'The Long Loneliness': Dorothy Day

Yes, I think I would last in one of Dorthy's communes or homes about two seconds. They would kill me or I would kill them.

But everyone is different.



However I suspect young people would be more into such things. Older people maybe not so much. I notice even my dogs seems to prefer to keep to himself more and more as he gets older.

My mother used to take care of her grand children loads. They used to be all unloaded on her like a large parachute drop. But even she reached a stage when she had to say, 'Enough is enough'.

 

Father Lazarus is a great favourite of mine.

 

In this movie, it seems she did have an abortion. The greatest sinners so often make the greatest saints.

Watch Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story (1996 - Free Movies | Tubi

 

Oh it only works in the USA. What a pity.

I was just reading there before I went to sleep and woke up again about a priest Dorothy and the rest of them knew called Fr Roy who used to give Retreats. Fr Roy one time went into an old nun who was dying of cancer in a hospital. He noticed a radio by her bedside and advised her to get rid of it as a means of mortification!

I was just thinking of this and thinking I would just about have died than to have said such a thing to the poor old dying woman. Not surprisingly Fr Roy got evicted by the hospital staff. He was eventually forbidden by his Bishop to give any more retreats.

Dorothy really knew the most interesting people from all over the USA. Bishops, priests, Cardinals, whole flocks of lay people of every rank and age. She had the most enormous impact. As far as her work was concerned she most certainly did practice the most extraordinary heroic virtue in so many ways.

She was very much into her retreats. I have not done a Retreat in many, many years. But then again I do not live the kind of hyper active Apostolic life she did. My life ,now I have retired is pretty well one long retreat.

I would guess she was a saint really but one so radically different it is hard for me to grasp really. The saint closest to here in her radical life style I suppose would have been Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Yet even so the two women are as different as chalk and cheese.

But Dorothy is never ever boring, she was always up to something. Very,very challenging and idealistic. So very American.

 

Well finished Dorothy Day's book. It was very,very good. At the end she writes of the death of her co founder Peter Maturin. She called up to his bedroom one night and found someone had stolen his blankets while he was sleeping in freezing conditions. Very poignant. She also mentions Paul used to sleep with his overcoat wrapped around his feet so no one would steal it.

I would certainly say Peter and Dorthy were saints ; no doubt about it. If they were not saints I can't say who was really.

It is true they were both accused of being Communists, but this simply was not the case. They were both of them and their movement the very worst kind of enemies Communism has ever faced.

Anyway God bless them both.