The Implicit Liberation Theology of Dorothy Day: Spiritual Dissatisfaction, Lo Cotidiano, and Sacred Spaces of Hospitality

Abstract

This paper will analyze the life of Servant of God Dorothy Day through the hermeneutical lens of liberation theology. Although Day was not an explicit liberation theologian, her work through the Catholic Worker Movement exemplifies liberative qualities. I will first reflect on Day’s interior life and her dissatisfaction with social injustices, claiming this as the starting point of liberative theological practices; then, I will turn to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a saint whom Day came to greatly admire, and Thérèse’s method of “the little way,” paralleling it with mujerista theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz’s epistemological concept of lo cotidiano as an important method in spiritual praxis; and finally, I will parallel the liberation between Base Ecclesial Communities in Latin America and the houses of hospitality in the Catholic Worker Movement, ultimately arguing that liberation for those on the margins stems from first offering safe places for the creativity of the marginalized to flourish. It is safety that thus leads to creativity—to a restoration of one’s agency and an affirmation of one’s voice and dignity—that can then lead to a stable and sustainable type of liberation. Day and the Catholic Worker movement serve as exemplars in this liberative method.

1. Introduction

In the fall of 2015, Pope Francis visited and toured the United States as part of his first trip in his papacy to the West. He was invited by Speaker Boehner to address Congress in a joint session, becoming the first pope ever to do so on Thursday September 24, 2015. In speaking to this Congressional audience, Pope Francis named four past Americans, asserting that these four citizens serve as American representatives for current day Americans to look to and reflect upon. Those Americans were the following: Abraham Lincoln; Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Thomas Merton; and, last but certainly not least, Dorothy Day. Biographers John Loughery & Blythe Randolph note in their book, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century, that Pope Francis chose these four American citizens because their “lives and ethical struggles offer a different way of seeing the world” (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 5). When speaking about Servant of God Dorothy Day, arguably the lesser-known person out of those four listed Americans, Francis confessed his admiration for Day’s passion in promoting social justice and honoring the rights of persons, stating the following: “her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.”1

In reaction to Pope Francis’ words, Kate Hennessy, one of Day’s grandchildren and author of the biographical book, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, was the guest of an episode in a Critical Faith podcast in 2017. In discussing Pope Francis’ words to Congress with the podcast host, Hennessy noted that many politicians in Congress had no idea who Dorothy Day was and had to search her on the Internet in that very room (Critical Faith 2017).

Day—a woman of incredible contradictions—was someone who danced in the nuances, someone who was unafraid of challenging and critiquing social expectations, and was someone who wholly embraced normatively unholy situations. On Thursday 24 September 2015, Pope Francis’ speech to Congress led people all over the world to beg the same question: Who is this Dorothy Day?

In this paper, I will first look at the spiritual development and the interior life of Dorothy Day, analyzing a posture of dissatisfaction with injustices and how this is a crucial quality to Day’s anarchism and to the greater movement of liberation theology; then, I will examine holiness through comparing and contrasting the contemplative life and the active life, bringing St. Thérèse of Lisieux into the conversation in order to utilize the liberative concept of lo cotidiano and Thérèse’s “the little way” as an important method in the spiritual praxis of both Day and liberation theology; finally, I will end with a reflection on the liberative and inclusive practices of the Catholic Worker movement, looking at how the function of space—both external and internal—plays an essential role both in actualizing sustainable liberation in the Base Ecclesial Communities in Latin America and in the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality.

This paper will analyze the life of Servant of God Dorothy Day through the hermeneutical lens of liberation theology. Before investigating this further, I want to offer a brief introduction to Latin American liberation theology—its historical background and essential qualities.

2. Overview of the Historical Significance of Liberation Theology

In the 1960s and 1970s, Latin American liberation theology came to fruition in Southern and Central America. Dominican priest and Peruvian, “the Father of Liberation Theology,” Gustavo Gutiérrez, asserts in his monumental and foundational text, A Theology of Liberation, that liberation theology represents “an attempt to accept the invitation of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council and interpret this sign of the times by reflection on it critically in the light of God’s word” (Gutiérrez 1973, p. xxi).

In Latin America, this was a time of contention and struggle that led to radical changes—politically and socially—deepening the socio-economic gap between the lower and upper classes. Atrocious poverty was copious in the margins outside of the cities, while the middle and upper classes were centralizing. As a method for offering dignity for those who may feel paralyzed in these margins, liberation theology, according to Gutiérrez, ultimately honors the eradication of suffering and exploitation, and that this “is a sign of the coming of the Kingdom” (Gutiérrez 1973, p. 97). Therefore, liberation must be seen as intimately connected to salvation, serving as a method of accountability in achieving salvation.

In addition, the Exodus narrative, specifically Moses’ liberation of the Israelites from Egypt in Exodus 7–14, remains a scriptural pillar to the foundation of liberation theology, prevailing that liberation is always a political action, and that God calls us to thoughtful political participation in this process of liberation (Gutiérrez 1973, p. 88). In the Exodus story, it is Moses who leads the Israelites out of Egypt, frees them from exploitation and alienation, and offers them a life to be lived with dignity that leads to salvation. Jon Sobrino, Jesuit priest and the “father of Latin American Christology,” names how the Exodus narrative serves as exemplar for the poor in Latin America: “it is clear that the victims are waiting for a new exodus and for the God who has the power to bring it about” (Sobrino 1993, p. 273).

In the background of the tense political and social turmoil in Latin America during this time, one must understand the larger landscape of the Cold War that has been at play for years between the Soviet Union and the United States. Latin America essentially became the battleground in the war between the West and the Soviet Union. Brazilian theologians and brothers Leonardo and Clodovis Boff state in Introducing Liberation Theology that “the poverty of Third World countries was the price to be paid for the First World to be able to enjoy the fruits of overabundance.” (Boff and Boff 1987, p. 68). Reforms regarding infrastructure led to tensions and further divisions between the state and the people; revolutionary movements rebelled and intensified against governmental dictators across the South. This is the historical context through which liberation theology emerged; Gutiérrez begs that these are the signs of the times that must be considered.

In his chapter, “The Catholic Worker Movement: Toward a Theology of Liberation for First World Disciples,” Matthew R. Smith claims, “When understood properly, according to liberation theologians, theology is a dynamic, practical and engaging process of the People of God” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 154). Liberation theology, a theology that is rooted in the People of God, is ultimately a confrontational theology, looking critically at systems of injustice but using dynamic and personal methods to combat this injustice with a posture of compassion, with a posture that honors the preferential option for the poor. In speaking of the dynamism liberation theology entails, the Boff brothers state that they desire for the term ‘liberation theology’ to become a redundant phrase, normative to the point that all of Christian theology becomes a theology that centers liberation. This is the universal goal, hopeful to be achieved through local and personal effects and relationships. Gutiérrez, in initiating and formalizing liberation theology as a field of study, invites dynamism and diversity in in rethinking what scholars use as credible sources of theology, challenging and transcending the euro-centric canon.

Gutiérrez essentially sought to voice the lived experience and reality of the Latin American people from this historical context, for, according to him, salvation can only be attainable through the offering of a preferential option for the poor and the marginalized. Sobrino also asserts in this vein, “to these poor, Jesus showed undoubted partiality, so that what is now called the option for the poor can be said to start with him” (Sobrino 1993, p. 81). For Gutiérrez, this preferential option for the poor and marginalized, which he considers a biblical prerogative and necessary duty of the Christian believer, must be recognized as a salvific prerequisite of the vulnerable. It is this participation in liberation that is a privilege and obligation for Christian life (Gutiérrez 1973, p. 32). And it is this focus on the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable—this undoubted partiality that Christ exemplified in the Gospels and that is the duty of the Christin to practice—that I will parallel between Dorothy Day and liberation theology. As Smith states, “Although liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement are unknown or misunderstood by the average Catholic in the pew, they are in fact two of the most beautiful, powerful and inspiring examples of Christian discipleship of our age” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 150).

Although Day was not an explicit liberation theologian, nor a theologian in the proper sense, her work through the Catholic Worker Movement exemplifies vital liberative qualities. June O’Connor in The Moral Vision of Dorothy Day: A Feminist Perspective, affirms similarities between Day and liberation theologies in stating:

Indeed, Day’s views and values anticipate those voiced in the liberation theologies of Latin America, Africa, and Asia: a decision to see life from the standpoint of the poor and to stand with the poor in a struggle for justice, an approach to theology rooted in praxis, a view of religion as a spur to revolutionary action, a desire to help bring about the transformation of society grounded in the values of justice, peace, freedom, and love.

(O’Connor 1991, p. 98)

It is this anticipation of liberative tendences from Day that I will analyze in the following project. Both liberation theology and Day desire to transform society for the better in and through the honoring of the preferential option of the poor and vulnerable. This paper will investigate the themes of dissatisfaction, littleness, and hospitality between both Day and liberation theology—where they are similar and different—in how the telos is a transformation of the society for the greater common good.

3. The Spiritual Development and the Interior Life of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day can be considered one of the most prominent modern American Catholic writers of the 20th century, known for living out her Catholicity with unquestionable generosity and unashamed hospitality. She was born on 8 November 1897, in Brooklyn, New York (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 12). When Day was young, she, her parents, and four siblings moved across the country to Northern California for her father’s new newspaper job (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 12). It is in Oakland where Day remembers that she “began to experience real piety, in the sense of the sweetness of faith” (Day 1952, p. 20). Day lived next door to a poor Methodist family that would sometimes take her to church with them (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 13). This sparked her initial curiosity of the divine. The Day family remained in California, up until 1906. On the morning of 18 April, San Francisco encountered a 7.9 earthquake that surprised the region with devastation; it was a tragedy for all. The Day family then packed their belongings and moved to Chicago, where John Day had found a new job. It is in Chicago where the rest of Day’s childhood would unfold.

In Chicago, Day and her siblings sometimes attended an Episcopal Church in their neighborhood (Day 1952, p. 28). This is when Day fell in love with the Bible, specifically with the Psalms, claiming that “the Psalms became part of my childhood” (Day 1952, p. 28). She began to develop a sense of an interior, spiritual awareness, noting that she was intently conscious of when she was happy, but also realized that it was never a full type of happiness, cognizant of a spiritual incompleteness—of dissatisfaction (Day 1952, p. 33). She began reading thought-provoking authors, such as Frank Harris, Peter Kropotkin, and Vera Figner, who challenged her mind socially and spiritually (Day 1952, p. 38). She then received the opportunity to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana (Day 1952, p. 40; Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 25).

After exploring aspects of Methodism (from her neighbor in San Francisco, Birdie) and Episcopalism (from Dr. Wilson in Chicago) as a child, college was the first time where Day decisively turned away from organized religion.2 She did, however, crave conversation regarding the divine, but she reflected that “even as I talked about religion I rejected religion” (Day 1952, p. 41); and that “the ugliness of life in a world which professed itself to be Christian appalled me” (Day 1952, p. 42). She believed religion to be a distraction, convinced that religion merely served as a comfort to people. She feared the performativity of Christianity, a performativity that she believed was not only inconsistent with the true message of the Gospel, but a performativity that was also unsustainable due to its superficiality.

However, she experienced a personal tension in that she loved the idea of what Christianity could be, and she saw beauty in this potentiality, but she was deeply disenfranchised and fatigued with the idea of short-term solutions that Christians were naively putting forward, solutions that were utilized in “remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place” (Day 1952, p. 45). This realization in college, this turning away from and criticizing organized religion, birthed Day’s commitment to anarchism. The biographers, Loughery and Randolph, note that “no one was more anti-establishment than Dorothy Day” (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 6).

After only two years in college, Day dropped out and moved to New York City to pursue journalism (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 35). After a grueling job search, Day secured her first journalist position on the New York Call, a Socialist daily paper (Day 1952, p. 50). Here she discovered an anarchist community of fellow writers, and the anarchism that birthed in Chicago began to flourish in New York (Loughery and Randolph 2021, pp. 38, 46, 66). Day’s form of anarchism dealt with a mindset of skepticism of institutions and their laws, a mindset that she would later believe, after her conversion, could occur productively within religious frameworks.

O’Connor claims that Day ultimately “esteemed anarchism precisely because it emphasized the moral power inherent in each person” (O’Connor 1991, chap. 5, p. 87). Day was also deeply distrustful of the state and never voted. She also never paid federal taxes due to the government’s usage of nuclear weaponry and arms in war.3 Robert Cole states, “Hers was a hands-on, a localist and personalist politics—she had little use for the bureaucracy of the modern state.”4 In my interpretation, it is Day’s anarchism and natural inclination to criticize institutions that made her keenly aware and dissatisfied with systematic injustices, a dissatisfaction that is also an essential posture in liberation theology.

Brazilian liberation theologian, Maria Clara Bingemer, wrote in her article, “The Witness of Dorothy Day and the Future of Liberation Theology,” that, for Day, “it was not enough to aid victims of social injustice, it was necessary to attack and destroy the causes of social disorder as well” (Bingemer 2013, vol. 16, no. 2, p. 6). Day radically claimed to be simultaneously Catholic and anarchist, believing that these two positions could co-exist. Day reflects, “anarchism has been called an emotional state of mind, denouncing injustice and extolling freedom” (Day 1952, p. 55). For Day, anarchism was not a blueprint for chaos, but rather an instinct of questioning of larger structures (Doblmeier 2020). Her anarchism centers this posture of dissatisfaction that is a crucial quality to liberation theology, a dissatisfaction that is not necessarily negative nor unhopeful, but rather is motivating and critical.

Day wrote her spiritual autobiography, The Long Loneliness, in 1952. In “Part One: Searching,” she discusses her childhood experiences—from California to Chicago to New York. A question that haunted her throughout this part of her life: she asked, “Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?” (Day 1952, p. 45). During this time, she had felt that religion was a type of drug and that she must turn from it; she hardened her heart and tried to cut it out of her life (Day 1952, p. 43). However, Christ continued to haunt her.

A powerful story from Part One of her autobiography involved her time at the “Anarchist Ball” in New York. Along with other communist journalists, this event was used to gather funds for the local anarchists who were facing trial for rejecting the draft for the war during this time (Day 1952, p. 58). She reflects on one anarchist—Louis Kramer—who was well-intentioned to the cause but frustrated many members of the community, including Day. She notes, “I got away from him as often as I could” (Day 1952, p. 58). Kramer was homeless and wore ragged clothes. He would wait for Day to get off work in order to walk her home, greatly unaware of social boundaries and her overall discomfort. Kramer met Day at the Anarchist Ball that night. He embraced her; she slapped him, and he slapped her back. Other men nearby witnessed this and jumped to her protection. They began to beat him up; he was eventually kicked out of the ball. What I find most striking about this story is Day’s debrief of the event: she laments and highlights her regret and shame in how she acted that night (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 45). Day states, “I was not even acting like a good radical, lining myself up on the side of the “capitalist-imperialist” press, rather than on the side of my poor friend [Louis]” (Day 1952, p. 59). Day sought the liberation, the salvation, of Kramer. This is a small story in her autobiography (taking up only one page), but it is particularly insightful to her interior life, showing her dedication for inclusion and accountability. She sought to live a consistent life ethic, unafraid to acknowledge subtle forms of dishonesty and hypocriticalness, to which even she can fall victim. She writes, “Can a Hitler be converted and live? God, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. Let me see Christ in him. Take away my heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh. Teach me to love” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 87).

She further reflects on hypocrisy in The Long Loneliness in looking to French novelist and dramatist, François Mauriac, in offering his words as part of her reflection: “there is a kind of hypocrisy which is worse than that of the Pharisees; it is to hide behind Christ’s example in order to follow one’s own lustful desires and to seek the company of the dissolute”(Day 1952, p. 59). Day reflects on this specific quote from Mauriac because she sought to be better, and she was not afraid to look at herself and criticize where she was too comfortable; it is this story of her interaction with Kramer and her debrief of the situation that holds to how dissatisfied yet contemplative Day was in her reflection process about her own actions.

Then, in Part Two of The Long Loneliness, Day meditates on her relationship with her common law husband and an atheist, Forster Batterham, and discusses the birth of their daughter, Tamar Teresa. Forster was an anarchist from Asheville, North Carolina (Loughery and Randolph 2021, pp. 99–100). They entered into a common-law relationship in her mid-twenties; she felt that life with him brought her a natural sense of happiness (Day 1952, p. 111). He had a “horror of commitment. Freedom meant everything to him” (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 103). She notes that they did not talk much, but that they lived together in the fullest sense of the meaning of that phrase (Day 1952, p. 114). However, Day asserted that it was nearly impossible to talk with him about explicit faith or religion (Day 1952, p. 120).

Day soon discovered that she was pregnant; she considered this a miracle due to complications from her abortion years earlier, even though she left out her abortion in The Long Loneliness (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 106). Forster did not believe bringing in children to the world, which was a big point of contention between the couple. Day reflects that he was obsessed with the war and was consumed by his extreme individualism (Day 1952, p. 136). Regardless, their daughter, Tamar Teresa, was born on 4 March 1926. Tamar’s birth was the big pivot that led to the start of Day’s conversion to the Catholic Church.

Soon after Tamar was born, Day began to read the Imitation of Christ, which led her to reflect: “I knew that I was going to have my child baptized, cost what it may. I knew that I was not going to have her floundering through many years as I had done, doubting and hesitating, undisciplined and amoral. I felt that it was the greatest thing I could do for my child” (Day 1952, p. 136). This was a great internal dilemma to Day, for she knew that becoming Catholic would mean losing her family. However, the Holy Spirit led Day to determine that Tamar needed to be baptized before even Day herself was baptized. Day reflects on her own conversion process: “There had been the physical struggle, the mortal combat almost, of giving birth to a child, and now there was coming the struggle for my own soul. Tamar would be baptized, and I knew the rending it would cause in human relations around me” (Day 1952, p. 138).

After Tamar was baptized, Day was also baptized. Soon after, Day and Forster separated, and his “resentment was unappeasable. He wore it like an open wound” (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 113). Day reflects about this spiritual dilemma in 1926 writing the following: “Becoming a Catholic would mean facing life alone, and I clung to family life” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 31). Tamar was the push that Day needed in order to become Catholic. The problem for Day was not whether or not to love God, but rather how to love God; Catholicism functioned as this “how.” She writes in May 1939, “If natural love can be so great, and we must remember that grace builds upon nature, then how great should be the supernatural love we should bear our fellows. It is this love which will solve all problems, family, national, international” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 137). In a sense, Forster was holding back Day’s love from achieving this essence of supernatural, due to his focused commitment to the natural.

At this point in her autobiography, she reflects on the thoughts of theologian, Romano Guardini, who notes in The Church and the Catholic, and the Spirit of the Liturgy how the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from His Cross, and “one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the Church” (Day 1952, p. 150). This stance of dissatisfaction is a crucial quality to the implicit liberative posture of Day. Five years after her conversion, she then met Peter Maurin, her eventual co-founder and partner of the Catholic Worker Movement.

In the final part of her autobiography, Day discusses how love is the ultimate measure of one’s life, which describes her relationship with her work in The Catholic Worker Movement. She notes that Maurin was naturally an agitator, yet he ignored the differences of others in order to stress concordance and community (Day 1952, p. 170). Day writes, “Peter was the poor man of his day. He was another St. Francis of modern times” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 73). He wore ragged clothes and was blunt in his conversation style. He had the ability to arouse in someone a sense of their own gifts in order to influence them to contribute to something greater (Day 1952, p. 171). He also was very trusting of the idea that things will always work out and that God will provide, saying to Day “in the history of the saints, capital was raised by prayer. God sends you what you need when you need it” (Day 1952, p. 173). He sought food, clothing, and homes for all, and was greatly inspired by the Catholic social teachings of the Church.

Maurin was the entry point for Day of first learning about the Church’s social teaching. Because of her connection with Maurin, Robert Coles states in the introduction of The Long Loneliness that Day had “a strong sense of connection to the Church’s late nineteenth-century social teachings, as embedded in such important documents as the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, and later, Quadrigessimo Anno, bold efforts on the part of the Vatican to spell out the moral and social obligations of Christians in the contemporary industrial order.”5 The mission of the Catholic Worker was inspired by these themes that were communicated in these encyclicals. Both Day and Maurin understood these moral and social obligations that were communicated by the Vatican to translate into their devotion to resistance, hospitality, personalism, Christian anarchism, and works of mercy.

After meeting Maurin, the Catholic Worker movement, which was both a newspaper that promoted the personalist message of the Gospel and a system of houses of hospitality set up across the country, began to come to fruition. Peter’s ultimate vision was to create a society “where it was easier to be good,” an environment they sought to cultivate in and through the Catholic Worker, but an environment they yearned to actualize beyond the Catholic Worker with regard to social institutions (Hennessy 2017, p. 71). This movement exploded in the midst of the Depression and due to Maurin and Day’s dedication to service.

Day and Maurin affirmed that “we are our brother’s keeper 2026… we must have a sense of personal responsibility to take care of our own, and our neighbor, at a personal sacrifice” (Day 1952, p. 179). Day recalls that the Catholic Worker grew organically, and that Maurin would frequently state, “We are not an organization, we are an organism” (Day 1952, p. 182). The first Catholic Worker house existed on the West Side of New York on West Charles Street with about twenty people (Day 1952, p. 186; Loughery and Randolph 2021, pp. 150–51). After a few years, thirty-three houses of hospitality and farms were active around the country (Day 1952, p. 186).

In the houses of hospitality, Day truly believed in living with the poor. She asserts:

going around and seeing such sights is not enough. To help the organizer, to give what you have for relief, to pledge yourself to voluntary poverty for life so that you can share with your brothers is not enough. One must live with them, share with them their suffering too.

(Day 1952, p. 214)

Voluntary poverty was a crucial pillar of the Catholic Worker. Through the practice of voluntary poverty, the poor are no longer differentiated as “other.” This was a requirement for all who wished to live in the houses of hospitality because, as Loughery and Randolph suggest, “voluntary poverty brought into living practice the radical egalitarianism preached by Jesus” (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 150). She continues in reflecting on the importance of voluntary poverty:

The love of the humanity of our Lord is the love of our brother. The only way we have to show our love for God is by the love we have for our brother… Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must compassionate them, suffer with them. While our brothers suffer from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts.6

In addition, O’Connor suggests that Day’s work “urges us to notice that people with possessions and status very often live in fear of losing these and that such fear constricts vision and generosity” (O’Connor 1991, p. 98). Day sought to practice voluntary poverty as a way to combat this fear. Day claimed that the Catholic Worker Movement “is a permanent revolution” (Day 1952, p. 186). She believed in a transparent relationship that is with, for, and of the poor.

Thus, the theme of dissatisfaction with social injustices serves as a common thread between liberation theology and Day. Bingemer affirms this as well in noting that “Liberation Theology builds a new future, the witness of Dorothy Day is an important source of inspiration” (Bingemer 2013, p. 5). In looking at Day’s young life adventures, there are early glimpses of liberative qualities shaping her spirituality, a spirituality that blossomed from her posture of dissatisfaction and her draw to the anarchist movement, but a posture that remained hopeful in seeking what is to come. Much of Day’s legacy of her activity in fighting for social justice is grounded in her personal spirituality, which is where we will turn to next.

4. Lo Cotidiano: The Contemplative and the Active

I claim that there is a doctrine of grace in the life and theology of Dorothy Day that is interested in paving the pathway for the intersection between contemplation, work, and faith. Day’s dedication to spiritual contemplation serves as the basis for her social justice initiatives, which then led to the birth of the Catholic Worker movement. She saw her spirituality as a sacramental commitment—a duty—based on the ethics of her lived experience, leading to the liberative philosophy of the Catholic Worker. Day confirms that the world not only needs liturgy, but that there is the desire for liturgy and worship being awakened by the people of the world (Day 1952, p. 223).

Day reflects in her Postscript in The Long Loneliness, “We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”7 It is in this way that Day’s conversion serves as the embodiment of the truth of the redemptive love of God. Before her conversion, she considered herself an avid anarchist and socialist. She was always curious with theological questions, but refused to participate in any religion formally because she believed that there was not enough social action associated with the values that religion preaches (Day 1952, p. 45). She yearned to focus on intimate relationships at a local level in order to combat institutional systems of oppression. But even after her conversion, according to O’Connor, Day “questioned the practice of religion against her ideals, regularly challenging and exhorting those who claimed to be religious” (O’Connor 1991, p. 88).

It was not until she had met Forster and they lived together in their little cottage on Staten Island where Day began to see more of a connection between the physical and the spiritual. It is Forster and his love for the natural that bring Day to further contemplate converting to Catholicism. Reflecting on this time with Forster, she states that “it was because through a whole love, both of physical and spiritual, I came to know God” (Day 1952, p. 40). She continues, “body and soul constitute human nature. The body is no less good than the soul… we are not to destroy but to transform it” (Day 1952, p. 257). It is in this interplay and legitimacy of both body and soul where one part is not necessarily greater than the other and where love can transform. Day writes, “we must die to the natural to achieve the supernatural, a slow death or a quick one. It is universal… all must die; it is a universal law, very hard for us to realize” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 100). This was difficult to realize for Day, but especially difficult for Forster to understand. Her yearn to contemplate the supernatural eventually led to her decision to convert and ultimately to leave Forster.

Day felt called to focus more on the contemplative and to join the Catholic Church. She reflects that “I felt that it was necessary for man to worship, that he was most truly himself when engaged in that act” (Day 1952, p. 93). Through the act of worship, Day felt more authentic, as both the active and the contemplative aspects in her united in the ritual that is the Catholic Mass (Day 1952, p. 84). Forster and Day agree on this philosophy of human nature, but Dorothy takes it one step further in seeking this spiritual dimension. For Day, what you do with human nature makes all the difference. Forster simply appreciated it up front for what it was; he “refused to do other than live from day to day” (Day 1952, p. 119). Day believed in the day to day—this lo cotidiano, the little way—but in a way that called for her intimate spiritual participation.

In 1960, Day released a book about St. Thérèse de Lisieux, the Little Flower. The outward forms of life of Thérèse and Day could not be more different—Therese was gentle, submissive, and came from an affluent family; Day was blunt, critical, and practiced voluntary poverty. However, their inward spiritualities are very much in tune with one another. Both The Long Loneliness and A Story of a Soul, Thérèse’s autobiography, concern the roles of action and contemplation in a life seeking to live out holiness in the modern world. In A Story of a Soul, Thérèse goes through significant moments of her life that helped shape her faith, looking at how holiness emulates through the little actions of daily life. Thérèse reflects on this principle of littleness in stating that “I am too little, now, to be vain, too little to know how to coin fine phrases indicating how very humble am… and the greatest thing He has done is to show me how insignificant I am and how incapable of doing any good” (St. Therese of Lisieux 2016). Day sees a commitment to a life of prayer in Thérèse that centers a sanctification process through the day-to-day. Initially, Day found Thérèse to be a “pious pap… colorless, monotonous, too small in fact for my notice” (Day 1979, p. xiv).

However, the holiness of Thérèse came to haunt Day, and she began to look at Thérèse in a new light. She reflects, “It took me a longer time to realize the unique position of Thérèse of Lisieux in the Church today.”8 It’s not what Thérèse suffered, but rather how she suffered that Day admired. Day reflects in December 1949, “We are all guilty, we all make up the Body of Christ. And we must suffer with bitterness, the Little Flower said, if need be, and without courage, and that is what makes the suffering especially keen” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 57). This attention to suffering is what Day admired, and, for Day, it made her understand reality more intimately. Day asserts, the “Little Flower begged God to let her always see reality. Things as they really were, so her love would be true and real” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 181).

Day admired this about Thérèse—her unshakeable trust in God. Thérèse writes about how she knew that God always provides mercy to those who seek a path of penance. Day reflects that Thérèse “practiced the presence of God and she did all things—all the little things that make up our daily life and contact with others—for His honor and glory.”9 Day found in Thérèse a radical revolution of love that has the potential to change the way of modern life. “Little” for Thérèse does not mean “little” in the literal sense; rather, it means being close to Christ.

There is a doctrine of grace here that is interested in paving the pathway for both faith and work. Thérèse is an exemplary model of what it means to be a modern Saint, exemplifying the idea of immeasurable love in modernity. Day learns to have a great devotion to Thérèse, noting that “she was beloved by her heavenly Father, she was the bride of Christ, she was a little less than the angels” (Day 1979, p. xix). Thérèse ultimately lived a life that embodied the agony and joy of giving herself to Christ. Thérèse reflects in her spiritual autobiography, “As Jesus had made me realize that the Cross was the means by which He would give me souls, the more often it came my way, the more suffering attracted me” (St. Therese of Lisieux 2016, p. 87).

In addition, Robert Ellsberg reflects that “from Thérèse, Day learned that each sacrifice endured in love, each work of mercy, might increase the balance of love in the world.”10 The little way of Thérèse found itself in the background of the culture of the Catholic Worker; this theme of “little-ness” also plays a huge role in liberation theology.

Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Roman Catholic Cuban-American mujerista theologian, used the concept of lo cotidiano as an epistemological category to describe liberation in order to refer to the importance of the everyday details, to the little things. Mujerista theology is a branch of liberation theology, putting “into practice a preferential option for the oppressed. It insists that liberation is not something one person can give another but that it is a process sin which the oppressed are protagonists, participates in creating a reality different from the present oppressive one” (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 1). With Latinas as the point of departure in mujerista theology, Latinas become the protagonist responsible for constructing their own identity, their own liberation, while not under the shadow of the colonizer. It is this practice of lo cotidiano that decenters the oppressor and centers the oppressed.

Lo cotidiano is not a static entity that is to be reviewed and studied, but rather, it serves as a fluid model of the method of life that is practiced by those who live day-to-day on the margins (Martell-Otero et al. 2013, p. 6). Isasi-Díaz assesses in her book, Mujerista Theology, that “lo cotidiano, the daily experience of Hispanic women, not only points to their capacity to know but also highlights the features of their knowing;” she continues, “our emphasis on lo cotidiano as an epistemological category, as a way of knowing, has to do, in part, with the need to rescue Hispanic women’s daily experience from the category of the unimportant” (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 68). Therefore, lo cotidiano is a framework that prioritizes what has traditionally been deemed as unimportant by society and serves as a salvific and liberative praxis (Isasi-Díaz 1996, pp. 69, 131). Through lo cotidiano, those on the underside of history are able to comprise themselves as agents in the ongoing liberation process.

Lo cotidiano looks at the day-to-day activities in orientation to the overarching divine (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 71). In naming lo cotidiano as the source of theologizing, a shift is thus initiated in determining Hispanic women as the protagonists of their own liberation (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 73). And it is not just liberation in our earthly lives, but a liberation that affects our salvation in the afterlife (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 117). In addition, Robert Chao Romero in Brown Church notes the Christological impact of the practicing of lo cotidiano in stating the following: “As we walk with him [Jesus] each day in the big and lo cotidiano, he teaches us, heals us, and transforms us from the inside out to make us more like him” (Chao Romero 2020, p. 43). The revelation of God happens in and through lo cotidiano—in the day-to-day. Thus, there is a Christological effect in both the little way and lo cotidiano (Isasi-Díaz 2004, p. 66).

In addition, Gutiérrez notes that “to be a Christian is to be in solidarity” (Gutiérrez 1973, p. 67). We are called to a posture of solidarity that haunts us in every corner and aspect of our daily lives, similar to Day’s theory with voluntary poverty. It is the experiences of our daily life that build the foundation of our ability to self-determine the protagonists of our liberative narrative, in becoming those active, moral agents (Isasi-Díaz 2004, p. 183). This process of self-determination and liberation requires communication—communication with ourselves, with our surroundings, and with God through Christ. Isasi-Díaz notes, “Without communication we cannot be in communion with each other, we cannot be in communion with God” (Isasi-Díaz 2004, p. 44).

Liberation is ultimately authentic communication and thus and intimate attention to the other; we find God through communication in the path of our own liberation, as well as the liberation of those around us (Isasi-Díaz 2004, pp. 50–51). Through lo cotidiano, we are able to radically alter the structures of society in changing the structures of our culture (Isasi-Díaz 2004, p. 86). Therefore, lo cotidiano is in constant contact with our social systems. Isasi-Díaz adds,

Lo cotidiano is where we first meet and relate to the material world that is made up not only of physical realities but also is made up of how we relate to that reality (culture), and how we understand and evaluate that reality and our relationship with it (history).

(Isasi-Díaz 2004, p. 95)

Thus, lo cotidiano bridges history to culture, validating the protagonists and their dignity in all that has been and all that is yet to come. Lo cotidiano ultimately slows down this post-modern, rapid process of imperial, capitalist, neoliberal globalization and brings awareness to the small details of the internal aspect of the struggle that overflows and affects the external and physical of the struggle. As Smith assesses in his chapter on Day and liberation theology, both of them are “responding to the abuses of capitalism” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 151). Therefore, for external change to happen, internal reflection needs to occur. Isasi-Diaz conveys, “mujerista theology is anxious to participate in developing those strategies for liberation, which we know can grow only out of real solidarity, and this, in turn, depends on a real engagement of differences rather than a superficial acknowledgment of them” (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 71). Context and communication are crucial aspects to be centered in this liberative process.

It took Day a while to find this balance between the active and the contemplative. It was about four years after she became Catholic where she had an existential crisis, realizing that perhaps she has now become too contemplative and not active enough. She attended the Hunger March in Washington D.C. to report as a journalist for some Catholic magazines (Loughery and Randolph 2021, pp. 131–32). She ran into some of her old communist friends from before her conversion who were participating in the march. This pulled a nerve in Day as she began to remember how active she used to be in protesting for social justice (Day 1952, p. 165). At the Hunger March, ay realized that since she had become Catholic, she had not been active in the way that she had used to be. She experienced a bitterness here, stating “since I was now a Catholic, with fundamental philosophical differences, I could not be out there with them… how little, how puny my work had been since becoming Catholic” (Day 1952, p. 165).

After the Hunger March when she returned to New York, Day met Peter Maurin for the first time (Day 1952, p. 166). Maurin would be the first person that Day met who practiced a balanced contemplative and active life and was vocal about it. He taught Day about the Church’s social teaching program, which she had never heard about before (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 156). When Peter and Day launched the Catholic Worker Movement, they wanted people to know that the spiritual and material welfare of all peoples were supposed to be a top priority to the Church (Hennessy 2017, p. 74). Day yearned to live out this mission; “how I longed to make a synthesis reconciling body and soul, this world and the next” (Day 1952, p. 151). The Catholic Worker sought to be an environment reconciling body and soul, allowing contemplation and action to flourish fully. The Catholic Worker movement became the Church made visible—for Day, for Peter, and for countless others.

Day acknowledges and criticizes the potentiality of the thing versus the actuality of the thing itself. She was no armchair thinker; she was not stuck in an ivory tower at leisure pondering theological musings. She was on the streets where the people were; she was in and of the everyday, in and of the lo cotidiano; she was a saint who served with and for the people, who exemplified voluntary poverty and the virtue of solidarity, crucial qualities that are significant both to Day and liberation theology.

Day practiced lo cotidiano and the little way with her work at the Catholic Worker, in the daily house-work tasks, in the cooking and providing of the meals to people, and in the daily conversations with the poor. Day’s attention to the little was what made her work so liberative. Day was drawn to Thérèse’s sense of self-awareness, noting that whenever Thérèse “did something wrong, she was very conscious of it and would run and confess it” (Day 1979, p. 71). Similar to Day, Thérèse had a deep conviction of accountability and greatly feared any sense of hypocrisy (think of the Louis Kramer story). Both women believed in living a consistent, steadfast, and accountable life ethic.

Lastly, Thérèse and Day also had a great love for those who were poor. Thérèse became conscious of the poor at a young age, and compassion flowed through her when she met them on her walks with her father (Day 1979, p. 79). On these walks, she noticed all things—big and little—and yearned for more compassion to be given to those who are poor. Day reflects in her biography of Thérèse, “there is never too small an incident for Thérèse to mention in her memories” (Day 1979, p. 81). Thérèse exemplifies her incredible ability to find beauty and grace in all things, to find holiness in unholiness, just as Day did with her work in the Catholic Worker.

For Day, Thérèse was the closest synthesis of action and contemplation, admiring how Thérèse was able to translate the grace of God in particular and local moments, in the little things, in lo cotidiano. Thus, Day’s contemplation served as the basis for her liberative action; she did not create a social movement based on mere ideas or abstractions. Day practiced a social and liberative philosophy of life, living it out as a sacramental duty, that was based on the ethics of her lived experience.

5. The Liberative Hospitality of the Catholic Worker

Day and liberation theology share many similarities in their ideology and praxis—the ideologies’ dissatisfaction with social injustices, as well as the method of lo cotidiano and the Little Way. Now we will turn to this idea of the role of space—both physical and social—in the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality and the Base Ecclesial Communities (Communicado Ecclesia de Base or CEBs) in Latin America.11 The Catholic Worker movement can be seen as a modern-day Exodus movement of liberation led by Day. Both these houses of hospitality and these CEBs serve as places from which theology comes out of and from which people are called to reflect on their experiences with God in intentional ways. These sacred spaces of liberative hospitality present in both the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality and the Base Ecclesial Communities serve as experiential theology.

Smith argues that “the Catholic Worker movement gives its members a lens through which first world Christians can view the world and Scripture. This unique vantage point enables Catholic Workers to practice liberation theology in a first world context” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 162). In centering the reader’s first-world identity, Smith challenges the reader to reflect about how they are participating as oppressors. Smith’s liberation in the first world context approach, an approach that bridges the first world to liberation theology, seeks to invite discernment and ultimately accountability of the rich. He states, “here, the rich are called to compassion (to suffer-with). They are called to conversion, to turn toward God and their brothers and sisters in need” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 161). He calls for discipleship in the first world, a discipleship that needs to be translated to the “majority population that enjoys wealth, power, status, and influence” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 161). In looking the life of Day and the Catholic Worker, a United States -based movement, through the hermeneutical lens of liberation theology, I will analyze how the function of sacred space in the houses of hospitality and the CEBs ultimately lead to liberation.

Stanley Vishnewsi, an avid supporter and helper of the Catholic Worker throughout the first forty years of its existence, felt deeply drawn to the radically inclusive culture that the Catholic Worker promoted. Before he discovered the Catholic Worker, Stanley was at first attending nearby parishes in New York. However, he did not feel happy in any of these Church spaces. Hennessy reflects in her biography of her grandmother that “the Worker drew Stanley in because of his dissatisfaction with what the local churches were offering, called the ‘Five Bs’—bridge, beer, bazaars, bowling, and bingo… at the Worker you didn’t merely write about the news; you took part in it” (Hennessy 2017, p. 79). Stanley was keenly aware of how local parishes were transforming into almost country clubs—churches that did nothing for their community but were an enclosed bubble, an exclusive type of space, that hosted events that were not even necessarily religious. He was deeply drawn to the space that the Catholic Worker cultivated, a space that centered radical inclusivity and personalism.

Through the practice and philosophy of personalism, which refers to this philosophy of recognizing the dignity of the other and one’s responsibility to the other, Day found this ability of encountering holiness in all spaces, even in situations that may seem unholy. Maurin inspired her in this mindset in how he interacted with people in the Catholic Worker: “he aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment” (Day 1952, p. 171). Maurin and Day would adhere that everyone has a personal responsibility to take care of their brothers and sisters, and that everyone must attend intimately to one another. Influenced by Maurin, Day’s writing and activist theology was deeply entrenched with personalism, leading to her devotion to the local.

According to Hennessy, “Day wrote beautifully about what was wrapped in tragedy. Part of her genius was this ability to see beauty in what didn’t seem to possess it” (Hennessy 2017, p. 150). It is important to note that Day’s sense of personalism in her service should not be considered a “favor” for that person who is marginalized, but rather should be considered for the favor of change within the one participating in this service.

June O’Connor expresses that “Day’s doctrine of ‘gentle personalism’ underscored the uniqueness of the individual and the dignity due the individual at the same time that it encouraged a communitarian view of life” (O’Connor 1991, p. 92). Ultimately, it is through personalism that Day believed true conversion of one’s heart could shift and orient itself toward God. Day writes that Peter “was impersonal in his love in that he loved all, saw all others around him as God saw them. In other words, he saw Christ in them.”12 The personalism of Maurin inspired Day to look more specifically at the individual people and their needs, which encompasses the spirit of The Catholic Worker Movement.

Furthermore, Maria Clara Bingemer expresses that the Catholic Worker “aspired to live radical Christian commitment in order to create a new society ‘within the shell of the old…’ The movement advocated for human beings, a decentralized society, acts of nonviolence, works of mercy, and voluntary poverty” (Bingemer 2013, p. 7). This hope for a new society is a salvific enterprise that is supported by the sacred space and inclusive culture of these houses of hospitality. Bingemer also reflects how Day yearned to build a bridge between her passions for social justice and for her Catholic values, and the Catholic Worker movement served as this bridge, a place where both the spiritual and material welfare of the peoples were prioritized. This was the method in practicing radical egalitarianism and denouncing injustice, just as the personalist message of the Gospel encourages us to do.

Day notes in The Long Loneliness that Jesus “spoke of the living wage, not equal pay for equal work, in the parable of those who came at the first and the eleventh hour… we did not feel that Christ meant we should remain silent in the face of injustice and accept it” (Day 1952, p. 205). Day understands the mission of Christ to be deeply intertwined with the mission of the Catholic Worker movement—a movement that is radically inclusive but seeks accountability in the face of injustice. This is where Day’s anarchism, which has now transformed into a Christian anarchism, becomes instrumental, questioning hierarchical structures and seeking to decentralize societal power dynamics.

Setting up productive spaces that seek to flatten power dynamics is also a crucial component of liberation theology, especially in its beginning stages with the formation of Base Ecclesial Communities. These CEBs were small groups that would meet to reflect upon different passages of scripture and then apply to current day situations. Influenced by the teachings of Vatican II, which encouraged laity to participate with a more active role in the church, CEBs were popularized after the meeting of Latin American Council of Bishops in Medellín, Colombia in 1968.

These communities prioritized a self-reliant approach with the Bible, practicing radical egalitarianism in challenging participants to use their agency to think about God. CEBs lifted up the autonomy of persons, centering them as the protagonists in discerning their relationship with God and how they understand God to be at work, allowing these peoples to have an active role in their spiritual formation. Even though the CEBs focused more generally on spiritual and biblical catechesis of the individual attendee while the Catholic Worker focused on the physical and emotional well-being of the poor, both of these settings value agency as a category that is to be first and foremost respected. The individual’s discernment process is supported, yet unregulated.

In actualizing the mission of Christ, Day is aware of the Cross and the suffering that come along with it. It is here when Day begins to differentiate individual and authentic human people from the masses, reflecting that she had been prior idolizing this idea of the masses. The personalism of Peter Maurin inspired Day to look more specifically at the individual people and their needs. According to Loughery and Randolph, “the most comprehensive and radical critique of Western society imaginable, personalism decried almost everything about modern life: the extremes of individualism and collectivism, the political Right and the political Left, capitalism and communism, parliamentary democracy and totalitarianism” (Loughery and Randolph 2021, p. 138). Through Maurin’s philosophy of personalism, Day began to re-think how to differentiate “the people” from “the masses,” straying away from idolizing the masses and turning her attention toward the individual people and their local needs, to the lo cotidiano.

Day notes in The Long Loneliness, “there is so much more to the Catholic Worker Movement than labor and capital. It is people who are important, not the masses” (Day 1952, p. 221). Due to this commitment to personalism, each Catholic Worker house is run differently than each other because each house is intensely focused on the local relationships and needs of the people in their specific community, in who is in front of them, encountering them through lo cotidiano, through the everyday of their context. Each house seeks to meet the community where it is at, and then the community in turn helps form the culture of that house.13

Day had a radical sense of hospitality and inclusivity. Since treating someone like Christ constitutes the liberation of that person, everyone who walked through that door was treated as if they were Christ, Himself. Hennessy recalls that “this was another part of Dorothy’s genius: her tremendous interest in people, no matter who they were, young or old, sane or insane, and this is so often how people remember her” (Hennessy 2017, p. 97). Day expressed the heart and mindset not of a tourist, but of a pilgrim—someone who was with and for the community, someone practicing a consistent posture of solidarity. For liberation only comes from within communities; it cannot be forced or projected onto someone else. Day and liberation theologians express this authentic and liberative type of solidarity and charity with those on the margins. She offers the following critique:

and what was this love of our fellows? Certainly we loved them in the mass; we were moved by the account of their sufferings, and by what we saw of their sufferings, and our hearts burned with the desire for justice and were revolted at the idea of a doled-out charity…The word charity had become something to gag over, something to shudder at. The true meaning of the word we did not know.

(Day 1952, p. 87)

In addition, Day wrote in 1938, “Our greatest need is mutual charity, love, and loyalty to each other. It is the only way to solve problems, get cooperation, and have peace. To see the good in our neighbor, and develop it. To forgive and not to judge. Never to speak ill of one another.”14

Furthermore, Ivone Gebara, ecofeminist Latina theologian, notes in Longing for Running Water, “If our thought and practice are to be inclusive, they need to be debated by a great variety of different groups; they can never be set up as new dogmas” (Gebara 1999, p. 14). Inclusivity requires a posture of listening; it requires a posture of debate. Gebara later states, “we need to re-situate ourselves, and from there to re-weave our daily lives” (Gebara 1999, p. 15). It is these lived experiences of the grassroots of community, the underside of history, that serve as the source of liberation (Isasi-Díaz 1996, p. 78).

The Catholic Worker houses of hospitality and the Base Ecclesial Communities sought to make normative the dignifying of lived experiences of the marginalized by creating safe spaces of listening, processing, and reflecting. These safe external spaces created safe internal spaces for spiritual formation to authentically flourish. In looking at these two types of liberative communities, a parallel can be made in affirming a prioritizing of safety, for safety leads to creativity, allowing for the restoration of one’s agency and lifting up the affirmation of one’s voice and dignity—and this is what ultimately can then lead to a stable and sustainable liberation.

6. Conclusions

Bingemer declares that “the Catholic Worker Movement is considered something that embodies an implicit theology of liberation in a North American context. A movement of more than ninety years of existence, it advocates voluntary poverty, nonviolence, daily works of mercy, and seeking authentic liberation from personal and social sin: a conversion of hearts and transformation of structures” (Bingemer 2013, p. 6). The Catholic Worker promotes access to liberation, offering the poor and marginalized an outlet to reclaim their dignity in finding freedom and safety in using their voice.

Hennessy recalls that “[Day] felt that people who came to their door need kindness, courtesy, and acceptance, and most often just to be left alone to rest and recover mentally, spiritually, and physically… It is hard to do nothing, and yet often that is all you can do–do nothing but listen and give the person a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup” (Hennessy 2017, p. 185). Regarding the Catholic Worker, it is not necessary to prove that one deserves to be there; there weren’t any expectations from the patrons. The doing “nothing” that Day discusses is ironically doing everything—this provides space for the liberation to actually occur. She writes, “We have got to pray, to read the Gospel, to get to frequent communion, and not judge, not do anything, but love, love, love. A bitter lesson.” 15

I wish to end on a thought from the Boff Brothers and their text, Introducing Liberation Theology: they discuss the living, active, and ongoing commitment necessary in actualizing liberation theology. Liberation theology is a practice, a practice that they state, “operates within the great dialectic of theory (faith) and practice (love),” as one “anticipate[s] the divine response” (Boff and Boff 1987, pp. 2, 33). Liberation theology seeks to correct and criticize “its ahistorical interiority, its elitism…” through the lo cotidiano, through this slowing down of the capitalist-imperialist rush of decisiveness and categorizing in seeking to honor the agency of the other (Boff and Boff 1987, p. 36). The Boff brothers’ goal for liberation theology to become a redundant phrase, for it to be normative so that all Christian theology becomes liberative, can only be accomplished through lo cotidiano. This goal—this normativity of liberation in all theologizing—is what is actualized in the life and ministry of Servant of God Dorothy Day.

Day’s work through the Catholic Worker Movement exemplifies vital liberative qualities in her commitment to Christian anarchism and posture of dissatisfaction with injustice. Day’s devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s little way shares similarity to Isasi-Díaz’s epistemological category of lo cotidiano in how both attend to intimate spaces and direct context. Both the Catholic Worker houses and the Base Ecclesial Communities in Latin America function as physical spaces of hospitality to where the little, the lo cotidiano, can be attended.

It is Gustavo Gutiérrez who challenges, “You say you love the poor, name them.” Day not only loved the poor; she knew them by their names. And although there are many differences between Day and liberation theology, such as geographical and socio-economic context of the first world, the historical context, and the commitment to spiritual formation, both Day and liberation theology stood for the naming of others. For to love the poor means to name the poor, to lift up the dignity of the poor, to enter into communion with the poor.

O’Connor reflects that “Day is a sobering reminder that the ‘unbright’ and those broken in spirit not only require our attention, they can be our teachers. More to the point, in Day’s view, they are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers and children” (O’Connor 1991, p. 94). In this attending to the poor, in this serving with and for the poor, Day has learned more about what encompasses love. She ends her spiritual autobiography with the following reflection: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 224). Hennessy adds that “Dorothy helped the involuntary poor without trying to change them,” (Hennessy 2017, p. 272) for true liberation is not forced upon someone but comes from within the community. It is liberation that combats the long loneliness.

And what is at stake in bringing Day and liberation theology into conversation with one another? This is an important topic of conversation because Day, as a Servant of God, is currently one of the leading Americans to be considered for canonization. As the Church and her people continue to learn about and recognize the holiness of the life and work of Day, it is crucial that Christians take time to look at, demystify, and see the similarities between the tents of liberation theology and Day. This reinterpretation and desire to make new connections to Day is not a new endeavor. Recent scholars, such as Casey Mullaney and Marty Tomszak, have attempted to bring political theology into conversation with both Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. I take part and share this desire with these theologians to demonstrate the dynamism of Day’s spirituality, work, and life. This article seeks to contribute to the wider field of literature here in showing the vitality of Day as a model of how to live an authentic, Christian witness in a post-modern setting that centers the preferential option of the poor and of the vulnerable. There is much more to be learned from Day and her liberative philosophy.

In conclusion, as Smith states, this conversation will ultimately “help both groups communicate with one another and help span the gulf between North and South. It will help both movements work together and learn from one another so they both can be stronger, wiser and more effective” (Thorn et al. 2001, p. 165). Thus, Day can be seen as an implicit liberation theologian in her ideologies, praxis, and legacy, offering a preferential option for the poor by providing space—external and internal—for their dignity to be affirmed and for their hearts to be revolutionized. Day contemplates, “the greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun’” (Ellsberg 2024, p. 203).

Liberation theology is in need of a renewal because the conditions of systematic injustice, oppression, and marginalization have transformed under and through the globalization of capitalism and neoliberalism since the birth of liberation theology in the 1980s. The paradigm has shifted geographically, technologically, and socially—the beginning of a new exodus narrative is approaching, and Dorothy Day can help in this preparation (Sobrino 1993, p. 273). A renewed liberation theology will greatly benefit in considering figures like Day because Day embodies a praxis that was not just an intellectual project but was ultimately a spirituality of simultaneous communion and resistance. Just as Bingemer claimed: liberation theology seeks a new future. It is the spiritual praxis of Dorothy Day that serves as a crucial source of inspiration (Bingemer 2013, p. 5).