The Long Loneliness

Day mentions that she was once told by a priest that if she “were a woman of family, the things [she] wrote in The Catholic Worker about community and personalism would have more validity” (235). She is 38 and going through a difficult time; she wishes that she were married and led a more ordinary and happy life.

Tamar is everything to Day. Before Day had The Catholic Worker community, it was just her and her daughter, fending for themselves. However, once she develops the newspaper, her days become long and Tamar is not the only person in her life. Sometimes, Day forgets her in the bathtub during long Catholic Worker discussions. Day presumes that Tamar relishes the freedom that she is given while her mother is so busy. She has many neighborhood children to play with. She is also interested in making things. Tamar ends up getting married before the age of 17. She and her husband go to live “in a barracks-like house on the farm, surrounded by a three-acre garden” (240). It seems that her lifestyle choices are influenced by her mother.

The last speech Peter Maurin ever gives is at Tamar’s wedding breakfast. A few months later, he loses his memory and can no longer think clearly. Day notes: “Joy and sorrow, life and death, always so closely together!” (242). Tamar does give Day much joy, making her a grandmother five times over. Tamar is also the person who suggests the title for the book when commenting about how lonely she has been as a young mother. Day realizes the only answer to this issue is living and working closely together in a community and showing one’s love for God. 

Day starts to go on Catholic retreats. She hears of more retreats in Canada and in Baltimore. The one in Canada is in French, so she does not attend, and when she reads the writings of another priest in Baltimore, she is not moved. A friend named Sister Peter Claver brings Father Pacifique Roy to the house. He discusses the natural versus the supernatural, how “the seed of supernatural life planted in us at our baptism, and of the necessity we were under to see that the seed grew and flourished” (246). This captivates Day. Father Roy suggests that she go to a retreat with Father John J. Hugo, who is from Pittsburgh. Father Hugo will later write a book about the Catholic retreat movement, but at that time he is teaching at a girls’ school just outside of Pittsburgh, in Oakmont. Hugo and another Priest, Father Louis Farina, who runs an orphanage in Oakmont, begins holding summer retreats at the campus. Day participates in five days of silence, with conferences and prayer groups led by Father Hugo. The idea of grace is a hallmark of the retreat: “We have been raised above ourselves by baptism, and the law of this supernatural life is love, a love which demands renunciation” (257). Catholicism dictates that the body is meant to be transformed from its natural state to a supernatural form; Day still has notes from the retreat that she takes with her to Mass. In the end, the retreat is disbanded because of a doctrinal disagreement over whether original sin changed the nature of man. Articles in The Ecclesiastical Review lambast Father Hugo. The priests involved with the retreat end up being transferred to other areas.

Near the end of World War Two, Day and her friends decide to start their own retreat on one of their farms on Staten Island, where attendees can pray and study. Young priests come to study and teach. The Catholic Worker eventually has to sell the farm because a family living on the lower farm is raiding the upper farm. Day moves to Newburgh, New York and finds the rural area to be less overwhelming. The retreats continue. Day emphasizes their importance to her as nourishment for her body and soul.

Day uses this chapter to highlight a few writers for The Catholic Worker, along their pacifist leanings. At the end of World War Two, people chastise The Catholic Worker for having been pacifist. Though readers of the paper agree with this pacifism, they also do not want to quit their jobs, most of which tangentially support the war effort. The newspaper publishes many articles about this difficulty. Ammon Hennacy, a Christian anarchist, is one of the writers they publish. He talks of time spent in the Atlanta Penitentiary during World War One, for refusal to serve. While there, he read Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Jesus and became attracted to Christian anarchism, though not organized religion.

Another writer they publish is Bob Ludlow, who has converted to the Catholicism. He has been a student and teacher who was a conscientious objector and was sent to work at the Rosewood Training School in Owings Mills, Maryland. On his few days off, he comes to New York and helps The Catholic Worker with their filing. After the war, he begins to write a monthly article. Day offers that Ludlow’s “writings have aroused the conscience, have spotlighted attention on the grave questions of freedom and authority (267). His anarchism allows those who follow his philosophy to expand beyond Marxism. His argument against government is really an argument against the State: it is better, Ludlow thinks, when people govern themselves in small communities, rather than when they are led by representatives.

Ludlow also explains The Catholic Worker’s position on pacifism by breaking it down into the natural and supernatural. Pacifism descends from reason, as well as the existence of Christ, and the prohibition against the slaying of the innocent. Young men face questions about what they did in the war, Day adds; she questions how they can truly be Catholic if they are killing other men. However, they also have an inclination towards community—to fight with their brothers. Further, “in the face of the most gigantic tyranny the world has ever known,” how can one not fight? (272). These are debates that any Catholic or religious person must weigh in a time of war.