"Dorothy Day: A Saint For Our Time" Program at Wisdom House Retreat Center In Litchfield October 3

LITCHFIELD, Conn. - Sept. 16, 2020 - PRLog -- On Saturday, October 3, 2020, Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center at 229 East Litchfield Road in Litchfield will present a program on Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Presented by Robert Ellsberg, the revered author of "The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day" and "All The Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day", the program will run from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The cost of the program, co-sponsored by Fairfield University's Center for Catholic Studies, is $60 which will include lunch.

Robert Ellsberg, editor in chief and publisher of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, is the prolific author of numerous books on Catholic Faith, including "Blessed Among Us: Day by Day with Saintly Witnesses"; "Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets and Witnesses"; and "The Franciscan Saints".

Dorothy Day (1987-1980) was a journalist, social activist, and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She described the process of her conversion in her autobiography, "The Long Loneliness". Today she is perhaps the best-known political radical in the American Catholic Church, and is currently under consideration for sainthood.

In 1917 Day was imprisoned as a member of suffragist Alice Paul's nonviolent Silent Sentinels. In the 1930s, she worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that combines direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. She practiced civil disobedience, which led to arrests in 1955, 1957, and in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.

In 1933 Day co-founded the "Catholic Worker" newspaper, and served as its editor from 1933 until her death in 1980. In this newspaper, she advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism, which she considered a third way between capitalism and socialism. Pope Benedict XVI used her conversion story as an example of how to "journey towards faith... in a secularized environment." Pope Francis included her among four exemplary Americans who "built a better future". Yet for much of her life Dorothy Day was considered a fairly marginal figure, if not viewed with outright suspicion.

The October 3^rd program will include a showing of the documentary, "Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story". The afternoon sessions will explore the social program of The Catholic Worker Movement: Works of Mercy, Social Justice, and Peace, plus a focus on Day's spirituality and reflections on the question of sainthood.

Face masks, social distancing protocols, and registration for this event will be required. To register, call Wisdom House at 860-567-3163, or visit https://www.wisdomhouse.org.