Dynamite - Alliance Catholic Worker Newsletter Summer 2014 | Page 2

Aims and Purposes By Dorothy Day (1943) “Let us therefore love God because God hath first loved us. If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not?”–St. John It is because of this invitation that we are engaged in the work of getting out the Catholic Worker. “Love is an exchange of gifts,” St. Ignatius said. And we want to show our love for our brother, so that we can show our love for God; and the best way we can do it is to try to give him what we’ve got, in the way of food, clothing and shelter; to give him what talents we possess by writing, drawing pictures, reminding each other of the love of God and the love of man. There is too little love in this world, too little tenderness. Not a Liberal They say that I am a radical. If I am a radical then I am not a liberal. The future will be different if we make the present different. But to make the present different one must give up old tricks and start to play new tricks. But to give up old tricks and start to play new tricks one must be a fanatic. Liberals are so liberal about everything that they refuse to be fanatical about anything. And not being able to be fanatical about anything, liberals cannot be liberators. They can only be liberals. Liberals refuse to be religious, philosophical or economic fanatics and consent to be the worst kind of fanatics, liberal fanatics. Not a Conservative How can we love God and kill our brother? How can we love our brother and kill him? How can we fulfill the Gospel precept to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect; how can we follow the precept to love God when we kill our fellow man? How can war be compatible with such love?! ! To kill, to destroy, to starve, to inflict all these sufferings with love–that is sadism of the most hideous kind. That is perversity. It has long been said that religion is the opiate of the people. Pope Pius XI said that the workers of the world are lost to the church. If that is true, if the poor of the world are turned from the Bride of Christ, it is because there is no relation between the spiritual and material. We are not trying to put into effect our Christianity, our Christian principles. They are not animating our lives.! ! Continues Page 5… If I am a radical, then I am not a conservative. Conservatives try to believe that things are good enough to be let alone. But things are not good enough to be let alone. Conservatives try to believe that the world is getting better every day in every way. But the w