While reading a textbook for my Theory and Practice of Nonviolence class, I came across a paragraph talking about Dorothy Day. Day was a nonviolent Catholic activist that is considered to many a modern day saint for the work that she did for many social justice issues including co-founding the Catholic Worker, supporting the grape and lettuce boycotts with the United Farmworkers Union, and going on hunger strikes to show the immediate necessity for change. Day got much of her inspiration from Gandhi and while reading about her own methods she used to be principally nonviolent, I came across a paragraph talking about her stance on celibacy. 

"Unlike Gandhi, Day was no prude. She chose celibacy for herself, but she did not demand it of others. "It is not idealism as against sensuality," she told Coles. 'God...certainly put us here to enjoy our sexual lives." When sexual love is genuine and faithful, it is a beautiful thing, she said. It is a "mating of spirit and flesh," a symbol of divine love. "It is the foretaste we have of heaven." But when sex is careless and exploitative, it "takes on the quality of the demonic, and...is a foretaste of hell."

-David Cortwright from Gandhi and Beyond, Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism

Dorothy Day

I found this statement so riveting. Day was a strong Catholic, but was speaking about sex in a way I have never heard a religious person talk about it before. Like the quote states, Day did not have the same beliefs as Gandhi, and no where in the statement does Day mention that the act needs to be saved for a marriage between a man and woman. Day uses the word idealism in her statement and it reminded me of our class discussion on 'what is idealism?' Looking through my notebook, i have scattered notes on what different people thought it was. It could be defined as beliefs, ideals, a specific mindset, or habits of a group of people/individual. My personal favorite defined it as your own relationship to the world.

Day's ideology did not come from leaders of nonviolent action, such as Gandhi, and they didn't come from leaders of her religion, such as the Pope, but they came from her own beliefs. In Day's early life, she had a relationship with a man which resulted in her becoming pregnant and having an abortion. The Catholic Church certainly doesn't accept having sex without marriage and definitely believes that abortions are morally wrong. But, by reading this book about Day, I am taking away that she recognizes that things happen in life and her ideology reflects an authentic viewpoint from which people are able to relate to. Since these things happened in Day's early life, her relationship to the issues are different than the teachings of the church. 

Does that make her a 'bad' follower of the religion? Should she not be prominent figure in the church? The culture of the church would, I would think, say that she shouldn't be. The Theory Toolbox defines culture as "way of life". The whole idea is very interesting to me: why is Dorothy Day held in such high regard in the Catholic Church even though her personal beliefs and ideologies are different than what it is that they teach? And what is it about the culture of the church that makes it acceptable for some people, like Day, to be very outspoken about their differences with the Church, but doesn't give the same opportunity for others to do the same?