Dorothy Day: Drawing on the Profane to Grasp the Sacred
Skip Worden
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Skip Worden
I am currently a scholar in residence at Harvard. My areas include philosophy (historical moral, religious, political and economic thought), theology (Christian ethics), and political theory, with applications to film.
Rather than spending her adult years in a convent, Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Workers Movement in the twentieth century, could distill religious experience through her activity in the world—the sacred essentially coming up through the profane. This is not to confound these two spheres, just as Christology has held since the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) that the two natures, human and divine, of Christ do not mix within his one essence. In fact, even within the religious sphere, Day could distinguish qualitative differences between God as personified and as impersonal in nature.
The full essay is at "Dorothy Day ."