Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World

by Dorothy Day, Francis J. Sicius (Contributor)

Dorothy Day provides the most complete intimate portrait of the man she called an Apostle to the world. Maurin emerges as a true saint and prophet who offers an instructive and healing challenge for our time.

Genres: Biography, Catholic, Religion, Spirituality, Theology, Social Justice, Biography Memoir

206 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

Dorothy 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.

Reviews

[James Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book, b/c I had wanted to know more about Peter Maurin, and b/c it was written by Dorothy Day. Maurin was the person who inspired Day to start the Catholic Worker Movement--both the newspaper and the hospitality houses. He was a thinker who was also determined to put ideas into practice. But he was not an intellectual or abstract thinker. In fact he was a peasant, but he thought about things and felt that ideas were important, as the basis for actions. He wrote up his ideas in what Day called "easy essays"--almost poems that put ideas in simple ways that were engaging to a newspaper reader. Day wrote a memoir of Maurin in 1947, not long before he died. But it was somewhat scattered, and an editor/co-author wrote almost half the book as a way to give background, connections, and fill out stories.

Some passages from the book that caught my attention were:
(p. xx): Peter's great mission was to bring back the communal aspects of Christianity, to rescue the communal from Communism.
(p. 119, discussing the realities of working with the poor): Over and over the windows on the first floor of the house were broken by neighbors until finally the boys boarded them up and gave up trying to replace them.
(p. 161): As Day reflects on the life of Maurin, she reveals that it was his meekness that attracted her--a virtue not normally celebrated by those who, in history's judgment, have significance or importance. However, Maurin's "meekness" was for neither the faint-hearted nor the cowardly. It was the meekness of Christ, who permitted himself to be betrayed by friends, spat upon by soldiers, and yet created a revolution in the world that shaped a new moral paradigm. Had Christ himself come to Dorothy Day, the change in her life would have been no more radical. For in Peter she saw Christ.
(p. 179): We are gentle personalists. We will move people by our example; we will become what we want the other fellow to be.

Some of Peter's easy essays (or excerpts):
(p. 28): When the organizers try to organize the unorganized
they do not organize themselves.
If everybody organized himself,
everybody would be organized.
(p. 79): The world would be better off
if people tried
to become better.
And people would become better
if they stopped trying
to be better off....
(p. 87): ...The scholars must become workers
so the workers may become scholars.
(p. 97): A Leader
is a fellow
who refuses to be crazy
the way everybody else is crazy
and tries to be crazy
in his own crazy way.
(p. 117): The Sermon on the Mount
will be called practical
when Christians make up their mind
to practice it.
(p. 137): College professors
are specialists
who know more and more
about less and less
and if they keep on specializing
they will end
by knowing everything
about nothing.
(p. 144): Christ drove the money changers
out of the Temple.
But today nobody dares
to drive the money lenders
out of the Temple.
And nobody dares
to drive the money lenders
out of the Temple
because the money lenders
have taken a mortgage
on the Temple....

Day writes about how much she loved Dostoevsky's writing, and about how Dostoevsky met the challenge to write about a truly good person by writing "The Idiot". She saw Peter in this same way. Peter seems to be another example of what is so common--that those we idolize would not be those we would want to spend time with--Jesus, Socrates, Wittgenstein, Gandhi.... Peter was given to talking on and on about his ideas, uncomprehending that someone might get bored or would be uninterested in his thoughts. I have known people like this and was anxious to avoid them.
I am glad to have read about Peter, and have him held up as an inspiration for things I very much care about. And I liked his attempts to popularize his ideas as well as get them put into practice. But I did not feel drawn to the man himself.

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francis J. Sicius presents Dorothy Day's biography of Peter Maurin. Peter Maurin was the co-founder of The Catholic Worker movement and the biggest proponent of back-to-the-land movements within The Catholic Worker movement. Sicius edits and comments upon Day's biography throughout this work. The result is a remarkably fluid and enjoyable discussion of Day, Maurin, and Maurin and Day's relationship. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in The Catholic Worker movement, back-to-the-land movements, Dorothy Day or Peter Maurin.

[Brett Linsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic book, not because of the quality of writing, but because the subject is endlessly fascinating. Any simple writer who can accurately reflect some of Peter Maurin's wisdom will have written a great book!

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story of admiration and love regarding a simple, humble, (in other words) rare follower of Jesus.