JIM WALLIS: Here's what she said, “You just need to look at what the gospel asks and what war does. A great comparison we all need to make. The gospel asks that we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the homeless, visit the prisoner and perform works of mercy. War does all the opposite; it makes my neighbor hungry, thirsty, homeless, a prisoner, and sick. The gospel asks us to take up our cross, war asks us to lay the cross of suffering on others.” So at the foundation here Dorothy is saying the alternative to war and violence is to do what Jesus says about taking care of those who are most struggling . . . So Dorothy was raising hard questions and the people would leave during the “good war” which the whole nation was for and the fight was necessary with the Nazis. And so she was wrestling with that, but she stayed true to what she believed even when she didn't have all the answers. I don't think Dorothy never struggled or questioned, what do you do with a Hitler in the world. Bonhoeffer did, Bill Stringfellow did, Berrigan did. Phil Berrigan went to war and came back. But she said, I know what Jesus said and I'm going to stay faithful Jesus and be a peacemaker. I don't think she had all the answers but she stayed true to what she knew. So staying true to what you know is always going to be the best thing to do.

CORNEL WEST: It took tremendous courage for her to call into question the tradition of “just war” that had been hammered out going all the way back to Augustine by towering Catholic theologians. . . .It’s a very powerful and sophisticated position. But she also knew that it could too easily become a rationalization for killing innocent people. And it became a rationalization of how violence takes on a logic of its own, a dynamic of its own far beyond the kind of moral concerns that you do find in “just war” theory.

KATE HENNESSY: She didn’t really make any kind of distinctions about whether one war was more complicated or more clearly wrong than another. I think that’s a really hard thing for people to understand. I mean, we really want to hold onto the idea that there are just wars. And she was very clear: there’s no such thing as a just war, there’s always a war against the poor. It’s always the poor that suffer the most.

SIMONE CAMPBELL: It came from the fact that everybody has inherent dignity, so how can you kill anyone? How can you, as a strategy, go out and kill others and know that the people you are sending to war will be killed themselves? And for her, out of the dignity of the individual, I think she came to the absolute sense that war was wrong, war was futile, war didn't accomplish anything and that she needed to stand up against it.

JIM WALLIS: Now Dorothy didn't have the kind of pacifism that was passive. There’s a real difference here. Pacifism isn’t actually a biblical term. Jesus says, Blessed are the peacemakers for they’ll be called the children of God. He didn’t say blessed are the peace lovers. We all love peace.

MARTHA HENNESSY: And her understanding of what Jesus said when he said, “Put the sword down. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” This is something she was willing and able to practice. . . .

ROBERT ELLSBERG: But certainly in the 1950s when she was going to jail protesting the civil defense drills, the number of Catholics in America who really believed that civil defense and preparing for nuclear war was a crime against God and humanity, they could pretty much fit in this one police wagon. No Bishops supported her at the time, it was just kind of shocking and embarrassing. But there was always allowance for the idea, well Dorothy is this outlier, she’s a prophet, she’s kind of a holy fool.

SIMONE CAMPBELL: I think our nation changed a lot with the Vietnam War and we were a different people and the war was a different war. …the amazing thing about Dorothy Day is that she’s consistent. She said this war was wrong, got involved, and was in the streets and civil disobedience around the war. And the country sort of caught up to her. It’s not that she changed, the nation changed.

Dorothy Day was a life-long pacifist who decried war and the justification of war on any terms. In a May 1936 article in The Catholic Worker, Day stated the organization’s position as “sincerely pacifist” and opposed to “class war and class hatred,” as well as “imperialist war” and the “preparedness for war.” Day and Catholic Worker supporters protested American involvement in World War II, as well as the Vietnam War and the post-World War II nuclear arms race. Day refused to accept theories of a “Just War” or a “good” war, instead seeing all violence as a contravention of Jesus’ call for his followers to be peacemakers.

1. Do you agree with Day’s total commitment to pacifism? Is "sincere pacifism” a tenable position – or even a “Christian” one, as Day declared? Is pacifism possible in an age of domestic and international terrorism and genocide, as in Rwanda in the 1990s---or the Holocaust of the 1940s?

2. Do you interpret Jesus’ call to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9) as a call to pacifism? Why or why not? What difference does it make how we interpret this Beatitude? 3. Day opposed the centuries-old Roman Catholic teaching on “just war” -- that defensive war can sometimes be morally justified. Do you find the “just war” argument compelling? Why or why not? Briefly review Catholic teaching on “just war” theory in the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church before formulating your answers. A summary of that teaching can be found here: http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-andteachings/ what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/. See especially Article 5: The Fifth Commandment, Part III: Safeguarding Peace (pp. 585-588).

4. Day and other Catholic Workers were involved in many anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons protests and acts of civil disobedience from the 1940s to the 1970s (Day died in 1980). Do you consider demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience appropriate? What sort of parameters would you draw around what acts of civil disobedience are or are not appropriate? Do you agree with those Catholics who accused Day and her fellow Workers of undermining war efforts and of not being patriotic (particularly during World War II)? Can one be a pacifist and not pass judgment on the many religious people who serve in the military? Why or why not?

5. Would you have withdrawn your support from the Catholic Worker movement, given its pacifist stand during World War II? Consider what was at stake in that war before formulating your answer. Or does it matter what the war---any war---is being fought for?

6. Dorothy Day and other Workers practiced voluntary poverty as well as pacifism. Do you think there is a natural connection between the two---that if we surrender our possessions, we also surrender the desire to fight for them? Or that we take a stand on the side of the poor and the dispossessed rather than that of the powerful?

RTE INTERVIEW 3:15 The works of war destroy the food, destroy the homes, and do the very opposite of what the Lord asks. So that makes us, of course, ardent pacifists, and as such we could not possibly be communists or fascists or think in terms of use of force at all.

MOYERS FILM 27:06 I believe in miracles of course. I believe someday there will be mutinies large enough to bring an end to war. Who knows what will happen. …

THE CHRISTOPHERS PROGRAM (9:50) there is a tremendous growth in the peace movement in this country… (10:10) and the constant emphasis on the need for voluntary poverty and the works of mercy as a basis of the peace movement. (10:35) these things are taken hold all through the young. The desire is there to grow spiritually and to see how much they can do without to see how much they can change the system by each one playing his part…a great sense of personal responsibility…and the importance of it.