongoing death for love of God and explicitly connected it to Tamar's loss of faith. It was, he said, the end of Dorothy's “dream for her child's stability and happiness.” By abandoning the faith, Tamar “adds the last faggot to the funeral pyre on which Dorothy had from the beginning chosen to lie” (Your Ways are not My Ways, 1: 258). Nonetheless, without the actual date and context of Dorothy's comment, it is difficult to know how to interpret it correctly.

118 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, September 1976, p. 2.Google Scholar

119 Miller collected many of these and published them in All is Grace.

120 Day, , Loaves and Fishes, 7.Google Scholar

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123 Day, letter to Tamar, as quoted by Miller, , Dorothy Day, 492.Google Scholar

124 Jordan, Patrick, “An Appetite for God: Dorothy Day at 100,” Commonweal, 24 October 1997, p. 13.Google Scholar Jordan lived at the Catholic Worker from 1969–1975. He was probably unaware of the negative connotations Dorothy had earlier attached to “doting.”

125 Day, as quoted by Coles, , Moral Leadership, 143.Google Scholar

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127 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, December 1965, p. 7.Google Scholar

128 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, March 1966, p. 1 and February 1975, p. 2.Google Scholar

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134 Day, , “On Pilgrimage,” Catholic Worker, May 1978, p. 2.Google Scholar

135 Patricia Ann Bryon, interview by Riegle, , Portraits, 109.Google Scholar

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