What is Pope Francis thinking?
Lance Richey is editor of a new edition of a book by Dorothy Day titled “House of Hospitality.” Richey, who is dean of the school of arts and sciences and associate professor of theology at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana, recently organized a conference earlier this year on Dorothy Day and her impact on the Church during her life, now, and for years to come. Since the theme of hospitality is quite relevant to Pope Francis asking European parishes to take in Syrian refugees, I wanted to talk with Richey about hospitality, Christianity, Dorothy Day, and more. — KJL
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Did the pope’s call to European parishes this past weekend to house refugees remind you of Dorothy Day?
Lance Richey: Well, I did immediately think of Dorothy’s call in the depths of the Depression for every parish to open a House of Hospitality that would serve those in need, so in this respect the pope’s call is simply an extension of the principle that the corporal works of mercy belong to us all and that we should respond to them directly and personally on the parish level. I think it should also be noted that, during the Depression, Dorothy did not call for the United States to bring in non-citizens to be cared for when the needs of our own people were so pressing. Likewise, to my knowledge, her work with the United Farm Workers in the 1960s and ’70s did not call for open borders, or even increased immigration, but rather for justice to be done to those who were here. The crushing pressure that a tidal wave of immigrants would place on social services is something Dorothy would have been very aware of from her experience in the 1930s.
Lopez: A Hungarian bishop today raises concerns that a large influx of immigrants would represent an “invasion.” This call of the pope’s could be impractical and even dangerous?
Richey: I suppose it depends on what one means by practical or dangerous. A massive wave of immigration is certainly dangerous to the political and cultural sovereignty of any country that experiences it, and it is impractical (meaning not effective) for a country that wishes to maintain its identity and not to overload its social safety net. No country can be reasonably expected to accept a situation that threatens its social, economic, and political stability indefinitely. On the other hand, as Christians we consider ourselves to have obligations that transcend the interests of the state, so these national concerns cannot be an absolute in our minds. On the third hand (so to speak), we cannot lie to ourselves about the sacrifices and dangers that accepting unlimited immigration will bring to our fellow citizens, nor can we be blasé about it. Prudence, Aquinas tell us, is the chief virtue, since without it no other virtues can be exercised. We must be charitable, loving, but prudent.
Lopez: Fundamentally, what is Christian hospitality?
Richey: Who am I to say? It is, I suppose, welcoming the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the sick and caring for them in a manner that does not make it impossible to meet the even greater obligations we have to our families and fellow citizens. We are called to sacrifice for the poor, to be sure, but the Catholic tradition has (wisely) never expected entire societies to make heroic sacrifices such as accepting unlimited immigrants would demand.
SLIDESHOW: Europe’s Refugee Crisis
Lopez: Why was Dorothy Day so concerned about hospitality?
[Dorothy Day] was so concerned with hospitality because it constitutes the essence of the Christian life
Richey: She was so concerned with hospitality because it constitutes the essence of the Christian life: direct, personal sacrifice in order to perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy for the stranger. It is also why she was so adamant that we cannot shift to the government these works of mercy and still call ourselves Christians who have met our obligations. In that respect, Pope Francis’s call for parishes to act is perfectly in line with Dorothy’s thought on this subject.
Lopez: What’s most practical about the book?
Richey: The book shows how spontaneous, disordered, spiritually exhausting, frequently ineffective, and yet absolutely valuable her own work amongst the poor was during the Great Depression. It strips away all the gauzy nostalgia and idealism that people have about performing the corporal works of mercy, and instead gets to the absolute bedrock of what it means to live a Christian life of service and love for the most marginalized of peoples.
Lopez: You describe it as “on the periphery of Day’s canon.” So why is it important?
Richey: In some respects, the book is unfinished and quite preliminary in its conclusions. It is almost more a collection of original documents rather than a well-integrated and purposeful writing. But that is what makes it so valuable. In it, you experience Dorothy’s work without the sophisticated theological understanding and consolations she eventually discovered. It is a raw portrait, a marker along her way, and a reminder that acts come first and the Christian understanding follows.
Lopez: At one point in the book, she says of Catholic young people: “Why they think a weekly wage is going to give them security is a mystery.” Whatever is she talking about? The kids need jobs! The dignity of work and all. Not to mention the price of rent in a city.
Richey: Dorothy here (quite properly) is railing not against jobs and wages, but against the bourgeois mindset that ultimately places job (and financial and social) security at the pinnacle of life, and as the supreme good that we must all seek. Like St. Francis, she wanted to live in radical insecurity (she called it “precarity”) so that she would rely solely on God to provide. Not very practical, and certainly not for everyone (see my warning above against expecting heroic virtue of every person), but that is precisely what makes her a saint and allows her to challenge us today when the same temptations are stronger than ever.
Lopez: How were the sacraments a part of her life?
Richey: Dorothy lived a deeply sacramental life — daily Mass, regular confession, a constant insistence that it was through the Church and its sacraments that God would feed her and give her the strength to endure what she often found to be a crushing way of life serving the poor. By her sacramental life, she came to see the presence of God in others as well, and to find God hidden in the world and all its sufferings. This is not a misty bit of poetry — it is the natural extension of an authentically Catholic and sacramental way of understanding God and the world.
Lopez: Can her life and writings help us understand what Pope Francis means by mercy?
Richey: I certainly think so. She is, in her way, an American St. Francis and an American precursor of Pope Francis. Just like Pope Francis, Dorothy refused to reduce our Christian obligations to purely political or electoral duties (paying taxes, voting one way or another), and refused to hand off to others (including the government) the responsibility to care for those in need. At the same time, she was no libertarian, in that she recognized an absolute moral order, which lay at the heart of all human relations and which must be used to structure our social relations rightly. She only refused to identify the State with human society, or to shift to the State those duties which belong to us by baptism.
Lopez: How important is her abortion to that story?
Richey: I am unsure how important it is to her story in the largest sense. She rarely spoke about her abortion, regretted it deeply, and was ardently pro-life. However, and except insofar as in some mysterious way her abortion laid the groundwork for her subsequent conversion, she would have embraced the same way of life regardless, insofar as her way of life was an attempt to live out the gospel as literally as possible.
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Lopez: What can a conservative love about Dorothy Day? What can a liberal?
Richey: Everyone, conservative and liberal, can love Dorothy Day’s absolute and unflinching commitment to the gospel and her willingness to sacrifice her own life in a heroic fashion, living half a century among the poor and struggling to defend them and affirm their dignity not through violence but through an authentic witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Anyone who cannot admire that is neither conservative nor liberal, but rather someone who has surrendered an essential part of their humanity.
Lopez: What can a conservative learn from Dorothy Day? What can a liberal?
She truly escapes our categories — as does every saint.
Richey: Conservatives can learn that the market is not always benign but can be as ruthless and inhuman as any natural force, and that the poor do indeed often find themselves in poverty not because of moral failures but because of larger structural forces in society and the economy, which we have an obligation to resist and change insofar as possible. Standing by and quietly regretting that so much poverty and inequality must occur if the market is to function at its most efficient level is to place Adam Smith (or some parody of his thought) above the demands of Christ. Liberals can learn that a truly just social and economic order must be built on transcendent values and not be left to the whims and emotional vagaries of individuals who are considered their own supreme lawgivers, not to be infringed upon by human nature, the common good, or divine command. The ethical anarchism (indeed, nihilism) of the Left was greatly lamented by Dorothy in the 1960s and ’70s, just as was the laissez-faire capitalism she encountered in the 1920s and ’30s. She truly escapes our categories — as does every saint.
Lopez: Was Dorothy Day a saint?
Richey: Yes. Or, better, Dorothy Day is a saint.
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Lopez: How are you so certain?
Richey: As a Catholic theologian, I am not presuming the judgment of the Church, of course, but the positive judgment of the Church removes only our uncertainty.
Why am I confident (not certain) in my belief she is a saint? I have read her writings extensively, studied her life, and spoken with many who knew her personally. She seems to fit all the requirements for orthodox belief and heroic sanctity — in the Middle Ages she would have been declared a saint by acclamation.
Maybe it is just selfishness on my part — if Dorothy is not a saint, who is?
Lopez: Will hospitality make us saints?
Richey: No. But a failure to show it will certainly prevent us from becoming saints.
Lopez: What does Dorothy Day tell us about gratitude?
Richey: Gratitude, for Dorothy, was an awareness of the immense goodness that human beings are able to share with one another just by their presence. The poor, hungry, angry, mad people she served were reminders of God’s love for her, and the patience and love she showed them a pale imitation of that shown to her by God. We are all sinners before God, who alone judges hearts, so we should not place ourselves above others but rather beside and in service to them.
Lopez: What are you most grateful for?
Richey: That God has not rendered me what I deserve, and that he has also not always given me what I have mistakenly wanted.