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THE FIFTH
COMMANDMENT:
PROMOTE THE
CULTURE OF LIFE
YOU SHALL NOT KILL
—CCC, NOS. 2258-2330
THE DOROTHY DAY STORY
Dorothy Day was born on November 8, 1897, and died on November 29,
1980. Daughter of a journalist, she also chose journalism as a profession.As
a young woman, Dorothy became involved in several love affairs, entered
into a brief marriage,and also gave birth to a child out of wedlock. She also
had an abortion for which she later deeply repented.
During World War I, she became a Socialist and was influenced by
the Communist Party, believing this was the best way to help the poor. But
after the birth of her daughter, Tamar, she became a Catholic and came
under the influence of Peter Maurin, with whom she formed the Catholic
Worker Movement. She embraced voluntary poverty, raised her daughter,
devoted her life to the care of the poor, and struggled to remove both the
causes and symptoms of poverty in society.
On November 9, 1997, Cardinal John O’Connor delivered a homily
about sanctity and Dorothy Day on the occasion of the one-hundredth
anniversary of her birth. We quote here some of the comments that
he made:
Dorothy Day died before I became archbishop of New York, or
I would have called on her immediately upon my arrival. Few