The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist by Dorothy Day

Author:Dorothy Day [Day, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonviolence, ST, Radicalism, Autobiography, Christianity, Religion, Catholicism, Biography & Autobiography, Anarchism, Religious
ISBN: 9780060617516
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 1996-12-06T07:00:00+00:00

JOBS AND JOURNEYS

□ I never regretted for one minute the step which I had taken in becoming a Catholic, but I repeat that for a year there was little joy for me as the struggle continued. I knew a good priest who helped me along the way. I was living in New York that winter and went to confession in a church on West Fourteenth Street, Our Lady of Guadaloupe. It was a narrow little church, served by the Augustinian Fathers of the Assumption, and there were Masses at seven, eight and nine o’clock each morning. Before every Mass priests came from the rectory next door to hear confessions. There were three confessionals on either side of the entrance door, and there were bells on the confessionals so that at any other time of the day one could ring a bell and a priest would appear. My priest’s name was Father Zachary and his previous assignment had been in the Holy Land. He was a Spaniard, a gentle old man who was good and patient with me. He was so gentle that one welcomed his questions, and when he found that I was baptized but not confirmed he began preparing me for confirmation. He gave me Challoner’s book of meditations to read and a St. Andrew’s missal so that I could learn to follow the seasons of the Church, the saints of the day, and have the doctrinal instruction containing many quotations from the Fathers of the Church that the missal gave before each Sunday Mass.

One confessor years later told me he found little of Christ in my writing but much of self. I would have taken that criticism humbly except that he added, “I will tell you when to write.” Since this priest was one who objected to all my social interests on the ground that it was too late to do anything except prepare for death, I left him and found another. Thank God one can change one’s confessor. As a matter of fact I have been singularly fortunate in good parish priests, order priests and diocesan, to whom I could go. I was happy indeed with Father Zachary.

In turn Father Zachary read some of my articles and short stories, and confessed that he found them very dull and unadorned. “You have no style,” he would complain. “You are too grim, too realistic.”

Often when I had finished my confession and my act of contrition and he had given me absolution, he would lean over and whisper, “Have you sold any stories lately?”

Such an interest was not as mundane as one might think. I was still working for the Anti-Imperialist League and Father Zachary told me to keep my Communist job until I found another one.

My confirmation was a joyous affair. I went one Sunday afternoon on the feast of Pentecost to the Convent of the Holy Souls on Eighty-fifth Street near Third Avenue. There, in company with a large group of adults, to the sweet singing of the nuns, I received the sacrament of confirmation.

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