Loaves and Fishes

Loaves and Fishes: The Inspiring Story of the Catholic Worker Movement is the second major memoir by Dorothy Day. A journalist, pacifist, and lifelong radical, Day abandoned a bohemian lifestyle in her early thirties to become a deeply pious leader in Catholic thought who nevertheless continued to champion worker’s rights and the disenfranchised. Released in 1963, Loaves and Fishes picks up where the author’s first memoir, The Last Loneliness, left off, as Day recalls her work as one of the chief architects behind The Catholic Worker Movement, an influential community organization founded in 1933 that aimed to help the poor while adhering to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Informed in equal measure by Day’s newfound religious piety and the anarchic streak she exhibited earlier in life, the Catholic Worker Movement—and its attendant magazine, The Catholic Worker—peaked in membership and circulation before losing considerable traction during the Second World War due to the movement’s unwavering allegiance toward pacifism.

When Loaves and Fishes picks up her life’s narrative, Day’s conversion from a socialist-bohemian to a devoted Catholic is already complete. However, the conversion leaves her unsure of how best to promote the change she wishes to see in society. She finds she no longer fits in with secular movements devoted to Communism, Socialism, or Anarchism, in part because those groups attract a huge contingent of atheists. At the same time, she concludes that the Catholic Church and its leadership have lost sight of Jesus’ original mission of helping the poor. She captures this state of confusion perfectly in her previous book, The Last Loneliness: “I could write, I could protest, to arouse the conscience, but where was the Catholic leadership in the gathering of bands of men and women together, for the actual works of mercy that the comrades had always made part of their technique in reaching the workers?"

As the idea for the Catholic Worker Movement begins to take root, Day meets a kindred spirit named Peter Maurin. Maurin is a French immigrant who, despite having never attended school, possesses an extraordinary intellect. But intellect aside, what Day appreciates most about Maurin is his unflagging devotion to lifting working families out of poverty. And like Day, his ambitions are rooted in his Catholicism—specifically the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi, one of history’s most renowned and passionate defenders of the downtrodden. Day writes that Maurin broadened her horizons and boosted the credibility of their work on two fronts: One, his knowledge of rare papal documents governing the Church’s approach toward social justice helps solidify the theological framework for their work; and two, he owns an extensive collection of anarcho-communist literature from which Day unearths a number of salient items she isn’t previously aware of, including Fields, Factories, and Workshops by the Russian philosopher Peter Kroptokin.



On May 1, 1933, Day and Maurin officially launch the Catholic Workers Movement, and before long the organization includes over 30 satellite locations around the world which provide food and shelter to the poor. Meanwhile, the circulation of the Catholic Workers magazine peaks at 150,000 subscribers.

While Day continues to achieve real traction and attention with her movement, there are a number of challenges the organization faces that test Day’s conscience and, ultimately, her faith. For instance, one of the movement’s most impactful initiatives is to provide food and shelter to needy individuals. But doing so without passing moral judgment on the beneficiaries of their organization’s largesse is a struggle for her. Particularly troubling to her are the sexual activities and marijuana use that many of the individuals seeking help from the organization engage in regularly. Not only do they participate in such sins of the flesh, but they do so under the roof of the facilities Day has so generously provided. And while Day possesses too much grace to take personal offense over these matters, she is torn over what she considers to be her complicity in the eyes of God for providing the arena where these sins take place.

Unfortunately, Day and Maurin soon have a far more significant dilemma that threatens the very existence of their budding movement. The threat is rooted in one of the central principles guiding Day’s work and philosophy since the beginning: a pacifist stance that is unequivocal and non-negotiable. Even on the issue of class warfare, Day pledges only to stand with the working classes but not to fight alongside them. And so when the Spanish-American War breaks out, she loses favor with a huge number of Catholics stateside who side with the Catholic dictator Franco against the country’s insurgents. That said, even without Day’s commitment to pacifism it is highly unlikely that her movement would align itself with Franco, a brutal authoritarian whose fight against the working classes is aimed at deterring the very same egalitarian reforms Day supports in her writings.



In any case, circulation for The Catholic Worker magazine falls from 150,000 to 30,000. After the Spanish-American War ends, the magazine is able to build its circulation numbers back up to 75,000. Unfortunately, subscriptions plummet again in the wake of World War II, again due to the movement’s unequivocal pacifism.

Though the book is structured chronologically and touches on key autobiographical moments, Loaves and Fishes is more than a mere recounting of a certain period of the author’s adult life. It’s also a bold mission statement for Day’s radical Catholic teachings. In the book, she sums up how to live life according to her stated philosophy: “In a world enslaved through installment buying and mortgages, the only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.”