The O Antiphons reimagined: My interview with Sr. Ansgar Holmberg

Ansgar Holmberg, C.S.J., 86, didn’t paint her O Antiphon series to edify or instruct anyone. They were meant only for herself. Ansgar (she likes to be called by her first name) has been with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for 67 years, and although she has spent time teaching children and offering spiritual direction, she created these seven paintings over the course of three years as a…

After publishing last Part III of this series last week, a friend and colleague commented how unfortunate it is that the conservative Supreme Court justices (all of whom profess to be Catholic or were raised Catholic) do not seem to share this passion for social justice that Dorothy Day embodied. I agree and find it confounding. The Catholic Church took a hard-right turn in the 1980s and continues on that path today, despite Pope Francis’s best efforts. In any event, it is well to remember that there is (or was) a place in the Church for dissenters, for activists, and for those with a passion for the poor and afflicted—even if they don’t make it to the highest echelons of ecclesiastical or political life. 

Dorothy Day never seemed much interested in climbing any ladders or achieving a certain status within the Church she served. “Don’t call me a saint,” she would say. “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

 Here’s Part IV of my series on Dorothy Day and the history of The Catholic Worker newspaper.

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The Post-War Period

After Peter’s death, Dorothy Day continued to publish the paper, to run the New York House of Hospitality, and to oversee the growing Catholic Worker Movement. By the start of 1950, the paper’s circulation had increased slightly to 60,000; circulation remained at this plateau throughout the fifties.

The paper was still an eight-page tabloid and it looked the same as it had for more than 15 years. Only woodcuts were used for artwork; photographs were too expensive to print. In the thirties and forties, the paper featured woodcuts of Catholic worker-saints—St. Peter the fisherman; St. Paul writing in prison; St. Joseph the Worker, and many others—all the handiwork of Worker Ade Bethune.

Woodcuts by Ade Bethune ...

In the fifties, another artist, Fritz Eichenberg, produced some stunning works of art for the paper. Eichenberg, a Quaker, portrayed most sensitively in his woodcuts and engravings the spirit of The Catholic Worker. His “Christ on the Breadline,” “The Labor Cross,” and “Last Supper,” captured visually what The Worker’s writers were trying to express in words. Day wanted to touch those poorest of the poor who could not read so she often printed full, front-page reproductions of Eichenberg’s work.

... and Fritz Eichenberg graced the pages of nearly every issue of The Catholic Worker. 

The Catholic Worker continued to be built around Dorothy Day’s writing. She changed the name of her column to “On Pilgrimage,” a title that seemed to describe the nature of her life.

Others contributed articles regularly. Michael Harrington, a resident Worker who later became an economist, consistently provided pieces for the paper. Harrington’s most famous work, The Other America, written in 1961, is said to have sparked the Kennedy/Johnson War on Poverty. Ammon Hennacy, a pacifist anarchist, wrote extensively of his “one-man revolution.” Robert Ludlow, an intellectual and lover of Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence—he wrote a striking piece on Gandhi’s death—became an associate editor of the paper. Columns about the day-to-day activities of the House of Hospitality and about life on the farm provided engaging copy each month.

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The Catholic Worker continued to fight for justice and peace. When the underpaid gravediggers of Calvary Cemetery—Catholics and members of a CIO union—went on strike against New York’s Cardinal Spellman, Dorothy Day supported the gravediggers. The Cardinal thought the strike was inspired by Communists and refused to negotiate. He even used seminarians, of all people, to break the strike and forced the striker to dissolve the CIO affiliation and join an American Federation of Labor union instead. Day criticized the Cardinal’s tactics and the “shameful seminarians” who broke the strike.

At the onset of the Nuclear Age, The Catholic Worker denounced the continued testing of the A-bomb and the development of the H-bomb, and called for total disarmament of nuclear weapons. Indeed, The Worker even criticized the Catholic press for its “unbalanced” portrayal of Russia and its people.

The paper also opposed the anti-Communist Smith and McCarran Acts:

Although we disagree with our Marxist brothers on the question of the means to use and to achieve social justice, rejecting atheism and materialism in Marist thought and in bourgeois thought, we respect their freedom as a minority group in this country…. We protest the imprisonment of our Communist brothers and extend to them our sympathy and admiration for having followed their conscience even in persecution.

 The paper continued to criticize the Capitalist system. “Communism, considered as an economic system apart from its philosophy, is not so much the antithesis, the opposite and the contradiction of Christianity as Capitalism is.” Such critiques did not win the paper many friends in the highly charged “Red-Scare” atmosphere of Joe McCarthy America. One priest wrote to ask The Catholic Worker, “Why don’t you come out in the open, declare yourselves Bolshevik Communists and fight the Church like men?” Day, a woman, stood firm, even quoting the Popes and their attacks on economic materialism and Capitalism.

Civil Disobedience

In 1955, seven Catholic Workers, including Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy, staged a protest with twenty-three others from the War Resisters League against New York City’s annual air-raid drill. The Civil Defense Act required that all take shelter for at least 10 minutes.

The Workers considered the drills scare tactics and war preparations; they would have no part in them. The protesters informed the police beforehand of their intention to violate the law. When the siren sounded, instead of heading for shelter, the protesters sat on benches in City Hall Park. They were arrested and detained for nine hours before being released on fifteen hundred dollars bail.

When their case came to trial, the protesters made a statement explaining their brazen stance. They said they did not wish to participate in an action aimed only at creating a war mentality. Taking cover from an atomic attack was ridiculous, they said, and they offered their action, and any punishment for it, as a small act of penance for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. The judge found them guilty but suspended their sentence, so they served no jail time.

For the next four years, Workers along with others continued their protests. They were jailed each time for anywhere from five to thirty days. The Catholic Worker carried accounts of the demonstrations and explained Workers’ rationale for participating. Workers wrote about their own jail experiences and, thus, brought public attention to jail conditions and to the lives of those so confined. In 1960, one thousand people showed up to protest the “war games,” as The Worker dubbed them. When arrests were made, the Workers were passed over, prompting Hennacy to ask one of the arresting officers if he wasn’t shirking his duty. After 1960, the City gave up on its annual air-raid drills.

Slum Landlord

In 1956, Dorothy Day was handed a summons ordering her to appear before a City judge to answer charges of being a slum landlord and of running a firetrap. Since the thirties, The Catholic Worker had run a House of Hospitality, with rooms and beds for those who had no home of their own. The Houses were always liveable, although no one ever worried about conforming to any housing regulations. When Day appeared in court, she explained to the judge that The Catholic Worker was a charitable organization and that the apartments were for those who had no other place to live. “All the more reason for you to provide suitable housing” for them, the judge growled. He fined her $250 and told her that she and her fifty “tenants” would have to vacate in 10 days. Day was stunned.

Someone contacted The New York Times, which picked up the story. Public outcry about the incident caused the judge to apologize to Day, suspend the fine, and give her enough time to raise the $28,000 needed to make the house conform with local building codes. Because of the publicity, within a month most of the funds had been donated and soon the House was refurbished to meet City standards. But “Holy Mother City” had the last word. In 1958, the City informed Day and the Workers that they would have to move to make room for a new subway line!

About Cuba

When Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba succeeded in 1959, The Catholic Worker came out on Castro’s side. The paper’s critics were outraged. How could a Catholic paper endorse a government opposed to the Church? Even friends of The Worker were astonished and thought the paper had compromised its pacifist position. Day answered both critics and friends in the article “About Cuba.”

To her critics, Day said:

It is hard … to say that the place of The Catholic Worker is with the poor, and that being there, we are often finding ourselves on the side of the persecutors of the Church. . . . One could weep with the tragedy of denying Christ in the poor. . . . Fidel Castro says he is not persecuting Christ, but Churchmen who have betrayed him (in the poor). . . . (Castro) has said that the Church has endured under the Roman empire, under a feudal system, under monarchies, empires, republics and democracies. Why cannot she exist under a socialist state? He has asked the priests to remain to be with their people….

 To her friends, she said: 

We are certainly not Marxist socialists nor do we believe in violent revolution. Yet we do believe that it is better to fight, as Castro did with his handful of men … than do nothing. We are on the side of the revolution. We believe there must be new concepts of property, which is proper to man … there is Christian communism and a Christian capitalism as Peter Maurin pointed out. We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and will be happy to see how they work out in Cuba.

The criticisms continued, however, and Day, at age 65, decided to go to Cuba to report first-hand on Castro’s revolution. Her reports were printed in her “On Pilgrimage” column from September through December of 1962. She recounted day-to-day experiences among the Cuban people in a touching way that gave her readers an idea of exactly what was happening to both Church and State in Cuba. Many praised her Cuban reports as her best journalistic work. One admirer wrote simply, “Thank you for your courage on Cuba.” After Day’s personal reports on Cuba, the controversy stopped.

 (To Be Continued)