Dorothy Day

About This Book

"The first full-length biography of its subject in forty years, this book separates the myths from the facts about America's most radical pacifist, critic of US foreign policy, Catholic activist. Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century is the life story of the American icon Pope Francis I mentioned alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln for her revolutionary aspirations to a more humane and sustainable future." "After a middle-class Republican childhood and a few years as a Communist sympathizer, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for almost fifty years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. Day went to jail challenging the draft and the war in Vietnam. She was critical of capitalism and foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism. Her protests began in 1917, leading to her arrest during the suffrage demonstration outside President Wilson's White House. In 1940 she spoke in Congress against the draft and urged young men not to register. She frequented jail throughout the 1950s protesting the nuclear arms race. She told audiences in 1962 that President Kennedy was as much to blame for the Cuban missile crisis. She refused to hear any criticism of the pope, though she sparred with American bishops and priests who lived in well-appointed rectories and tolerated racial segregation in their parishes."--Amazon. Loughery and Randolph separate the myths from the facts about Dorothy Day, America's most radical pacifist, critic of US foreign policy, Catholic activist. Her conversion to Catholicism in the 1920s, following an abortion and the birth of a child out of wedlock, changed the direction of her life. She founded the Catholic Worker to provide food and shelter for the destitute during the Depression. An impassioned advocate of civil disobedience, she frequently criticized the church for its complacency but is today being considered by the Catholic Church for canonization. -- adapted from jacket