No Warmth, No Comfort

Dorothy Day reveals in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, that she craved the deep faith and the spiritual discipline she observed among the poor and the immigrants with whom she lived in New York City during her young years as a radical socialist.

Many a morning after sitting all night in taverns or coming from balls at Webster Hall, I went to an early morning Mass at St. Joseph’s Church on Sixth Avenue and knelt in the back of the church, not knowing what was going on at the altar, but warmed and comforted by the lights and silence, the kneeling people and the atmosphere of worship. People have so great a need to reverence, to worship, to adore….

The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day (1952 Harper & Brothers, New York, NY), p.84

It’s so very interesting to me that the Catholic church was once known as a staunch foe of socialism, and now? I cannot think of a single socialist or open Communist today who would feel anything but comfortable in the presence of the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

If you wish to find the enemies of Christ, look for inversion. Those who hate the crucifix and its ferocious message will always practice inversion. Good becomes evil. Purity becomes perversion. Day is turned into night.

It’s also worth noting that Dorothy Day, if she were alive today, would find herself hard-pressed to locate a Mass where she might feel “warmed and comforted by the lights and silence, the kneeling people and the atmosphere of worship.” She would likely wail and blind herself at the noisy, irreverent, organized blasphemy that characterizes the Mass as practiced in the Church in these times. I believe she would recognize the inversion.

~ S.K. Orr