Dorothy Day

One Christmas at the close of World War II, we received a card from the Rochester group saying that they had liked The Catholic Worker [1] much better before the pacifists got hold of it. Another letter came from Boston, from an elderly worker who had been responsible for the first house of hospitality in Boston. She to reproached me for the extremism of our revolutionary pacifist position. She was a good trade unionist and was thinking in terms of the immediate steps to be taken, while we tried to keep the vision of a new social order, brought about by peaceful means.

It struck me then how strange a thing it was; here we have been writing about pacifism for fifteen years and members of two of our groups were just beginning to realize what it meant. We had been pacifist in class war, race war. in the Ethiopian war, in the Spanish Civil War, all through World War II, as we are now during the Korean war. We had spoken in terms of the Sermon on the Mount and all of our readers were familiar enough with that. We had lost subscriptions and bundle orders but these cancellations came from those who frankly disagreed with us and the matter was settled at once.

But there were a very great many who had seemed to agree with us who did not realize for years that The Catholic Worker position implicated them; if they believed the things we wrote they would be bound. sooner or later to make decisions personally and to act upon them.

Union workers in steel plants, auto and airplane factories - many in industry and business would have to find other jobs, jobs not tied up with the war effort. And where could they get them? If they worked in the garment factories, they would have to fill government orders for uniforms. Mills turned out blankets parachutes. Raising food, building houses, baking bread - whatever you did you kept the wheels of industrial capitalism moving, and industrial capitalism kept the wheels moving on war orders. You could not live without compromise. Teachers sold war stamps and bonds. Children were asked to bring aluminium pots and scrap metal to school. The Pope asked that war be kept out of the schoolroom, but there it was.

We wrote as much as we could on the subject, and Father John J. Hugo wrote articles and pamphlets - “The Immorality of Conscription,” “Catholics Can Be Conscientious Objectors,” "The Weapons of the Spirit,” “The Gospel of Peace.” The last two were printed as Catholic Workes pamphlets under the imprimatur of the Archdiocese of New York.

In Europe, Father Stratman. a Belgian Dominican, wrote The Church and War and Peace, and the Clergy, and Father Ude of Austria wrote a monumental book. “Thou Shall Not Kill.” Only the first two appeared in English. All of these set forth our stand. In addition to the theological articles in our own paper, many young men wrote of war and peace. The most lively articles we published were those of Ammon Hennacy, Christian anarchist, a modern Thoreau in his monthly account of his life on the land. He began with a series on his term, largely spent in solitary confinement, in Atlanta Penitentiary during World War I, where he met Alexander Berkman and studied American history and anarchism with him. Ammon had been a Socialist before he was won by the personalist approach of Berkman. Forced to rely on himself, he recognized the importance of beginning with oneself, starting here and now, and not waiting for someone else to start the revolution. He became a pacifist even in the class war and he came to see the dangers of the modern state, and the inefficiency and waste of bureaucracy.

Reading the Bible while he was in solitary confinement, he was completely won by the Sermon on the Mount and all the teachings of Jesus. Upon reading Tolstoj he recognized himself as a Christian anarchist and from then on, Tolstoj, Gandhi and Jesus became his teachers. Organized religion, as he calls it, he rejects.

[…]

Ammon's articles were always personal, since he wrote of what he knew, himself and his own experience. His life in jail, his work on dairy farms in Colorado and New Mexico, and on truck farms in Arizona have constituted a moving series about "Life at Hard Labor" and show how a man can live without compromise, and yet earn a living. For years he has paid no income tax. He worked by the day at the "stoop labor" the Mexicans usually performed, at irrigating, at ditchdigging, wood chopping, cotton picking. He has supported himself and his two daughters, sending both through Northwestern University and in addition to his back breaking work and his writing, he has found time to sell the Catholic Worker at churches and public meetings every week.

He has fasted and prayed for peace; he has picketed the tax collector's office twice a year. For the last few years on the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb he has fasted as penance for six days, picketing the Internal Revenue office at Phoenix while he fasted, and distributing literature. Ammon considers himself a propagandist, an agitator, a one-man revolution. I doubt that he has ever considered himself a sociologist or an anthropologist, yet he could be classed in these categories too. His articles on the Indians of the Southwest, specially the Hopi, who are anarchist and pacifist, are of vital interest.

Ammon is fifty-eight, a tall lank Ohioan of tremendous physical strength and endurance. For all of us at the Catholic Worker headquarters, he epitomizes the positive pacifist. He is trying to change conditions that bring about wars, and as he does not accept from Caesar, he does not render to Caesar. With all his absolutism and certitude, he is friendly and lovable, truly looking upon all as his brothers, overcoming opposition by understanding and affection. On the other hand, Bob Ludlow, one of the editors of the paper, a convert to the Catholic Church, has been the theorist of our pacifism for the past five years. Son of a Scranton coal miner, educated by the Christian Brothers, he was converted by reading Newman [2]. All his life he has been a student and teacher, and knows little of manual labor. When we have gotten him to work a few hours in our asparagus patch or to mend a leaky faucet, he has felt triumphant for weeks. He has cared for the babies of one of our Catholic Worker families, however, sitting helplessly in the middle of the kitchen while they circled like wild savages around him, and he has walked for miles on picket lines.

[…]

When correspondents ask him how we can do without government, he says,

Both among Catholics and anarchists in general a great deal of misunderstanding comes about by a confusion of the terms State, government and society. Father Luigi Sturzo's book Inner Laws of Society is the best Catholic treatment of the subject I have read. He brings out the point that the State is only one form of government. When you analyze what anarchists advocate (particularly the anarcho-syndacalists) it really boils down to the advocacy of decentralized self-governing bodies. It is a form of government. The confusion results because some anarchist writers use the term government as synonomous with the term State and will make the categorical statement that they do not believe in government, meaning by that the State. The State is government by representation (when it is a democracy) but there is no reason why a Catholic must believe that people must be governed by representatives - the Catholic is free to believe one way or the other as is evident from St. Thomas' treatment of law in the Summa Theologica. In Question 90, Art. 3, St. Thomas states: A law properly speaking, regards first and foremost the order to the common good. Now to order anything to the common good belongs either to the whole people, or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people. Hence the making of law belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care of the whole people; for in all other matters the directing of anything to the end concerns him to whom the end belongs. Anarchists believe that the whole people composing a community should take care of what governing is to be done rather than have a distant and centralized State do it. You can see from the quotation from St. Thomas there is nothing heretical about such a belief. It certainly is possible for a Christian to be an anarchist. As to government proceding from sin, St. Augustine distinguishes between coercive government and directive government. The former he says is the result of sin. The latter is not, as man is a social being. It could be said that anarchists advocate directive government (mutual aid) but reject coercive government (the State). Our Lord taught us to pray "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven" - in other words the nearer earthly government approximates what things are in heaven the more Christian it is. I do believe - whether it can be realized or not - that the anarchist society approaches nearer to this ideal than do other forms of government. As the Christian lives in hope so may we set this as the idea, towards which we work even if it seems as impractical as Calvary.

[...]

In stating the Catholic Worker pacifist position, Bob puts it this way:

The question of pacifism may be treated from the natural or supernatural viewpoint. From the natural viewpoint it derives its validity from reason, and natural morality, which is derived from the nature of man, is susceptible of development in that we understand more its implications as we understand more the nature of man. From an ethical and psychological standpoint it seems evident that pacifism, as exemplified in non-violent procedure, is more reasonable than is violent procedure and therefore is more in accord with man's nature which differs from sub-human nature precisely in that man is capable of rationality. As the Catholic religion is not in opposition to nature but rather completes and confirms nature it would seem then that there could be no opposition between a pacifism basing its validity on man's reason and the official teaching of the Church. The supernatural viewpoint takes into consideration the revelation of Christ. Here we find that, in the early Church, there was division of opinion. Some of the early saints and Fathers were definitely pacifist. All were critical of the army. The general rule of the early Church was that one who was baptized should not join the army. Those who were already in the army when baptized were admonished to shed no blood even in a war. So there has been a tradition of pacifism in the Church, though this has fallen into obscurity and awaits doctrinal development to become explicit. Some of this tradition survives in canon law wherein the clergy are forbidden to shed blood. The increasing horror and immorality of modern war which, because of the means used, necessitate the slaying of the innocent, should serve to recall this latent pacifist tradition so that the Sermon on the Mount will be seen to confirm and sanction non-violent procedure which is already sanctioned by reason. If it is remarked that pacifism places too much of a burden on the ordinary Catholic it can then be replied in truth that it places not so much a burden as does Catholic sexual morality with its day to day difficulties and the heroism it requires of many in these days. And yet the Church will not compromise in this regard. It would seem that the day must come when we refuse to compromise on this matter of war - otherwise we will sink to sub-human bestiality and will most certainly stray far from the spirit of Christ.

[...]

Tony Aratari, Charlie McCormick, Joe Monroe, members of the Catholic Worker group, and younger men in their early twenties just with us to help as long as the draft board permits, talk the issue over constantly.
Can there be a just war? Can the conditions laid down by St. Thomas ever be fulfilled? What about the morality of the use of the atom bomb? What does God want me to do? And what am I capable of doing? Can I stand out against state and Church? Is it pride, presumtion, to think I have the spiritual capacity to use spiritual weapons in the face of the most gigantic tyranny the world has ever seen? Am I capable of enduring suffering, facing martyrdom? And alone?
Again the long loneliness to be faced.