A Saint for the cafeteria Catholics, or a Saint for the Conservatives? The Dorothy Day Debate, and what it says about Modern American Catholicism

A fascinating aspect of American culture is our willingness to debate dead people.  To be more specific, the intentions and accomplishments of those public figures that have passed away are a surefire means of starting debate.  The clearest example of this is the debate over the Founding Fathers, which are viewed as pious men who wished to found a Christian nation or as Deists who wished for no religious influence in the new American republic, depending on who one listens to.  Similar debates have taken place over Abraham Lincoln, especially during the wars of the last decade when proponents of war were mentioning Lincoln’s actions that would violate civil liberty laws in most situations while opponents of war noted Lincoln’s quotes and actions to not show malice toward one’s enemy. 

                The latest historical figure to enter this posthumous debate of intentions is Dorothy Day, the political activist and founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.  What is of particular interest recently is that Day, who was not only active in pacifist and worker’s rights movements but, before her conversion to Catholicism, lived a life that included two common law marriages and an abortion.  It is this social activism and especially the abortion that have led many in the popular media to uphold Day, and her possible canonization, as a representation of the church “changing with the times” in that the Church is even considering the canonization of this supposedly marginal or lapsed Catholic.   In a recent article on cnn.com Stephen Prothero, who is a professor of American Religion at Boston University, raised the question of if Catholics could embrace a person as a saint who had committed the “original sin” of contemporary Catholicism.  You can read the article here:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/07/my-take-catholics-will-accept-a-saint-who-had-an-abortion/comment-page-2/

This question raised by Prothero has a number of issues.  Aside from the obvious fact that the “original sin” of contemporary or any other Catholicism is not abortion but original sin (one would think that a person who holds a PhD. In religion from Harvard would know such a thing), if one were to erase from the list of saints everyone who had ever sinned, then according to Catholic beliefs the only saint remaining would be the Virgin Mary.   Of course Dorothy Day was a sinner.  Her story is not unlike St. Augustine, who lived a similarly promiscuous life before his conversion to Catholic Christianity (Prothero even mentions this in his article).  What is more telling is not that Dorothy Day had an abortion but her reaction to the abortion after her conversion to Catholicism.  In a 1974 Day identified birth control and abortion as genocide similar to that which happened during the Holocaust.  This is a statement that even many of the most conservative Catholics would shy away from.

                Stephen Prothero’s troubling question has an even more troubling answer.  He feels that American Catholics would embrace Dorothy Day as a saint, not because of her actions as a Servant of God (as the Catholic Church recognizes her as being) but because of poll data that shows that a majority of American Catholics to not fully agree with the Church’s teaching on abortion.  Prothero calls this “diverging from the party line,” a statement that belittles the Catholic Church’s teaching on life issues into a political platform.  If it were such then the platform would likely be altered at the whims of polling data, but the Catholic Church’s teachings aren’t  decided by polls and one isn’t elected a saint (once again, a guy with a PhD. from Harvard should know this).  This argument also ignores the fact that many people who have had abortions or who were initially pro-choice advocates such as Norma McCorvey of the Roe v. Wade case have gone on to become pro-life advocates who are likewise embraced by Catholic pro-life advocates.   Anyway this argument makes no sense.  If, according to Prothero, a majority of American Catholics see little or no issue with abortion and feel it should be legal in most if not all cases, then why would they embrace a saint who saw abortion and birth control as genocide?

                On the other side of the coin, Phil Lawler of CatholicCulture.org wrote a rebuttal of sorts to Prothero’s article.  You can read it here:

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=817

Lawler’s article largely concentrates on sin, but then said that Dorothy Day would agree with the Church’s opposition on homosexual acts.  Now, I haven’t seen every single thing that Dorothy Day has written or said but I have never seen anything where she openly opposed homosexual acts in the strong manner that she condemned abortion and birth control.  She may have made such a statement (if you know of one please send it to me, with citation) and I don’t doubt that her stance on homosexual acts is that different from the Church’s, but I have never seen anything that would make Day’s stance similar to that of a modern conservative anti-gay marriage activist.

                There is one thing strangely absent from Lawler’s article, however.  While Lawler acknowledges that Dorothy Day was a controversial figure throughout her life and he correctly identifies her as one who “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable,” he does not say why Day was so controversial.  While he acknowledges her as a fiery pacifist and an advocate for the poor, how fiery she was and who among the poor she was advocating is omitted.  Day was an early and unwaveringly vehement opponent of the Vietnam War, so much so that counterculture leader Abbie Hoffman went as far as to call Day the “first hippie.”   Her advocacy for the poor is, of course, best represented in her founding of the communal living-style Catholic Worker movement.  Therefore while Day was pro-life, her most public work would have been in direct opposition to the worldview of modern American conservatism.

                So if Dorothy Day isn’t one who can be embraced by lapsed or cafeteria Catholics or politically conservative American Catholics, then who can embrace her example and work on Earth?  The answer, in short, is Catholics.  Catholics of all stripes.   Catholics who are lapsed and Catholics who attend daily mass.   Catholics who are Democrat, Republican, and everything in between.   Dorothy Day’s example is one with widespread appeal, and her tireless work as an advocate for the workers, pacifism, and the unborn shows that she was not interested in appeasing any one side, so therefore all of us Catholics and really all of us Christians in our modern American lives can look to Dorothy Day and wonder what is truly lacking in our own lives.

                The debate over the posthumous legacy of Dorothy Day will continue as the question of her sainthood is discussed, a process that will likely be decades considering her case is in the very early stages and she has yet to even be beatified.  As this debate goes on there will undoubtedly be further molding of Day’s legacy to fit one’s own platform.  I must say that I might be guilty of this as well, as I see myself as a Catholic who is pro-life but economically Liberal and I like to view Dorothy Day as much in the same fashion.  What does stand in opposition to this posthumous legacy debate, however, is the process for canonization in and of itself, ironically because of what happens after one who is being reviewed for canonization has passed away.  There will be the need for confirmed miracles attested to Dorothy Day (Lawler mentions this in his article, Prothero does not, although I presume he knows it, since, you know, he has a PhD. from Harvard).  If this happens and Dorothy Day is elevated to sainthood, then she will be a saint that all can celebrate and venerate.  While Day’s legacy can be debated and altered, what will stand the test of time is her work as a servant of God.

John Corapi: A Sheepdog without a Flock

                John Corapi was, up until recently, perhaps the closest thing to an evangelical style TV preacher in American Catholicism.  He was part of a Catholic order (Society of Our Lady of the Trinity) but lived in a large expensive home rather than live with his brothers.  He traveled the country speaking at different conferences and retreats that were regularly shown on EWTN.  His website included CDs, DVDs, books, and recordings of his Sunday homilies that were all available for a price.  He had quite a following with his engaging personal story, dynamic speaking voice, and willingness to make outlandish and sometimes controversial statements while wearing the collar.

                This, of course all came crashing down in a very public manner with allegations of sexual misconduct and with a former employee as well as drug addiction and John Corapi’s decision to leave the priesthood, although he intends to continue with his speaking engagements.  The allegations have led to many of these speaking engagements to be cancelled and EWTN has ceased airing his program.  While this might be seen as an overreaction to allegations that are as of now unproven, Corapi’s conduct in light of these allegations has not helped matters.  It was his decision to leave the priesthood rather than face disciplinary action by the church.   It was also his decision to publicly denounce such disciplinary actions by the church as “violations of his human and legal rights.”

                All of this reeks of an “I’m the victim here” attitude persisted by John Corapi.  Now, I’m not going to presume guilt or innocence on the part of the allegations against Corapi, but his actions in light of these allegations are reprehensible.  While he argues that he cannot get a fair trial and that the Church he claims to love and defend has in effect thrown him under the bus, what he seems to ignore that it was the Church that first pulled him out of the doldrums of drug addiction (namely his mother sending him a prayer card) and it was the Church that ordained him and thus gave him the ability to make a fortune as religious speaker who had the authority of the collar.  The perfect example of this “I’m the victim” attitude is the title of John Corapi is the title of his new website and his upcoming autobiography:  The Black Sheepdog.  This self-given title is meant to combine Black Sheep and Sheep dog and undoubtedly shows that Corapi wishes to convey an image of himself as one who is rejected but still stubbornly watches the flock.  Corapi’s blog is an exercise of self-promotion and he has even taken up addressing himself as “The Black Sheepdog” in the third person, all the while maintaining his innocence and making the allegations against him out to be a kind of witch hunt.

                There are some glaring issues of Corapi’s  new self-styled image of a Black Sheepdog.  First: Sheepdogs are protectors by nature, and a protector must be one whose first interest is whomever or whatever he/she/they is/are protecting and not in perpetuating one’s own image as a protector.  Corapi, who styled this image himself of a Black Sheepdog and his actions in light of the allegations against him show that he is more interested in being perceived as a protector to those who would attack the Church then actually protecting such threats.  With this in mind, one has to wonder who Corapi truly is interesting in protecting and what the “Church” is that he wishes to protect.  The natural answer, and one that John Corapi probably wishes to convey is that this up until recently priest from the S.O.L.T. order wishes to protect the Catholic Church, but at the same time he is critical of the actions in which the Church has taken against him.  In some of these criticisms Corapi has said things that could just as easily be coming out of the mouth of a Conservative Evangelical preacher who sees Catholics as “unsaved” and the Church as the “whore of Babylon.”  Once again such statements are made in light of the allegations against him, as Corapi claims he is a victim of a Church “running scared” in light of the sexual abuse scandals and attacking the character of his accuser as a “troubled woman.”  If John Corapi is interested in protecting anything, it is his image as a protector.

                Second: A Sheepdog needs a flock.  Quite frankly, John Corapi doesn’t have one.  This is due not to his leaving of the public ministry (although that plays part in it) but instead because of his interest in promoting the person of John Corapi rather than make any kind of positive contribution to the Church.  John Corapi is indeed a sheepdog without a flock and it is of his own choosing.

                I began this piece by calling John Corapi a type of TV preacher in American Catholicism, and it would seem to be no accident that the incident that led to his resigning from public ministry is similar to that that have led to the downfall of many TV preachers.  It perhaps can be said that these people of strong personality who use religion as a means of self-promotion are doomed to have such a fall, as their personalities will lead many of them to see themselves as invincible.  What makes these people different from other celebrities who use other fields for their own personal gain is that it can cause the laypeople in which John Corapi and others claim to wish to protect are put into further danger than before.  Not to mention that many of these actions go against the very nature of the Church and principles in which Corapi and others claim they wish to promote.  John Corapi, a man who lives in a mansion and has taken to criticizing the church any chance he gets, would be hard pressed to prove how he is keeping the vows of poverty, obedience, and, if the allegations against him are true, chastity.  Most importantly, Corapi’s self-promotion is detrimental to the Church in which he claims to wish to support.  It shows that his main interest is in using the Catholic Church as a tool to give him a stage for his own gain. Instead of being a protector, outcast or not, John Corapi is merely one who is attempting to use the church by concurrently criticizing the Church while claiming to support it. This attitude, along with his own dynamic personality, has led to Corapi making a fortune but is also detrimental to the Church he wishes to support.  So while Corapi claims to be a Sheepdog protecting the flock, it can be said that Corapi’s actions are more like that of a show dog drawing attention to himself.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog on Current Events and Religion in American life.  I realize there's the old adage to "never discuss religion or politics," but on this blog there will be a lot of discussion on both.   As a Catholic who is pro life but also Democrat as well as an expert on American Religious History who holds degrees in Religion and Political Science, I have keen interest on the current religious happenings in the United States as well as a unique perspective.  I invite anyone to the discussion and/or to raise issues of interest of your own, but I ask for you to keep it civil.

A quick note on the title of the blog: St. Brendan was one of my favorite Irish Saints with the legends of his sailing the seas and the adventures therein.  As one of Irish descent I just decided to have a little fun with the title.  Hopefully it will set a tone for the blog where although I'll be handling heady issues I'll be doing so in a positive and civil manner.  I ask you to do the same.  After all, we're all in the same boat.