A Visit to the Catholic Worker Archives at Marquette University

Dorothy Day/Our Sunday Visitor-Milwaukee Journal

History involves timing,  coincidence and luck. 

As all of these ingredients come together, it's the rare person who has a chance to track down first-person knowledge of what actually happened, or add a personal perspective to the individuals involved.

But an archive helps to provide a bridge of understanding between the past and the present.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Catholic Worker (CW) Archives at Marquette University. There are thousands of documents included in the CW Archives, including the correspondence of Dorothy Day. I chose to focus on Dan and Phil Berrigan's letters to Dorothy, Elizabeth Burrow and Ammon Hennacy. The Berrigans were both priests. At one point Phil eventually left the priesthood and married Elizabeth McAlister. Hennacy was a pacifist (conscientious objector during WWII) and was involved with the Catholic Worker movement for decades. Burrow was a nationally renowned editor of the Ozark Spectator for thirty years and a staunch advocate for the integration of public schools in the south. 

During the course of her life, Day kept in touch with each of them.

It was a pleasure to spend a few hours looking through a small portion of the CW Archives. It was very much like the proverbial fishing expedition. Here's a glimpse of some of what I found.

In a letter to Day, dated December 9, 1957, Dan Berrigan (who was arrested several times for activities related to draft resistance) writes, "... divine love wears a human face."

Of the Catholic Church's stance on non-ordination of women  to the priesthood and celibacy, Berrigan observes, "it is not for us to lay further burdens on men and women who are already bearing the heat of  the day."

Phil and Dan Berrigan/Thinking Faith

And it's always interesting to get a glimpse of the humanity behind larger-than-life historical figures.

At one point, Day confides to Berrigan, "Please forgive me for sharing my suffering with you. Praying for you daily as we have at Vespers these last few years, you are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh."

In another letter, Berrigan expresses his frustration with the seemingly inflexible bureaucracy of the Catholic Church. "It is our scandalous neglect of life today that drives so many of our best [leaders] away."

Elizabeth Burrow was a young woman when she first began corresponding with Day. In May of 1938, Burrow wrote: "I'm becoming about as beloved as a black fever tick."

A year later, Burrow expressed her pacifist leanings when encouraging Day in her own non-violence work. "[T]hat must be your big job now: to combat that one heresy of the use of force."

Two years later, Burrow again encouraged Day, "When you feel ill or discouraged, you can always remember that you really are a yardstick for all these souls to whom you've taught so much of Church doctrine they'd never otherwise have known."

In May of 1938 Burrow wrote to Day "Oh, you know I'm still going to build the school and home if the convent doesn't work out."

Day's correspondence with Ammon Hennacy was especially interesting.

Elizabeth McAlister/Steve Dear

Here's a snippet from Hennacy that offers an appreciation of a social-justice-inspired interpretation of scripture. "I asked Rev. Abbey, a young Methodist minister here to preach on my favorite text. 'All things work together for good to those who love God.' He did so last Sunday. It was pretty good. However, I told him that he did not draw the conclusion for his audience, which was that they had not loved God or even thought about it and therefore they had this terrible deep darkness coming to them and very little hope." 

In 1942, a few years before the United States' involvement in WWII, Hennacy wrote to Day, "It does take a long time you know to work out our great ideals."

A few months later, Hennacy, in reference to the growing support of the war in Europe, wrote, "If a person used ignoble means to gain a noble end then the end would be defeated."

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Ammon Hennacy/Intermountain Catholic

About a year before the end of the War in Europe, Hennacy wrote: "Those of us on the outside who have the courage and the wisdom to see ahead to the terrible times when timid souls will naturally be weeded out had better commence to act now."

Of particular interest were letters that Day wrote to Forster Batterham, with whom she had a daughter. 

"I was very cold last night," she writes. "Not because there wasn't enough covers but because I didn't have you. Please write me, sweet heart, and I won't tear the letter up as I did the last one (but I saved the pieces) because I was mad at you. I love you muchly."

Phil Berrigan wrote to Day about his struggles with Church bureaucracy and getting into trouble for his resistance to the Vietnam War. "I am pained, but not dismayed or embittered. Another set of illusions fall, and we're closer to reality."

FBI's Surveillance of Dorothy Day: Your Tax Dollars At Work...

An especially intriguing part of the CW Archives is the F.B.I. surveillance file on Day and the Catholic Worker. 

On April 3, 1941, the FBI recommended that Day "be considered for custodial detention in the event of a national emergency."

In the May 1979 issue of the Catholic Worker newspaper (from New York City) Robert Ellsberg wrote of the CW's obtaining, under the Freedom of Information Act, about 575 pages of declassified material from the FBI related to Day, including this, from an FBI agent: “I don’t like it. From my religious standpoint, I’m getting pretty sick of it ... and there isn’t any article in the whole darn thing [CW newspaper] that doesn’t tingle—well, I’ll put it this way; it’s almost complete pacifism. And stirring up a Negro question about race equality and God knows, you know how bad that is!” 

Wrote another informant: "I think the whole [Catholic Worker] group should be put in jail until the end of the war."

"Occasionally the Catholic lingo in which the cw's [Catholic Worker's] brand of sedition was invariably couched caused [FBI] agents to go back to their catechism.

"One priest revealed '...this particular group believed literally in the Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus Christ taught that the meek would inherit the earth and the Love of God and of one's fellowman were the most important things of all." In favoring the Catholic religion, dd [Dorothy Day] had "embraced the belief that the world could only be saved by men loving one another, no  matter what their race, color or creed was."

Ellsberg writes, that during the 1940s the Catholic Worker actually became increasingly isolated in its pacifist focus, and even the Communist Party in America defended the US's involvement in WWII. "In June, 1944, after four years of investigation, Hoover received a memo from the Justice Department stating that there did not appear to be enough facts developed to warrant prosecution for violation of the sedition statutes. ‘No further investigation is desired.'” 

In 1948, responding to an FBI agent's anger over an article in the Catholic Worker, J. Edgar Hoover himself seemed to close the door on further surveillance. Writing in the June, 1979 issue of the Catholic Worker, Ellsberg notes that Hoover wrote a three-page memo, which included the following: "The purpose of the Catholic Worker is to emphasize and live out simple Christian virtues and to aid and assist the poor and unfortunates of life irrespective of race, color or creed. It seeks to help the downtrodden, the failures, the suffering, and to give immediate aid to the hungry and homeless...There has never been sufficient evidence to indicate that the movement is associated with Marxist Communism . . . On the contrary, the movement seeks to combat Communism...It appears that the movement, rightly or wrongly... is sincerely attempting to apply a somewhat unique interpretation of Christian doctrine in a unique way, on behalf of the poor, homeless, hungry, weak, unfortunate people who have stumbled and fallen along life’s pathways. ... To this end, the leaders of the Catholic Worker, inspired by their concept of ‘Christian Love,’ seem to be willing to sacrifice their lives and talents.'” 

Unfortunately, Hoover, four months after writing this report, chose to press charges of sedition against the Catholic Worker, for publishing an article titled "Reasons Why We Should Not Register" [for the draft].

So, FBI interest in Day and the Catholic Worker continued into the 1950's, Ellsberg notes: "Hoover took the further initiative of adding Dorothy’s name to the private index of Bureau “enemies": the Director’s “No Contact List.” All this was reflected in the Bureau index of the Worker. Suddenly we find Hoover saying 'Dorothy Day has been described as a very erratic and irresponsible person.' (The 'description' was made by Hoover himself, in fact.) 'She is extremely pacifist and has constantly and vigorously opposed the Selective Service System and war in general.'

During the Cold War era, after WWII, the Catholic Worker again came under the scrutiny of the FBI when members, including Day, refused to participate in a Civil Defense drill (aimed to remediate the effects of an atomic bomb being dropped on New York City, and other major metropolitan areas). 

Writes Ellsberg, "This was Hoover’s third unsuccessful attempt to interest the Government in the threat posed by the Catholic Worker. Though the FBI maintained close surveillance of the future activities of the Worker, cataloging its extensive affiliations and statements on the subject of war and peace, the files do not indicate that Hoover ever again recommended prosecution."

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Sidenote: I am deeply thankful to William Fliss, Archivist, Special Collections at Marquette University for pulling the material that included Robert Ellsberg's history of FBI surveillance. You can access much of the Catholic Worker Archives online.