by Eileen Hanson
“For the sake of new readers, for the sake of men on our breadlines, for the sake of the employed and unemployed, the organized and unorganized workers, and also for the sake of ourselves, we must reiterate again and again what are our aims and purposes.”
Dorothy Day, Aims and Purposes, The Catholic Worker, February, 1940
As we are in a time of transition for the Winona Catholic Worker community, it occurs to us to look to our roots to find our way. Since the Catholic Worker movement has never had a ‘headquarters or central office, we have little in the way of directions to guide us. What we have is the history and tradition of a social movement, and the direct experiences of this and other CW communities. Although there is a sense of affinity among many communities, each community is independent and discerns for itself what is most needed and how best to meet those needs.
Perhaps the closest thing to a mission statement the Catholic Worker movement has ever had is something called the “Aims and Means”. Having just said there has never been a headquarters, I have to confess that at least part of reason the “Aims and Means” carries weight in many Catholic Worker communities is because it came out of the original Catholic Worker community, in New York, where Dorothy and Peter lived and died.
The Catholic Worker did not initially publish a systematic “Aims and Means”. They began simply with what Dorothy called Peter’s program – houses of hospitality, roundtable discussions and farming communes. Later, as the movement grew in breadth and depth, Dorothy Day outlined some of the “Aims and Purposes”. To begin, she offers some of her reasons for laying these out explicitly.
“Together with the Works of Mercy, feeding, clothing and sheltering our brothers, we must indoctrinate. We must “give reason for the faith that is in us.” Otherwise we are scattered members of the Body of Christ, we are not “all members one of another.” Otherwise, our religion is an opiate, for ourselves alone, for our comfort or for our individual safety or indifferent custom.” (DD, The Catholic Worker, 1940)
More recently, the Catholic Worker has published “The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker Movement” in its yearly anniversary issue. While there have been some revisions over the years, the basic message has remained. They declare that the current society falls far short of God’s justice, and that we must begin living in a different way if we are to build a society “where it is easier for people to be good.”
In the Aims and Means of the CW Movement, the writers advocate personalism, decentralized society, a “green” revolution, nonviolence, the works of mercy, manual labor and voluntary poverty. They commend a life of voluntary poverty, manual labor and the works of mercy to counter the prevailing tendency in society toward acquisition and over consumption.
From it’s earliest days, the Catholic Worker movement has called for a “green’ revolution, a return to the land, where we might “re-discover the proper meaning of our labor and our true bonds with the land.” They envisioned “a radically new society where people will rely on the fruits of their own soil and labor; associations of mutuality, and a sense of fairness to resolve conflicts.”
The Aims and Means affirm that only nonviolent means will bring about peace, quoting Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” They advocate many forms of non-cooperation and resistance to every kind of oppression, violence and militarism as excellent ways to establish peace.
And all of this grounded in the firm belief in the freedom and dignity of each person. In this “personalist” philosophy, one looks to the good of the other, taking personal responsibility for changing conditions rather than looking to the state or other institutions to provide “charity”.
In the Winona Catholic Worker’s early years, this community also put together a statement of purposes. A calligraphy of this statement, done by former community member Shirley Kelter, hangs in the dining room of the Dan Corcoran House. It still captures what we are trying to do here, and we reprint it on the back page of every newsletter.
Over the last several years, the Winona Catholic Worker has put together a set of core commitments that encapsulate what we see as our most basic goals.
Community Hospitality Poverty Stewardship Faith Nonviolence
There is no particular order or hierarchy among these commitments. They are all integral parts of the fabric of the Winona Catholic Worker community. They draw heavily on the history and tradition of the larger Catholic Worker movement, but also on the lived experience of this community. Primarily, our core commitments are the things that we consider, implicitly or explicitly, when we make a decision together. By striving toward these things, we hope that we are ourselves transformed as we hope to transform the world into a more just and peaceful place.
Over the next several issues of the newsletter, we plan to explore each of these ideas a bit more. For us, this is a way of reconnecting with our roots and sharing with you, our readers, a little more of the faith that grounds us.