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From Union Square to Rome
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, has been called “the church’s least likely yet most plausible saint.” From Union Square to Rome, first published in 1938, offers the first account of her dramatic conversion to Roman Catholicism. In this concise and passionate work, Day gives an account of how she came to embrace Christ and the Catholic Church. She reveals how God was present in all the steps of her in intimations of the sacred, in her experiences in the struggle for social justice, in times of loneliness and confusion, in her experience of love, her joy in the birth of her daughter, and even in the painful price she ultimately paid for her faith.
In his address to Congress in 2015, Pope Francis held up Day, whose cause for canonization is in process, among “four great Americans” who speak to the needs of our day. And now in a new Foreword to this edition, he holds up her story for all people, and especially for “Her whole life was devoted to social justice and human rights, particularly for the poor, the exploited workers, and the socially marginalized. It exemplified what St. James said in his ‘Show me your faith without works and I by my works will show you my faith.’”
In his address to Congress in 2015, Pope Francis held up Day, whose cause for canonization is in process, among “four great Americans” who speak to the needs of our day. And now in a new Foreword to this edition, he holds up her story for all people, and especially for “Her whole life was devoted to social justice and human rights, particularly for the poor, the exploited workers, and the socially marginalized. It exemplified what St. James said in his ‘Show me your faith without works and I by my works will show you my faith.’”
194 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1938
10 people are currently reading
302 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Day
71 books253 followersDorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without in any way abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known political radical in the American Catholic Church. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf.
A revered figure within the U.S. Catholic community, Day's cause for canonization was recently open by the Catholic Church.
A revered figure within the U.S. Catholic community, Day's cause for canonization was recently open by the Catholic Church.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 4, 2016
I became interested in Dorothy Day last year after reading about her life in David Brooks’s The Road to Character. She is the founder of the Catholic Worker, a charitable activist group that melds socialist concern for the common laborer with Catholic ideals. This was the precise journey she took in her life, from left-wing politics to devout Catholicism, or, as the title says, From Union Square to Rome. But rather than doing a complete 180 turn and repudiating her past, Dorothy Day sought to preserve the positive values she retained from her leftist years and find a way to incorporate them into the practice of her religion, to which she remained devout until the end of her life.
I am not a Catholic, but I was involved in leftist politics in my late teens and early twenties before turning to Orthodox Judaism. Heck, I even spent a few years with a foot in each camp, looking for a way to reconcile ideologies and lifestyles that seemed completely incompatible to everyone else, but came from one consistent impulse in me. The book confirmed for me that Dorothy Day was exactly the same, except she left the lasting legacy of the Catholic Worker. I don’t know what the future holds in store for me.
The introduction to this volume states that Day’s later work, The Long Loneliness, is a much more complete autobiography. This book reads much more like a coming of age memoir, except it is written as a letter to her brother, a Communist and atheist. The final chapter, “Your Three Objections,” most directly addresses him, whereas most of the rest is about her early life, which presumably, her brother already knew. That final chapter is the most polemical section in the book and was therefore the least interesting to me. After all, it’s a bit questionable for an Orthodox Jew to be reading about Catholicism! So I skimmed some parts and read for the “universal” religious experience.
I absolutely loved some of the insights she brought out, though. First, she observed that to a young idealist raised without religion, nothing is more natural than to be attracted to leftist ideologies. That was certainly true in her times, and though leftism was much more out of vogue in mine, (I came of age in the Reagan era), I still completely agree. Quoting someone else, she said that the measure of our love of G-d is how much we love others. That's consistent with Judaism as were her views on free will. Free will is our most precious of gifts, she says, and it is no surprise that so many people are willing to fight and die to preserve it, even though humans throughout history have also used their free will to catastrophic ends. Brilliant stuff!
Even though it has nothing to do with the book, I do want to tell a personal story of how my life was impacted by the Catholic Worker and why I was already predisposed to Dorothy Day. When I was a senior in high school, a self-proclaimed communist, I was looking for some volunteer work to do, and happened upon a calendar of leftist events. That led me to the Catholic Worker shelter for indigent women in the East Village where I spent a few hours getting my arms soaked while washing industrial-sized pots. I took a break in a small, enclosed garden behind the building, and there I met a woman named Amelia. She didn’t live in the shelter; she actually lived with her parents nearby, even though she was probably in her thirties at least. She probably suffered from something that would be labeled a mental illness, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation with a searching and socially clueless eighteen-year-old. “You know what you would like?” she said. “The Carlebach shul. 305 West 79th Street.” She wrote it down, and gave me the date to show up. That date was the holiday of Shavuos.
That was the rough beginning of my teshuva (return to Orthodoxy). I left NYC and began college in Binghamton shortly after, so I was away from both the Catholic Worker and the Carlebach shul. But I continued to make left-wing friends, got into quite a bit of trouble, and dropped out two years later. Only when I felt I had lost everything – my friends, my education, everything that mattered to me – did I go back to Carlebach to build a Jewish life in earnest. But that first link came from a fellow Jewess sitting with me in the garden of the Catholic Worker women’s shelter. Hashem works in unpredictable ways.
I like to think that Dorothy Day would be pleased with that story. Though I didn’t find my way to her religion, I found my way to my own. And it all began with my concern for the homeless and her vision in making service possible. I know it's not the only service organization in the world, but it was a start for me. May Hashem bring us all back to truth and unity.
I am not a Catholic, but I was involved in leftist politics in my late teens and early twenties before turning to Orthodox Judaism. Heck, I even spent a few years with a foot in each camp, looking for a way to reconcile ideologies and lifestyles that seemed completely incompatible to everyone else, but came from one consistent impulse in me. The book confirmed for me that Dorothy Day was exactly the same, except she left the lasting legacy of the Catholic Worker. I don’t know what the future holds in store for me.
The introduction to this volume states that Day’s later work, The Long Loneliness, is a much more complete autobiography. This book reads much more like a coming of age memoir, except it is written as a letter to her brother, a Communist and atheist. The final chapter, “Your Three Objections,” most directly addresses him, whereas most of the rest is about her early life, which presumably, her brother already knew. That final chapter is the most polemical section in the book and was therefore the least interesting to me. After all, it’s a bit questionable for an Orthodox Jew to be reading about Catholicism! So I skimmed some parts and read for the “universal” religious experience.
I absolutely loved some of the insights she brought out, though. First, she observed that to a young idealist raised without religion, nothing is more natural than to be attracted to leftist ideologies. That was certainly true in her times, and though leftism was much more out of vogue in mine, (I came of age in the Reagan era), I still completely agree. Quoting someone else, she said that the measure of our love of G-d is how much we love others. That's consistent with Judaism as were her views on free will. Free will is our most precious of gifts, she says, and it is no surprise that so many people are willing to fight and die to preserve it, even though humans throughout history have also used their free will to catastrophic ends. Brilliant stuff!
Even though it has nothing to do with the book, I do want to tell a personal story of how my life was impacted by the Catholic Worker and why I was already predisposed to Dorothy Day. When I was a senior in high school, a self-proclaimed communist, I was looking for some volunteer work to do, and happened upon a calendar of leftist events. That led me to the Catholic Worker shelter for indigent women in the East Village where I spent a few hours getting my arms soaked while washing industrial-sized pots. I took a break in a small, enclosed garden behind the building, and there I met a woman named Amelia. She didn’t live in the shelter; she actually lived with her parents nearby, even though she was probably in her thirties at least. She probably suffered from something that would be labeled a mental illness, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation with a searching and socially clueless eighteen-year-old. “You know what you would like?” she said. “The Carlebach shul. 305 West 79th Street.” She wrote it down, and gave me the date to show up. That date was the holiday of Shavuos.
That was the rough beginning of my teshuva (return to Orthodoxy). I left NYC and began college in Binghamton shortly after, so I was away from both the Catholic Worker and the Carlebach shul. But I continued to make left-wing friends, got into quite a bit of trouble, and dropped out two years later. Only when I felt I had lost everything – my friends, my education, everything that mattered to me – did I go back to Carlebach to build a Jewish life in earnest. But that first link came from a fellow Jewess sitting with me in the garden of the Catholic Worker women’s shelter. Hashem works in unpredictable ways.
I like to think that Dorothy Day would be pleased with that story. Though I didn’t find my way to her religion, I found my way to my own. And it all began with my concern for the homeless and her vision in making service possible. I know it's not the only service organization in the world, but it was a start for me. May Hashem bring us all back to truth and unity.
December 11, 2016
There wasn't a whole lot here that was new, and I wouldn't really recommend this book to those who are just beginning to read Day (that said, I gobbled it up in less than two days). However, the book does have a purpose: she writes the book as a response to her comrades on the left who are dubious about why someone who cared deeply for the poor and oppressed would choose to ally herself with the Catholic Church. In typical Day fashion, she answers this through both narrative (her story giving her leftist bona fides and how she turned to the Church in a time of joy rather than despair) and direct response (the final chapter confronts three standard objections from Communists toward Christianity). Day is more of a journalist/orator than a debater/philosopher proper, so one shouldn't expect an involved dialectic with secular leftist ideology, though she shows a decent familiarity with the socialist, communist, and anarchist critiques of organized religion of her day. I think that if someone from the political left was just beginning to study Day, he or she would be better off starting with 'Loaves and Fishes' (which gives the origin of the Catholic Worker movement) since this gives a broader view of the positive aims of what she was doing and the intellectual justifications behind the movement, but Union Square to Rome might be an appropriate place to turn shortly thereafter since one is likely to be curious about her background and reasons for making the kind of life commitment that she ultimately did.
March 19, 2009
This was a very good, slim volume on her life. It does not hold all the details like her autobiography, rather it is a overview-telling of the journey she took. Very good.
July 22, 2018
Great book. Totally recommended, you won’t regret to read it.
October 24, 2018
I read this book to understand the background to Duty of Delight, Day‘s journals from 1934 to 1980. From Union Square explains a good deal, especially the way in which the left view of labour and human solidarity carried her to the Christian vision of the unity of humankind or the church as the body of Christ.
The world she describes is very fascinating from a 21st-century perspective—one where someone with two years of college could start a successful career as a journalist and survive a peripatetic existence in newspaper work and in the political and artistic bohemia of the 1910s and 1920s.
However, I found the story of her attraction to Catholicism and her acceptance of the doctrines somewhat disappointing. She does seem to have been a religious seeker from a young age. But my question going into it was more: Why the Catholic church as opposed to a Protestant one? How could she accept the prohibition of birth control? the undemocratic and totally male-dominated structure of the church? I think the answer must lie in an unspoken sense of the cultural differences and distinct sensibilities of Catholicism vs. Protestantism at that historical moment. Feeling for and associating with the poor and new immigrants, she says she sees the Catholic church as the „church of the poor“ and Catholics as „a nation apart, a people within a people, making little impression on the tremendous non-Catholic population of the country.“ The wealthy people, the political leaders, the bosses would have all been mostly Protestants, and Protestantism was much more associated with the liberal individualism of American culture, in contrast to the communal vision both of Catholics and of leftists. But she herself does not directly explain this. Then, finally, she seems drawn to the Catholic church (as many people are drawn to various groups or causes) by personal connections—friendliness, neighborliness—and by her attraction (in a Catholic fellow student nurse) to „the order of the life and the discipline.“ Maybe the Catholic church offered her a spiritual intensity she could not find elsewhere.
Despite wanting a deeper analysis of all this, I greatly appreciated the book and am happy to know something more about this dedicated social activist and Christian.
The world she describes is very fascinating from a 21st-century perspective—one where someone with two years of college could start a successful career as a journalist and survive a peripatetic existence in newspaper work and in the political and artistic bohemia of the 1910s and 1920s.
However, I found the story of her attraction to Catholicism and her acceptance of the doctrines somewhat disappointing. She does seem to have been a religious seeker from a young age. But my question going into it was more: Why the Catholic church as opposed to a Protestant one? How could she accept the prohibition of birth control? the undemocratic and totally male-dominated structure of the church? I think the answer must lie in an unspoken sense of the cultural differences and distinct sensibilities of Catholicism vs. Protestantism at that historical moment. Feeling for and associating with the poor and new immigrants, she says she sees the Catholic church as the „church of the poor“ and Catholics as „a nation apart, a people within a people, making little impression on the tremendous non-Catholic population of the country.“ The wealthy people, the political leaders, the bosses would have all been mostly Protestants, and Protestantism was much more associated with the liberal individualism of American culture, in contrast to the communal vision both of Catholics and of leftists. But she herself does not directly explain this. Then, finally, she seems drawn to the Catholic church (as many people are drawn to various groups or causes) by personal connections—friendliness, neighborliness—and by her attraction (in a Catholic fellow student nurse) to „the order of the life and the discipline.“ Maybe the Catholic church offered her a spiritual intensity she could not find elsewhere.
Despite wanting a deeper analysis of all this, I greatly appreciated the book and am happy to know something more about this dedicated social activist and Christian.
January 10, 2016
This book helped me transition into my post-undergrad, post-Catholic, post-journalist life as a teacher. I read this during an uhmayzing Seattle U 3-day silent retreat where I made many touchingly profound collages from magazine clippings, drank copious amounts of earl grey tea, and wrote pages and pages of thoughtful, introspective notes in green ink. (Much is both very different and exactly the same a decade later)
February 6, 2008
buku ini sudah diterjemahkan dan diterbitkan oleh penerbit DIOMA, Malang. Isinya sangat menarik dan menggetarkan. ternyata, untuk menjadi baik dan lebih baik itu sangat "dekat" dengan kehidupan harian kita.
wassalve,
ismulcokro
wassalve,
ismulcokro
February 8, 2016
The introduction describes this as a "first draft" of The Long Loneliness. While it certainly makes me want to reread that work (and more Dorothy Day in general), it also stands on its own among the *great* spiritual memoirs.
Want to read
January 11, 2008from Mary's recommend
February 6, 2011
An honest, thoughtful personal story.
March 31, 2018
The story of one of my favorite modern saints - Dorothy Day. This particular writing tells of her early years and transitioning relationship with the church
September 22, 2024
Dorothy Day is a figure I've heard about in my U.S. History classes, but I was never really interested in her. Now that I've had the opportunity to read this as the first work of her presented to me, I can say my perspective has changed drastically!
While this book is not meant to be her autobiography, like the more popular "the long loneliness," it is setting the table up for that by giving us a general background of her own experience with God throughout moments or periods of her life. The ending being an apology to her previous comrades from various leftist organizations and ideologies on why she became a Catholic in the end.
Day's activism was marvelous, and she continued to become a social justice figure through and through while in the end, finally adopting Catholic principles after her own journey with Socialist, Communist, Anarchist and Syndicalist culminated into being a stressed and lackluster lifestyle of division and a false sense of genuine freedom from her experience.
I really enjoyed this book because it not only gave me a throwback to general American history but how Dorothy, a 20th century figure, was living and effected by these public and private changes in affairs that led to her personal journey to understanding the divine. Even if she couldn't answer all the questions, she was so familiar with Christian scripture that her initiative and sufficient amount of knowledge were done in bona fide.
I've kept for myself some bookmarks about the end of charity, the conversion of spoil men, and other topics. It's surely worth it!
While this book is not meant to be her autobiography, like the more popular "the long loneliness," it is setting the table up for that by giving us a general background of her own experience with God throughout moments or periods of her life. The ending being an apology to her previous comrades from various leftist organizations and ideologies on why she became a Catholic in the end.
Day's activism was marvelous, and she continued to become a social justice figure through and through while in the end, finally adopting Catholic principles after her own journey with Socialist, Communist, Anarchist and Syndicalist culminated into being a stressed and lackluster lifestyle of division and a false sense of genuine freedom from her experience.
I really enjoyed this book because it not only gave me a throwback to general American history but how Dorothy, a 20th century figure, was living and effected by these public and private changes in affairs that led to her personal journey to understanding the divine. Even if she couldn't answer all the questions, she was so familiar with Christian scripture that her initiative and sufficient amount of knowledge were done in bona fide.
I've kept for myself some bookmarks about the end of charity, the conversion of spoil men, and other topics. It's surely worth it!
June 15, 2020
"Yes, love, great love–and who wishes to be mediocre in love?–brings with it a desire for suffering. The love of God can become so overwhelming that it wishes to do everything for the Beloved, to endure hunger, cold, sleeplessness in an ecstasy of zeal and enthusiasm. There is a love so great that the Beloved is all and oneself nothing, and this realization, leading to humility, a real joyful humility which desires to do the least, the meanest, the hardest as well as the most revolting tasks, to crush the pride of self, to abandon oneself fully, to abandon even the desire for heroism. To prostrate oneself upon the earth, that noble earth, that beloved soil which Christ made sacred and significant for us by His Blood with which He watered it."
-Servant of God Dorothy Day (From Union Square to Rome, pg 176)
-Servant of God Dorothy Day (From Union Square to Rome, pg 176)
March 22, 2025
Prior to reading about Dorothy Day, I found it quite difficult to explain to my many atheist/agnostic leftist friends what it was about Catholicism that drew me to it. Luckily for me and for others, Dorothy Day exists and can articulate it all much better than I ever could. Like Day, I too have many sympathies with communists, socialists, and anarchists, often finding greater solidarity with them than among my Catholic peers. But the spirituality that lies at the heart of Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker Movement is something far greater than any manmade ideology: it's the true living out of the Gospel in such a radical way that the West has not seen.
I love you, Dorothy and I pray that I can live up to your example.
I love you, Dorothy and I pray that I can live up to your example.
April 13, 2020
Fascinating memoir of her early years as a student, journalist, Socialist, bohemian, etc. and her conversion to Roman Catholicism. I heard her granddaughter recommend this book as having a freshness to it, and she was right. Day was always an excellent writer. but this has a vivacity to it that is delightful. This was supposedly written in answer to her (Communist) brother's objections to religion. It moves along beautifully until the last section, when she is writing theology. The theology is solid, but it's not as interesting as her personal experiences.
July 20, 2020
Um livro encantador e, ao mesmo tempo, duro. Retrata a vida dos trabalhadores norte americanos no início do século XX, os movimentos radicais (anarquistas, comunistas) e a trajetória de Dorothy.
A autora abre o coração e expõe seu sentimento de indignação com a exploração dos trabalhadores, sua busca pelo transcendente e o longo caminho pelo qual chegou a se tornar católica.
Escreve a seu irmão menor, comunista, antipático pelas religiões, as razões da sua fé.
Um livro ainda atual
A autora abre o coração e expõe seu sentimento de indignação com a exploração dos trabalhadores, sua busca pelo transcendente e o longo caminho pelo qual chegou a se tornar católica.
Escreve a seu irmão menor, comunista, antipático pelas religiões, as razões da sua fé.
Um livro ainda atual
November 20, 2023
Fue muy esperanzador leer la autobiografía de esta extraordinaria mujer, defensora de los marginados y de la justicia social. Actualmente se encuentra en proceso de beatificación.
January 1, 2024
never knew going from communism to christianity existed but i am so so enthralled by it
March 24, 2024
Long Loneliness was better. She took a while to get to the point in this one.
June 10, 2025
Yep yep yep. Kind of a tough spiritual read until about 3/4 in as a MAIN spiritual book but a good enough 1/4 for the stars.
May 12, 2024
No es que me haya enamorado la lectura del libro, pero en mi caso ha cumplido bien su función de ayudarme a conocer a Dorothy Day, la cofundadora junto a Peter Maurin en 1933 de Catholic Worker, movimiento católico preocupado por los marginados y desamparados de Nueva York
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December 27, 2023Read for class. 3.5 - actually really enjoyed, the writing reminded me a lot of Patti Smith. Wasn’t interested in the religious themes
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November 16, 2018Read for Action and Evil Study Group at St. George's Round Church.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews