By: Cliff Kincaid
“From the River to the Sea, Catholic Workers Resist Empire” is the title of an email from the Catholic Worker movement started by “Christian Communist” Dorothy Day, in line to become a Catholic Saint. This is the same brand of “Christianity” being peddled by Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who calls himself a Christian who hates Christianity.
Though not an official branch of the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic Worker Movement’s founder Dorothy Day is being promoted for sainthood by “His Eminence, Cardinal Timothy Dolan,” considered by some a “conservative” clergyman who has been a favorite of the Fox News Channel.
She has already been officially labeled a “Servant of God,” according to the church, which is the first step in a multi-stage journey toward sainthood.
This is significant since the “conservative” media are now warning us about the sudden rise of “democratic socialism” when the movement has deep roots in the Roman Catholic Church, and this movement is very much alive in Catholicism today. There are estimated to be over 200 Catholic Worker communities worldwide, some in New York, regarded as a fertile constituency for Zohran Mamdani.
Indeed, in a campaign ad, Muslim Communist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cited “the great Dorothy Day,” as well as the political work of Vito Marcantino, who was sympathetic to the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and considered “a friend” of the Communist Party USA.
The phrase “from the River to the Sea” demonstrates the antisemitic nature of radical Catholicism today. The phrase means eliminating Israel. But hatred for America and its capitalist system are also staples of the movement.
Anti-American to the Core
Carol Byrne, author of The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis, confirms that Dorothy Day “supported the policies of hostile foreign powers operating from Moscow, Havana, Peking [Beijing] and Hanoi against her own country, the USA.” She documents how Day “wrote favorably about such socialist dictators as Lenin, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, even though they had all violently persecuted the Church in their respective countries. Nor could she in principle bring herself to condemn the social and economic ideals of Marxism.”
Asked for comment on the current state of the movement, she told me, “The present situation of the Catholic Worker Movement is not in the least surprising, as it is only a follow-up of Dorothy Day’s lifelong antagonism to the United States. She was always anti-American to the core. She refused to stand for the national anthem and objected to any public display of the American flag. Her so-called pacifism and anti-draft activities were only a cover for her lack of patriotism, which she tried to launder with references to the Gospel of peace.”
In her book, The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-80): a Critical Analysis, Byrne provides proof, drawn from archival evidence, that even after her conversion to Catholicism, Dorothy Day “became a member of several Socialist organizations and was actively involved in political groups whose founders and leaders were predominantly Communist Party members.”
She adds that the evidence is irrefutable that Dorothy Day was a radical revolutionary who strove throughout her life to bring socialism into the Catholic Church under the guise of “Christian Communism.”
Under FBI Surveillance
Day was so radical and anti-American that the FBI placed her under surveillance for alleged sedition. Her FBI file is revealing. She visited Soviet Russia, noting that one trip was funded by Corliss Lamont, author of The Philosophy of Humanism and a Fabian socialist who headed the Friends of Soviet Russia.
A memo from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover cited information that she was in fact a Russian who came to the United States in 1939. Hoover urged an investigation “to determine the subject’s place of birth, and if foreign born, the time when and the circumstances under which she entered the country.”
Her supporters claim she was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 8, 1897, but that she was “deeply influenced by Russian culture, literature, and thought throughout her life.”
She may have been just a dupe of the Reds.
While a member of the Communist Party before joining the church, a close associate by the name of Monsignor John J. Hartigan is quoted as saying he “does not feel she is smart enough to prevent the Communist Party from using her publication as a front for their activities,” according to one FBI report. Furthermore, “he does not believe that she is sufficiently intelligent enough to prevent such action on the part of the Communist Party should they desire to see the Catholic Worker for their own ends.”
Based on her writings, as researched by Carol Byrne, it is clear she was used as an agent of communism at the very least. That is, a dupe.
One FBI report on how “public opinion” was responding to the Catholic Worker movement said, apparently in reference to its self-proclaimed Houses of Hospitality, “Some charge it with foolishly catering to bums, hobos, drunkards, rascals, rogues and the general dregs and riffraff of society.” Others were “inclined to look upon it as being a nefarious communist outfit,” others “think it is a racket geared to high sounding phrases,” and some considered it to be “an extreme and ill-founded interpretation of Christian doctrine.”
Catholic Bishops Endorse Sainthood
Whether a dupe or agent of the communist conspiracy, why is she considered by the church to be a “servant of God” in line for Sainthood? It should be noted that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted unanimously in 2012 to endorse her cause for sainthood. This is the same group that facilitated the socialist health care scheme known as Obamacare, rocked by corruption to the tune of $10 billion in fraud.
Peter Maurin, a French Catholic social activist who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement alongside Dorothy Day in 1933, was reported by the FBI to be registered as an alien and “stated he never became a citizen of the United States as a ‘protest’ against nationalism.”
The email from the Catholic Worker referred to earlier cites praise for the “Pentagon 27,” a group of Catholic Worker “anti-war” protesters who claimed to be against “the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran” and cited “His Holiness Pope Leo XIV” for declaring the war to be “unjust, immoral, in violation of international law, and against the Gospel.”
Leo had participated in an anti-Reagan nuclear weapons protest in 1983 when he was a young Catholic in Rome.
Whitewashing a Sexual Predator
A more recent Catholic Worker newsletter concerns Catholic activism in San Antonio, Texas, in which the author states that “Our city also remembers Cesar Chavez, though now not without deep pain and complication. Recent revelations about Chavez’s personal misconduct remind us of something mature societies must learn repeatedly: moral insight and personal brokenness often coexist uneasily within the same human being.”
This is a rather strange way to describe a sexual predator.
Mexican-American “progressive” hero Cesar Chavez, who was trained as a revolutionary by Saul Alinsky, was promoted throughout his career as a committed Christian and Catholic in good standing. In fact, his movement operated as a “cult” in which his followers underwent New Age mind control techniques and followed his arbitrary directives.
He therefore came to be described as the Jeffrey Epstein of the American labor movement because he abused young women.
It had started to dawn on many in and out of the church many years ago that Pope Francis had come down on the side of the “progressive,” and even Marxist, forces in the world today. Francis had welcomed advocates of Liberation Theology — a doctrine manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism– directly into the Vatican. Leo is continuing that tendency.
What has not been acknowledged is the degree to which the American bishops have promoted this subversive force within the church.
It was reported that, at a special Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal Dolan had announced he was sending nearly 50,000 pages of documents to the Vatican for review in the Dorothy Day matter. Traditional Catholics should make sure that her FBI file is sent to the Vatican, along with Carol Byrne’s book.
- Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
