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Peter Maurin's Green Revolution: The Radical Implications of Reactionary Social Catholicism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Anthony Novitsky
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Extract

Does the phenomenon which occurred during the last decade and has been loosely called the “New Catholic Left” include the Catholic Worker movement? Leaders of the Catholic Peace movement, civil rights activists and proponents of social justice in many instances have actively participated in the Catholic Worker movement or have at least been in contact with its followers. Yet, upon studying the Catholic Worker, a seeming paradox arises: the ideology of the Catholic Worker is a product of neither the American Left nor of liberal Catholicism but, rather, of the European Right. The ideology of the Catholic Worker, which is presented in the “Easy Essays” of Peter Maurin, is understandable only in the context of reactionary French Social Catholicism and allied movements. It is in the consequent repudiation of most of those ideas which were developed during the Enlightenment and became the basic presuppositions of American economics, politics and society that the radicalism of the Catholic Worker lies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 83 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1975

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References

1 It would be impossible to cite all such figures. Michael Harrington, David Miller, James Forest, Eileen Egan, Tom Cornell, Daniel and Philip Berrigan are only among the most obvious.

2 It is not within the scope of this paper to develop the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its effects upon American thought. It is assumed that the “basic presuppositions” include individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, an optimistic theory of progress, science and technology, secularism and rationalism.

3 Miller's is the best study of Dorothy Day to date. See her Long Loneliness, Loaves and Fishes and On Pilgrimage, all republished by Curtis to commemorate her seventieth year.

4 Hennacy, Ammon, Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist (New York, 1954)Google Scholar, is both highly informative and characteristically opinionated.

5 Some biography of Maurin appears in the works of Day and Miller. A highly partisan biography is Sheehan's, ArthurPeter Maurin, The Gay Believer (Garden City, New York, 1959).Google Scholar

6 “Then suddenly he underwent some great religious experience. He never explained it to anyone, but from this time on his actions were different. He gave up charging for his lessons and offered them to students, saying they could pay him what they thought they were worth. Work was a gift, to be placed at the disposal of the community. His way was the ancient concept of the honorarium, once common in the medical world, particularly. It was strangely different in the get-rich-quick days of the last half of the twenties” (Sheehan, , Peter Maurin, p. 83)Google Scholar. There is no indication concerning the genesis of the conversion.

7 Miller is at his best in describing the early years of the Catholic Worker. The most complete bibliography on the history of the Catholic Worker has been compiled in mimeograph form by Alex Avitabile, S. J., of Fordham University, and is available with four supplements.

8 His obituary notice in the Catholic Worker stated: “One thing we can be happy about too, and that is that he felt he had finished his work before his mind failed, as St. Albertus Magnus' great mind failed. He used to say, ‘I have written all I have to say, I have done all I can, let the younger men take over.’ So he suffered but not with the feeling that there was much still that he could do.” (Day, , “Story of Three Deaths,” Catholic Worker, 16, No. 2 [06, 1949], p. 2.)Google Scholar

9 Maurin, Peter, Green Revolution (Paterson, N. J., 1961), p. 3Google Scholar. The “Easy Essays” were originally printed in various issues of the Catholic Worker and have been periodically reprinted in that journal to date, as well.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Green Revolution, “Money Lenders' Dole,” p. 5.

13 Ibid.

14 While Dorothy Day was writing for the Sign, Belloc published a series of 12 articles in that journal: “The Great Quarrel,” Sign (Nov., 1932), pp. 221-223; “The Disaster of the Reformation” (Jan., 1933), pp. 337–338; “Causes of the Protestant Domination” (Feb., 1933), pp. 397–399; “The Lowest Point” (Mar., 1933), pp. 465–467; “The Seeds of Change” (Apr., 1933), pp. 533–534; “The Catholic Change” (May, 1933), pp. 615–617; “The Catholic Resurrection” (June, 1933), pp. 653–655; “The Effect of History” (July, 1933), pp. 716–718; “The Economic Breakdown of Protestantism” (Aug., 1933), pp. 37–38; “The Void” (Sept., 1933), pp. 81–82; and “What Is Coming?” (Oct., 1933), pp. 145–146. The interpretation is also present in Walsh's, James J.The Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries (New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

15 Green Revolution, “Money Lenders' Dole,” p. 5; “Creating Problems,” p. 5; “When Civilization Decays,” pp. 5–6.

16 Green Revolution, “Church and State,” pp. 6–7.

17 Green Revolution, “Irish Culture,” pp. 204–206.

18 Green Revolution,“To the Bishops of the USA: A Plea for Houses of Hospitality,” pp. 8–11.

19 Green Revolution, “On Marxism,” pp. 15–16; “A Second Letter to Father Lord, S. J.,” pp. 21–22.

20 Ibid.

21 Green Revolution, “Is Inflation Inevitable?” pp. 17–20.

22 Green Revolution, ”A Rumpus on Campus,” pp. 23–26.

23 Green Revolution, “Scholars and Bourgeois,” p. 27. Also see “Coming to Union Square,” pp. 26–27.

24 Green Revolution, “A Question and an Answer on Catholic Labor Guilds,” pp. 30–33.

25 Green Revolution, “Tradition and Catholic Action,” p. 45.

26 Green Revolution, “For Catholic Action,” pp. 50–52.

27 Green Revolution, “When Christ Is King,” pp. 61–65.

28 Green Revolution, “Five Definitions,” pp. 76–77.

29 See, for example, John Cogley, in discussing ghetto Catholicism: “Even the radical Catholic Worker sponsored a back-to-the-land movement, vigorously denounced modern industrialism, and spoke glowingly of the peasant way of life” (Catholic America [New York, 1974]). The point is that radicalism of the, Catholic Worker and a significant element of the “New Catholic Left” lies in the philosophy which underlies precisely this reactionary program. The Catholic Worker is in fact a form and product of ghetto Catholicism with one essential difference: it presents a positive alternative rather than a negative defense to secular America.