Eighty years earlier, in 1933, Maurin—short, stocky, ragged and overly didactic with his thick French accent—had been the unlikely answer to Dorothy Day's prayer for a vocation. Since her conversion to Catholicism in 1927, Day had longed for a synthesis that would reconcile her political radicalism and her newfound religious orthodoxy. For Maurin, Day was the eloquent, practical and thoroughly American companion to translate his idea for a Green Revolution into action. Maurin soon began sharing with the journalist his pithy, free verse writings, which he called "Easy Essays." Many of these were summaries of books that greatly influenced his ideas, like the 1930 Southern Agrarian tract, I'll Take My Stand.

The Green Revolution that Maurin proposed was a far cry from the movement of the same name spread by Norman Borlaug in the 1960s. Where the latter emphasized industrialism and synthetic fertilizers, Maurin's movement harked back to the medieval Irish (hence "green") monks who had saved civilization during the Dark Ages through their combination of "cult, culture and cultivation" (Maurin's catchy idiom for worship, study and agriculture). Maurin's nonviolent revolution centered primarily on creating farming communes where people could integrate the practices of growing organic food, praying together and offering hospitality to wayfarers and the poor in "Christ rooms." Not wanting to abandon the urban poor, Maurin also advocated the establishment of city houses of hospitality for the homeless (the most well-known aspect of the Catholic Worker).

Initially, though, the Green Revolution would be fomented by starting a newspaper for disseminating Maurin's theory. On May Day 1933, Maurin and Day commenced their movement by passing out 3,000 copies of The Catholic Worker. Three years later, joined by a growing number of volunteers, they announced their search for land and financial support with the audacious headline: "To Christ—To The Land!" Continue reading

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• America
• Image: Sacred Run 2006

Day, who died in 1980, established with Peter Maurin the non-violent, pacifist Catholic Worker movement, which claims more than 200 autonomous communities providing social services in many countries, including New Zealand.

The endorsement by the US bishops took place during their annual general assembly in Baltimore. The bishop promoting her cause is Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the president of the bishops' conference.

Cardinal Dolan called the journey of Day's life "Augustinian", saying that "she was the first to admit it: sexual immorality, there was a religious search, there was a pregnancy out of wedlock, and an abortion. Like Saul on the way to Damascus, she was radically changed." He said she has become "a saint for our time".

"Of all the people we need to reach out to, all the people that are hard to get at, the street people, the ones who are on drugs, the ones who have had abortions, she was one of them," said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington.

"What a tremendous opportunity to say to them you can not only be brought back into society, you can not only be brought back into the church, you can be a saint!"

Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York, said: "She was a very great personal friend to me when I was a young priest. To be able to stand here and say yes to this means a great deal to me."

Source:

Catholic News Service

Image: Georgetown University