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Happy 75th Birthday to the Catholic Worker

On this day in 1933, the first issue of The Catholic Worker appeared, promising to take seriously the church's program to "reconstruct the social order" according to the teachings of a certain revolutionary, anti-imperialist, and egalitarian organization from the Palestine, long ago.

Introducing the paper, founding editor Dorothy Day wrote:

This first number of The Catholic Worker was planned, written and edited in the kitchen of a tenement on Fifteenth Street, on subway platforms, on the “L,” the ferry. There is no editorial office, no overhead in the way of telephone or electricity, no salaries paid.

The money for the printing of the first issue was raised by begging small contributions from friends. A colored priest in Newark sent us ten dollars and the prayers of his congregation. A colored sister in New Jersey, garbed also in holy poverty, sent us a dollar. Another kindly and generous friend sent twenty-five. The rest of it the editors squeezed out of their own earnings, and at that they were using money necessary to pay milk bills, gas bills, electric light bills.

Somehow the movement kept going. There are now almost two hundred Worker houses serving the poor in the United States and abroad.

A selection of Catholic Worker writings is available at its website.

Thanks to Mike at Pie and Coffee for marking the date.

Posted on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 11:19 AM | Comments (4) | Return

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