On May 13-15, 2015, the University of Saint Francis and Our Sunday Visitor sponsored the conference ‘Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present and Future’ in Fort Wayne.

More than 120 attendees, scholars and workers, gathered together to celebrate both Dorothy’s remarkable life and enduring legacy for the Church. This volume gathers together most of the papers and homilies given at this conference, offering a breadth and depth of material which will benefit both casual and scholarly readers, and both students and practitioners of her experiment in gospel living.

Some topics:

• Spiritual and Liturgical Influences on Dorothy Day

• Dorothy Day and Distributism

• Peter Maurin’s Influence on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker

• An Ecology of Hospitality

• Dorothy Day’s Far-Flung Friendships

• The Personalism of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker

Paperback, 436 pp. $20.95

Maybe the best way to explain why I perpetrated this little book is a short self-interview…

What’s this book about?

It’s a collection of my very unauthorized, highly debatable and possibly wrongheaded opinions about one of the largest and oldest voluntary organizations in the world—the Roman Catholic Church.

Or as cradle Catholic James Joyce once referred to it, Here Comes Everybody.

Who’s the book for?

Anyone curious about what it’s like to be “inside” the Church. Turns out it’s actually quite roomy.

But more specifically, I wrote it for the following kinds of people:

• Anyone who suspects that buried somewhere beneath the foundations of this tottering Catholic ecclesial culture are treasures of spirituality and even a kind of indigenous wisdom, however barnacle-encrusted, betrayed or forgotten.

• Anyone who suspects that a good deal of what passes for American Catholic culture today is a lame imitation of evangelical culture--with even worse music and an equally compromised public witness (although the immigration crisis may be changing that, let us hope).

• Anyone who suspects that Catholics in America were once risk-takers in their sense of justice, as demonstrated in their historical solidarity at certain moments with workers, with people of color, and with non-Americans, and that this kind of authentic witness could, just possibly, be recovered amidst our current cascading crises.

• Anyone who hungers to be in solidarity with the poor, with what the Old Testament calls the anawim (Hebrew for the “poor ones” who remain faithful to God even in their distress), especially those in the global South who do not even have the possibility of having possibilities.

• Anyone whose loyalty is first and foremost to the Gospel, not to nationality or local culture or politics or even a denomination.

Who won’t like this book?

It may annoy a certain kind of Catholic zealot due to its lack of concern for making sure everybody is rigorously catechized before we actually (or ever) get around to being faithful witnesses.

On the other hand, committed revolutionaries won’t like my wasting time with talk about devotions, contemplation, that kind of stuff.

Why are the chapters broken up into short sections?

I hope it sounds impressive to say I’m using “a mosaic approach”. Which is how my own conversion happened. First you notice this thing and then you notice that other thing—and eventually a bunch of small pieces have accumulated to show you something much bigger.

You seem to spend a lot of time in the book on Pope Francis and his writings. Are you a papolator?

I used to be. That was back when Pope John Paul II was in office. He could do no wrong. Not only infallible but impeccable.

But I no longer think that way. Pope Francis had his weaknesses—his enemies couldn’t stop calling everything he did “divisive”--but it’s not hard to separate him from his accomplishments.

Well I hope this book at least has an imprimatur!

Consumer alert: this book does not have an imprimatur.

An imprimatur, a Latin phrase meaning “let it be printed”, was an old-fashioned way of signaling the Catholic reader: “No worries, at least one bishop somewhere took a look at this book and couldn’t find anything that would damage your Catholic faith.”

I’ve only known one Catholic bishop personally, a nice enough chap. He was transferred to a distant state several years ago. Neither he nor anyone else in the hierarchy (that lovely term still in use) was consulted here. Just so you know.

I’ll add that I’m not trying to play here the familiar role of the Angry Catholic Dissident working out a personal grievance. Certainly many things about the institutional Church should make anyone angry but I’m not writing a jeremiad—more like a user’s guide in the form of a memoir.

After all, being a Catholic is not like being in the Army: you’re free to get up and walk out any time. (Although your parish will find you and continue sending those packets of weekly donation envelopes, wherever you go.)

So what follows in this book is simply a personal essay, not a work of sociology…

I asked a few people for their opinions of the book—

And finally, a description from the back cover of the print version (coming soon):

Street Catholic is both a personal memoir and an “unauthorized” guidebook that explores the global Catholic Church through the lens of social justice and reform.

Author Elias Crim reflects on a conversion journey that began in Chicago, contrasting “beige” institutional Catholicism with the radical witness of figures like Dorothy Day and the Polish Solidarity movement.

Offering here a critique of bourgeois Christianity, the author argues it must be replaced by ecclesial solidarity and the “preferential option for the poor” championed by Pope Francis and Pope Leo.

From a grounding in Catholic Social Thought, the author advocates for a “street” perspective that moves beyond comfortable pews to engage with marginalized communities and indigenous wisdom.

Ultimately, the book calls for a spiritual metanoia that rejects nationalism and wealth in favor of a humble, non-violent witness to the Gospel.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Finally available in English: a new translation of Reflections, the little book of insights and practical wisdom of the founder of the largest democratically-run and worker-owned organization in recent history, the Mondragon cooperatives.

Fr. Josemaria Arizmendiarietta (1915-1976) was a Basque priest influenced by the social Catholicism of his time as he…

Read more

Social care—childcare, elder care, disabled care—is a sector undergoing several crises currently in the U.S. What if we looked at the much more successful models of care creation and delivery found in other countries?

Social cooperatives are still little-known in the U.S. but they have an admirable track record of delivering high-quality, worker-owned, c…

Read more