The following appeared on a July 24 posting on the Fossey Faithbook blog. Richard Fossey is editor of Catholic Southwest. His account of a miracle worked through the intercession of Dorothy Day appears here.
I finished reading Loaves and Fishes this week, Dorothy Day’s account of the Catholic Worker movement. I had read the book several years ago. Reading it again, I was struck by the fact that Dorothy Day spent most of her adult life among irritating people–eccentrics, drunks, homeless people who didn’t bathe, the mentally ill, thieves. These are exactly the kind of people I try to avoid.
Mr. O’Connell, for example, who lived at the Catholic Worker’s Easton farm for nine years, was a racist, a drunk, a person so irascible that no one could work with him. Anna, a homeless woman who sheltered at a CW hospitality house, had lived on the street so long that she refused for months to sleep in bed. She was also a bit wacky. Dorothy wrote that Anna appeared one day wearing a pair of peach-colored women’s underwear on her head. Even Peter Maurin, co-founder with Dorothy of the Catholic Worker movement, did not bathe regularly.
And yet Dorothy Day saw the face of Christ in all these people–in all the poor. And were she alive today, I feel sure she would see the face of Christ in James Holmes, the young man accused of shooting 70 people iat a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.
James Holmes may not be poor financially. Reportedly, he was able to buy $15,000 worth of guns, ammunition and body armor. But surely he is poor spiritually–isolated, almost friendless, and probably mentally ill.
As individuals, we cannot do much to stop tragedies like the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado or the other mass shootings that have occurred in recent years. We don’t have the power to stop the sale of assault rifles or the online purchase of assault-rifle ammunition. We don’t have the skill to identify and restrain mentally ill people before they pick up a weapon and start killing people.
But we can be kind to people. We can do more on a personal level to easing the suffering of people around us. We can cultivate the virtue of patience when we are irritated by our co-workers. Who knows how James Holmes’s life would have turned out if some individual had simply smiled at him during the days he was amassing weapons and ammunition–if someone had bestowed some act of kindness on him?
For, as Dorothy Day wrote in Loaves and Fishes, “We do the things that come to hand, we pray our prayers, and beg also for an increase of faith–and God will do the rest.”
This was also the message of St. Therese of Lisieux, whom Dorothy Day much admired. “I have tried it: when I feel nothing, when I am incapable of praying or practicing virtue, then is the moment to look for small occasions, nothings that give Jesus more pleasure than the empire of the world, more even than martyrdom generously suffered.”
Of course, I don’t live this way. I don’t follow the example of Dorothy Day or St. Therese of Lisieux. I am caught up in the day-to-day distractions of living, worried about whether I have enough money to retire, annoyed by people at the checkout line in the grocery store, frustrated by traffic on the Interstate. Had I encountered James Holmes, I feel sure I would have brushed him off, signaled him by my demeanor that I did not want to expend the small amount of energy it would have taken to extend him a little kindness.
I believe Dorothy Day understood how God wants us to live in this world–this postmodern, materialistic, hedonistic, power-hungry, recognition-seeking, violence-obsessed world. And if we followed her example, we, like Dorothy, would make the world a better place for people to live.
To read more from the Fossey Faithbook blog, click here.
I can’t relate to the sentiments in regards to this article. it sounds disturbing to me, we are forgetting the innocent victims killed off at the theater. I just don’t get this false compassion!
It’s identifying with the poor of spirit. only Jesus can teach us this virtue.
I don’t agree that this refers to this man…
**We don’t have the power to stop the sale of assault rifles or the online purchase of assault-rifle ammunition.** Millions of high powered semi automatic and “assault” rifles in the USA civilian population, and every once in a while some are used to kill lots of people. Ratio of several million to one … If there were far fewer “assault” and other high powered semi-automatic rifles, my guess is that the mass murder rate would be higher. So far the public is lock, stock and sinker buying into the single uniform major media pitch that Holmes is the soul shooter, and that he himself rigged the bombs in his apartment. Where is the proof? Look at his mug shot … Looks to me like he has no idea what is going on. Almost all the major mass shootings in the USA get the same exact media treatment. Records and files are closed to the public, gag orders issued, strange connected mysteries surface, witness accounts of other shooters. And all this is ignored by the major media. Democracy works … but for whom? If all major media say the same thing, then it is true … because if it is in the newspaper then it is true. Why? Because that is the American tradition, at least as taught to the last two or three generations of Americans in public schools. The truth is what is most comfortable … Didn’t Jesus tell us this, that He will send the Comforter and Spirit of Truth to us … not sure if He said it would be in the guise of the major media, though .. right? Doesn’t a defense attorney request a mistrial because the media warped the minds of the jurors before they were chosen? Sirhan Sirhan has always claimed he does not remember shooting RFK. I have talked with one of his prison mates, who believes him … What does Sirhan have to lose by confessing? Nothing. Then why does he keep saying he does not remember? Holmes will say the same thing, that he does not remember all that shooting stuff … The media will hammer the public about individual ownership of guns … it is the only issue which the media will explore with any gusto. Believing the media is the great American pastime today in out era. A media that pushes the gay deceiver agenda and abortion, and people believe what it tells them … Am I missing something here or is it called the “mystery of iniquity”?
How do we know that he was not given the assault-rifle ammunition. I feel that there is more to this young man’s story. I almost bet that he was given all that ammunition and equipment that he had in his apartment. I believe that at the time of the shooting he was receiving unemployment. He did not have much money. Someone must have set him up with all that equipment. Be careful. Don’t be fooled by appearances, some people can be good actors.
It is impossibe to take issue with Fossey on the importance of love and acceptance of difficult people. That is commanded us by our Lord frequently in scripture, and wonderfully in the Imitation of Christ. But there are also very powerful forces that numb the mind and conscience to the gravity of moral vice: the immense glorification of violence spewed forth from the media, the failure to teach values in our educational system, the sexualization of culture with its attendant narcissim.James Holmes, the Columbine shooters, and many others choice evil because so much of society has chosen evil and gloried in it– witness the abortion holocaust.
It sounds to me like Holmes was much indulged and probably had more than his fair share of kindness. When I think of the suffering of people in Sudan or Nigeria who wouldn’t think of retaliating with violence, I think the author of this apologetic twaddle should perhaps rethink (with a heavy emphasis on think) this premise. We do not know what was going on in this man’s mind, but we do know he had plenty of money and that he had family, and every advantage in which to pursue his dreams. He chose to murder completely innocent people with wanton abandon and I think it is completely inappropriate and unthinkable (again, a heavy emphasis on THINK) to start making excuses for this murderer before even all the victims have been buried in the ground. Could it not be the result of a man completely self-absorbed in his own fantasies who never noticed if people smiled at him or not? Could it be that a perky smile is not much protection in spiritual warfare with the devil? Could there actually be such evil (gasp) that only our prayers to Saint Michael and our Heavenly Father will protect us? These humanists that think that they can achieve anything with a smile and a gratuitous handout will take care of anything. Four men gave their lives defending the women that were with them by throwing themselves over their bodies and taking the bullets themselves! That is what should be remembered. This incredibly courageous act is what should be shouted from the rooftops that there are still such men in the world! But no, these sobsisters and handwringers worry about whether anyone smiled to this poor disaffected man. What absolute pigslop!
Dana, Excellent post! Keep up the good work! : ) *Reality and Common Sense* are now the endangered qualities in the species known as man.
Dana, the men who gave their lives saving others were the ones I remember in all this too. No greater love. How different from the man who killed.
Nevertheless, we must pray for the killer, too.
Father Faber (1814-1863) did a Spiritual Conference on kindness which will go hand in hand with this wonderful article. I have a feeling that if they do a cat-scan on Mr. Holmes, they might find a tumor in his head, but, never-the-less he and his family and all of the victims and their families need our prayers, not our judgment and somehow God will make something good to come out of this horrible event. +JMJ+
They might find secret govt implants in his brain as well … sorry, I just can’t resist, since I get flooded with conspiracy theories all day long. Probably some conspiracy behind it. Or maybe it’s the voices again. Could the mother ship actually in reality be invisible? Hopefully some ace reporter ferrets the answers out of the totally bewildered Holmes. Hey, one day just after high school, I walked into the kitchen and the LA Times headline told about the Texas Tower Massacre. Ever since then I knew something was amiss.
Selective quotations are always problematic. Surely Dorothy Day would not have considered Holmes’ paranoia on the same level as wearing underwear on one’s head or not bathing. Surely she would have perceived that making the world better meant keeping him off the streets, even if it required force. Indulgence toward evil (or illness) is no kindness.
“Who knows how James Holmes’s life would have turned out if some individual had simply smiled at him during the days he was amassing weapons and ammunition–if someone had bestowed some act of kindness on him?” A dreadfully naive statement! Holmes (and many others who have committed the same kind of massacres going all the way back to Howard Unruh in Camden, New Jersey, 1949) was obviously psychotic and far out of touch with reality, judging from his actions and his appearance in court. Yes, he was very much in need of an act of kindness–and that act would have been to confine him in a psychiatric care center before his illness caused public mayhem. “We don’t have the skill to identify and restrain mentally ill people before they pick up a weapon and start killing people.” Then we had better acquire that skill, because otherwise there is no defense whatsoever to the acting-out of their psychoses. We USED to have the “skill” to identify and confine those legally insane–that is, those who are so crazy they cannot function or be morally responsible for their actions. (I am NOT speaking of the multitudes of people who suffer from various emotional burdens which may often require medication or counseling.) I wouldn’t be surprised if Holmes is declared unfit to stand trial and spends the rest of his life in confinement–as was Unruh’s fate–as may be the fate of Jared Lee Loughner, who shot and killed six people and wounded 14 others including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords–and who was then declared unfit for trial. Most other crazed mass killers, such as Charles Whitman, Austin, Texas 1966 (the tower sniper) and Cho Seung-Hui, 2007 (Virginia Tech shooter) die during the incident.
Larry, Loughner has been getting medicated in a Springfield, Missouri facility trying to get him fit to stand trial. I don’t think it is going very well. Most of the examples you site of mass murderers were people who randomly shot at others. In Loughner’s case, Giffords had dissed him at a town hall style meeting in 2007 so he had been targeting her for over 3 years.
All four of the individuals I mentioned murdered people they knew along with complete strangers who had never had anything to do with the shooters until the moment of their deaths. At any rate, Unruh, Loughner and Cho were so psychotic that they were completely adrift in a schizophrenic fantasy world–totally out of contact with reality. Although Charles Whitman was propelled by severe mental illness, he alone was lucid enough to understand that something was seriously wrong with him, and he showed that insight in a suicide letter. An autopsy revealed that Whitman had a brain tumor which could have affected his behavior.
Loughner was pretty well known in his community college as pretty off the wall. A girl in his class read a poem I believe was about an abortion she had and Loughner laughed and made some crazy comments about aborted babies after the poem was read. Loughner was described as “liberal” and “very left wing” by one of his former girlfriends and had read the revolutionary writings of Mao, Marx, Stalin and Hitler. He complained that he wasn’t learning anything in school. He obviously filled his mind with a bunch of garbage. It was interesting how the left wing media and politicians immediately tried to make people like Sarah Palin responsible for the shootings but whenever a snippet surfaced somewhere in media other than the left about Loughner’s socialist and left wing ideology it was censored by the left wing news organizations.
**so psychotic that they were completely adrift in a schizophrenic fantasy world–totally out of contact with reality**: Elected officials in the USA?
I’m getting medicated so’s I can take a couple of dogs for some exercise and training … hic :))
Dana, thank you for your cogent analysis. You can’t change evil with a kind smile or psychotherapy.
Pacman vs the Smiley Face
Whoa!
Too many psychologists and sociologists on the armchair.
Fossey isn’t claiming that a smile will cure psychosis or end abortion or cure us of our reliance on nuclear weapons. But oftentimes it’s the best we can manage…when accompanied by a prayer. Or so Blessed Teresa of Calcutta taught.
How about Hitler, would be have turned out different if someone gave him a warm smile. I’m sure he received many warm smiles, he came from a very wealthy family. Such false compassion is as disturbing as the mass murder of innocent people!
hitler came from a “very wealthy family?” really?
“In October 1907, the provincial, middle-class boy left home for Vienna, where he was to remain until 1913 leading a bohemian, vagabond existence. Embittered at his rejection by the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, he was to spend “five years of misery and woe” in Vienna as he later recalled, adopting a view of life which changed very little in the ensuing years, shaped as it was by a pathological hatred of Jews and Marxists, liberalism and the cosmopolitan Habsburg monarchy.
“Existing from hand to mouth on occasional odd jobs and the hawking of sketches in low taverns, the young Hitler compensated for the frustrations of a lonely bachelor’s life in miserable male hostels by political harangues in cheap cafes to anyone who would listen and indulging in grandiose dreams of a Greater Germany.”
sounds really posh…
“As individuals, we cannot do much to stop tragedies . . . ” WRONG! and wrong-headed and dangerous. If you really believe this, then you need to bone up on Catholic teachings, on Scripture, and on Catholic tradition. The whole point of Christ’s message is that we can and must act as individuals! One properly prepared, trained, and properly equipped person inside that theater at the moment that evil decided to act through this man, could have stopped the evil before such great damage was done. What eventually stopped him? People with guns showed up. What always stops such evil? People with guns show up. Christ in the temple taught us to stop evil – Christ fashioned a whip and upended the tables. We are not called to be pacifists in the face of great evil. A gun is a tool. A whip is a tool. A knife is a tool. Tools do not perpetrate evil actions. Be prepared.
Switzerland is considered to be one of the safest countries in the world with very little crime. All Swiss men from what I have read are required to own and know how to use a weapon, some type of gun. The women are encourged to do so too, so Nan Wager you point is well taken. It is the Swiss Guards who protect the Holy Father, too. As the Holy Bible says they is a time for everything under the sun, a time for peace and a time for war.
Sorry for the typos, but I think you all got the message.
When things like this happen, I often ask “What are you trying to teach me, Lord?” The response after Columbine, 9/11 and now Aurora, has been: Charity, Forgiveness and PRAY! So, I pray for the victims, their families, the community and the shooter. I pray that he takes responsibility and asks for forgiveness. I pray that he realizes that God’s Mercy is bigger than his biggest sin. I pray that the families find peace and comfort and for the souls of those killed. The evil that happened at movie theater can only be attributed to the father of lies. He is busy prowling around the world seeking the ruin of souls.
My sentiments exactly. Thank you, Delilah.
There is a book by Dr.Carol Byrne that gives a critical analysis of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement ties to Communism.
After reading Dorothy Day’s autobiography, her conversion to Catholicism, her love for the poor, I wonder if I could examine Carol Byrne’s life and find such radical concern for mankind. Communist? Socialist? Idealist? or…saint?
Richard Fossey obviously claims that guns and ammunition are responsible for this tragic incident. Blaming inanimate objects for evil is contrary to Catholic teaching.
Good point John, it is not the weapon that is the problem here, it is man who chooses to use them for murder that is the real issue. A gun was used in Florida by an elderly man, who defended innocent customers as some robbers threaten their safety and tried stealing from the store and them, when the elderly man took his gun out to chase the robbers out, a good deed was done and this senior could have saved many innocent people. The gun should be recognized for it’s good! How about in the old days, guns were used to go hunting and bring food to man’s families! A knife can be used for good too, carving beautiful creations from wood, etc etc.
My Aunt Rita introduced me and my family to Dorothy Day. We drove upstate New York to meet her on one of her Catholic Worker farms. We all got together in a circle, held hands, and prayed together. That I remember. I was probably pre-teen at the time. I read my Aunt’s copy of Dorothy’s autobiography, “The Long Loneliness.” What a human being! Perhaps she will be the saint of loneliness, in which case, I reach out to her in this modern world of isolation. Yes, I believe there are a number of lonely people in this world like James Holmes and unfortunately, he chose a rather bizarre and horrifying way to seek some attention. One expression that my late Aunt used to say to us was, “O, Lord, Let us never forget to be kind.” Kindness and mercy are much needed in our world today. God bless the late Dorothy Day.
“Doing the things that come to hand”
oh, great headline, since what ‘camme to hand’ were machine guns that blasted people watching a movie.
pretty unfortunate header for this article!
Tom Merton & Catherine Dougherty lived with her a time…