Faith
Connection
Elizabeth House is a faith-based organization. While
we are rooted in the Catholic Worker tradition, we do not mandate that
any paid staff, volunteer staff, residents or donors be Catholic, Christian
or any other faith denomination.
What
do we mean by "faith based?"
By "faith based," we mean that our founding, our mission and
our methods are all informed by an understanding that God calls us to
right relationship with each other. We make decisions and take actions
based on values of love, compassion, generosity, justice and peace. We
do not require participation in activities of faith (e.g., prayer, worship,
Bible study,etc.), yet we make these available to the entire community.
What
is the Catholic
Worker Movement?
Founding
The Catholic Worker was originally founded in 1933, in depression-era
New York City. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin started a newspaper called
The Catholic Worker and charged only 1 cents-per-issue. This is still
true today.
The Movement
Since then, a number of individuals, families, churches and other groups
of people have gotten together in all different forms and called themselves
"Catholic Workers". Some of these are newspapers like the original
Catholic Worker, others are soup kitchens, houses of hospitality (like
EHouse), collectives of "radicals" who protest against war,
violence, injustice, etc.
CW Values
Education and working towards systemic change (changing the systems that
create poverty, violence, injustice, inequality) are major tenets of the
CW tradition.
Therefore, most CW communities produce a newsletter or newspaper, and/or
educate and protest against injustice. Doing the Works
of Mercy (feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick,
clothe the naked, free the imprisoned, etc.) are key concepts in all CWs.
Other terms used to describe these works of mercy include hospitality,
personalism (treating each person as an individual with a name and history
and as "Christ in our midst" - we do not call people clients,
but residents or guests), simplicity, dignity, cooperative (not hierarchical)
and more.
Are all Catholic Workers Catholic?
The majority of folks who become Catholic Workers, or associated with
a CW community, are of some faith perspective and have some personal belief
in a "higher power". We are not all Christians, and certainly
not all Catholics, but we do this work because our faith dictates that
we serve each other.
To
Learn More
Keywords
to Search for Online:
- Dorothy
Day
- Peter
Maurin
- Catholic
Worker
- House
of Hospitality
- Works
of Mercy
Read books written
by Dorothy or Peter:
- The
Long Loneliness (Dorothy Day's autobiography)
- anthologies
of the Catholic Worker movement
View movie about
Dorothy Day:
- Entertaining
Angels: Dorothy Day's Story
For
a list of other Catholic Worker sites, please click on the following link:
http://www.catholicworker.org
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