It’s a Thursday like any other at St. Joseph House on East First Street in New York City. St. Joe’s and its sister site two blocks north, Maryhouse, are two of the oldest Catholic Worker houses of hospitality in the country. Like the 175 other Catholic Worker communities throughout the U.S., members of St. Joseph House live in voluntary poverty, in solidarity with their unhoused neighbors.

Every morning, Monday through Friday, they serve a hot meal to nearly 200 people on their quiet East Village block. A new COVID-friendly outdoor soup line has replaced the indoor meal they once served in the cozy first floor common space. The Workers meet the guests with smiles behind their masks.

But above the masks, their eyes are tired. Today, a long-time member of St. Joseph’s house, Carmen Trotta, 58, faces sentencing in federal court for conspiracy, destruction of government property, and trespass.

Fifteen minutes before the hearing is set to begin, James Murphy, 48, who moved to East First Street in January, begins to configure a mismatched array of technology so the Workers can broadcast Trotta’s sentencing. The trial will stream virtually from the court of the Southern District of Georgia. Murphy and Philip Basile, 39, try three different speakers before the sound is deemed sufficient. Even then, it’s choppy, punctuated by an undercurrent of static, and demands every ounce of concentration to hear. The voice of the prosecutor, Karl Knoche, rises above the static. Knoche describes Carmen Trotta as a criminal conspirator, noting his “pattern of behavior of trespass and disregard for the law.”

Trotta’s response exemplifies the Catholic Worker’s credo of civil disobedience: “Every one of my actions has been a reaction to an American war crime.”

Trotta is a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, a group of anti-nuclear peace activists who broke into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Southeast Georgia on April 4, 2018, to protest the Trident nuclear weapons that are kept on the base. Each Trident missile head is 30 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The seven Plowshares members spray-painted “Love One Another” and “Abolish Nukes Now” on the base’s grounds and poured blood on a medallion marking the base as a site holding Trident weapons.

Edward “Bud” Courtney—at 70, the oldest volunteer at St. Joseph House—speaks before the court to testify to the character of the man who introduced him to the house they have shared for the past 13 years.

When asked his profession, Courtney responds simply: “I wash dishes.”

The Workers gathered around the stereo chuckle in response. The warm beige walls of St. Joseph House’s kitchen usually hum with good-hearted ribbing, earnest discussion, and loud knocks on the door. But today, even the hum of the refrigerator is an intrusion in the breathless focus of listening to the static transmission. Over the next three hours, technical glitches in the stream became cues for smoke breaks on the back patio among the bicycles, milk crates of fruit, and the gray November drizzle.

Murphy and Basile closed the doors and windows to muffle the East Village’s ricocheting street noise. But throughout the sentencing, a steady stream of people in need knock on the door. Someone always answers. Calls for sandwiches or soup, socks or blankets, or the prized cup of coffee are the daily symphony of Worker life.

Although only one member of their community was facing a prison sentence, the rest of the Workers – and their lives of solidarity and protest – were on trial with Trotta. Annie Moran, 22, St. Joseph House’s youngest member, was surprised that in a court of law so much of the proceeding was focused on the application of rules and so little was focused on justice itself.

What is true justice? is the question the Catholic Worker poses to whomever they encounter, in courts of law and on street corners alike. And, as the results of the 2020 election reveal, the question of what a truly just society looks like is a hotly debated question among Catholics themselves.

The Catholic Vote
For most Catholics, as for most Americans, the question of political action begins with the question: for whom do you vote?

The “Catholic vote” is a phrase ragged from overuse in recent news cycles. In the past two months, Attorney General William Barr, a Catholic, received an award from Catholic leaders for his “advancing the teachings of the Catholic Church” through “exemplary, selfless and steadfast” public service even as he reinitiated federal executions, in opposition to Catholic teaching. One week before Election Day, Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice. In each instance, pundits speculated on how Catholics would respond at the polls. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s and President-elect Joe Biden’s campaigns persistently wooed Catholic voters.

The “Catholic vote” comprises 22% of the electorate and is the largest single-denomination voting bloc in the country. It has consistently backed the presidential winner from 1972 until 2020, according to the Associated Press.

The 2020 election was an exception, with 50% of Catholics backing Trump and 49% voting for Biden, according to AP Votecast. The hairline margins indicate a sharp fault line in the American Catholic Church.

Those disparities grow stronger along racial and ethnic lines. 57% of white Catholics voted for Trump, while only 31% of Latino Catholics did. Trump lost his grip on the white Catholic vote by 7 percentage points — he captured it by 64% in 2016. But that’s even less than the number of Latino Catholics who voted for Biden this year — 67% of them.

After overwhelmingly supporting John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, the Catholic contingent has swung between Democrat and Republican candidates. But it usually backs the winning candidate. “This is unusual, as most other religious groups vote for the same party over and over,” said Mark M. Gray of Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate via email.

Of the Catholic vote, William Cavanaugh, professor of political theology at DePaul University said, “There isn’t such a thing anymore.”

Catholic voters have ceased to be a unified bloc. Cavanaugh attributes this split to the fact that neither major political party fully represents Catholic social teachings. He pointed out that the Democratic party supports women’s access to abortion, which is a grave sin according to Catholic Social Teaching. But on the other hand, he said, the Republican party’s policies violate the Biblical mandate to care for the poor. “Republicans aren’t in favor of cutting military budgets,” Cavanaugh said in a phone call, “just cutting budgets that feed poor people.”

In the wake of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the debate over legalized abortion has defined many Catholics’ voting practices. But what muddies the waters, Cavanaugh said, “is the unclear relationship between voting and moral evil.” Namely, does voting for a pro-abortion politician contribute to the occurrence of abortions? Voting guides at parishes painstakingly parse the distinctions between material and formal cooperation with evil — that is, accidental and unintentional participation in an evil act versus the direct, intentional willing of an act. These moral discussions proceed from the premise that politicians are a more proximate cause of abortions than other systemic factors such as poverty, racism, or sexism.

“It would help,” Cavanaugh continued, “if Catholics could think of ourselves as homeless politically, and think more broadly than party politics, than electoral politics.”

For Catholics caught in partisan divisions, Cavanaugh held up Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker, as a guide: “She has a challenge for both of the parties.”

A History of Challenge
Dorothy Day challenged the electoral system itself. Unlike Catholics who visited the polls last month, Day refused to vote.

Born November 8, 1897, Dorothy Day came into adulthood in New York’s Greenwich Village after dropping out of the University of Illinois in 1916. In New York City, Day kept company with a literary set, including playwright Eugene O’Neill. 

In Greenwich Village, Day became preoccupied with the issues that would comprise the mission of the Catholic Worker movement — activist journalism, advocating for the poor, and non-violent civil disobedience. In 1932, five years after becoming Catholic, Day met theologian and activist Peter Maurin. Together, they published the first edition of the Catholic Worker newspaper on May 1, 1933.

Despite being jailed in 1917 for demonstrating for the 19th Amendment, Day never exercised her right to vote. She saw no virtue in voting for the lesser of two evils. Rather, her democratic action took the form of civil disobedience.

Day was repeatedly arrested protesting New York City’s nuclear air raid drills after the Second World War. At first, the protests seemed to be nothing more than the symbolic resistance of a handful of Christian anarchists to what Day called “psychological warfare.” But, slowly, symbolic resistance led to tangible change. Day, along with her colleague Ammon Hennacy and other fellow war resisters, demonstrated consistently. Their numbers grew until they filled City Square Park with 2,000 protestors in April 1961. After that, the city abandoned mandatory drills.

Day remained a pivotal Catholic figure long after her death in 1980. In his address to U.S. Congress in 2015, Pope Francis elevated Day’s passionate activism as a model of Catholic civic engagement inspired by the Gospel. The Catholic Worker movement continues Day’s work through houses of hospitality for the disadvantaged and the sustained protest of injustice. The Catholic Worker’s aims and means, published each year in the May edition of their eponymous newspaper, quote Day’s co-founder Peter Maurin, whose goal was to build a society “where it is easier for people to be good.”

The Catholic Worker challenges political bodies to embrace nonviolence and solidarity with the poor. Actions of civil disobedience are some of the more spectacular routines of Workers’ day-to-day lives. Many of the Workers have a story of their first arrest, a sit-in, or protesting outside the White House. Unlike Trotta, however, few have been charged in federal court.

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In his sentencing statement, Trotta said, “All of my arrests were deliberate, non-violent responses to the prompting of my conscience, which I hold to be a divine gift.” Whereas traditional Catholic election guides urge the faithful to vote with their consciences, Catholic Workers object with their consciences. Their conscientious objection challenges not just a policymaker or a law — it questions the entire system.

After an interminable three hours on November 12, 2020, Judge Lisa Wood handed down a decision, sentencing Trotta to 14 months in federal prison.

The members of St. Joseph House peeled away from the stereo, unwinding in both mourning and relief. Jim Reagan, 69, who has lived with Trotta for the last 18 years, stepped out onto the patio for a quiet moment with his cigarette. When he came back inside, Annie Moran put a hand on his shoulder in comfort.

Being Challenged
As a decentralized movement, the Catholic Worker invites interpretations of its goals that are as diverse as the people who live within its walls. Unintentional homogeneity, however, can also limit their vision. Of the seven live-in volunteers at St. Joseph House, the majority are male and predominantly white. The community they serve is largely Black.

Although individual Workers and some communities have dedicated themselves to racial justice, Annie Moran pointed out that the Worker has been a predominantly white movement since its inception. The movement’s aims and means focus more on the arms race than systemic racism.

Moran, whose shaved head gives her an uncanny resemblance to Joan of Arc, spent a summer at Maryhouse three years ago and returned to live at St. Joseph’s after graduating from college this spring. She accepts the age gap between her and the majority of her community members with equanimity. “Here,” Moran says with a laugh, “the kids are like anyone under fifty.”

Moran and James Murphy — a fellow “kid” by Moran’s terms — expressed the tension that exists in the Worker between hospitality and resistance. “It’s a good tension,” Murphy said. But the work of protest and political resistance, he pointed out, always begins with hospitality. As Bud Courtney put it, resistance is fueled by care for each other — by washing dishes, by welcoming neighbors, by offering food and clothing to the community.

Their hospitality and resistance are both fueled by prayer. Morning soup lines begin with benedictions. Important memorials—like Day’s 123^rd birthday on November 8—are marked with Mass. Each Sunday, St. Joseph House hosts compline—the nightly ritual from the ancient prayer cycle of monastic communities. “People wouldn’t expect such a traditional thing to happen here. We’re always held up as protestors and going to jail,” said James Murphy. But there is plenty of piety at the Catholic Worker—just for God, not the state. “This sounds like I’m so freaking pious,” said Jim Reagan, shaking his head, “but if there is a God, then it’s gotta be the most important thing in your life. How anything else could possibly be more important doesn’t make sense to me.”

Each week since the spring of 2017, the Catholic Workers have been holding a vigil in Tompkins Square Park to protest the U.S.-backed Saudi attacks on Yemen. They have intentionally chosen to call it a vigil, to center the place of prayer in their protest. One Saturday, a woman walking by shook her head at the placards they held. “Stop killing Yemenis?” she scoffed, “How about stop killing Black people?”

Her question articulated the tension Murphy felt between protesting injustice on a macro level and grassroots action—hospitality—on a local level. “You walk to that Yemen vigil and there are tons of homeless people in Tompkins Square Park,” said Murphy.

Reagan acknowledged the reality of this tension, but pointed out the seamless connection he saw between international injustice and domestic oppression. “If there’s so much government money being spent on war, there’s no money for housing,” he said.

Symbolic actions, like protesting the largest humanitarian crisis in the world according to UNICEF, or graffitiing a nuclear base, might seem useless to those in immediate need. But Day’s persistent resistance to nuclear air raid drills eventually led to their abolishment.

At the Yemen vigil the Saturday after his sentencing, Carmen Trotta held two large banners. One called “for a nuclear-weapon-free world,” the other declared, “Stop US Saudi war crimes in Yemen.” A pedestrian paused to consider the signs. He asked Trotta what would change under Biden. “Not much,” Trotta responded. “The underlying logic of American imperialism won’t change.” The man paused to consider the answer and then thanked Trotta before continuing past.

“We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world,” wrote Day in the June 1946 edition of the Catholic Worker. Resistance may not reap tangible fruit right away. But in the face of rampant injustice —housing shortages, compulsory drafts, and acts of war — Day found the Gospel provided a roadmap for resistance. “There is nothing we can do but love.”

Power of Community
With the election of John F. Kennedy, American Catholics began assimilating more easily into the halls of political power, according to Professor William Cavanaugh. But, in order to gain acceptance, Kennedy had to assure the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment that his Catholicism would not influence his governance. “To enter the mainstream, Catholics had to give up what makes the Gospel distinctive,” Cavanaugh concluded.

“Catholics have grown to care more about power than faithfulness to the Gospel,” said Cavanaugh. Trump’s campaign rhetoric repeatedly appealed to Catholic’s desire for cultural power. “Our nation is strong because of Catholics,” the president insisted.

But Dorothy Day called—and continues to call—her fellow Catholics to resist the empty strength of Americans’ political leaders and instead to create community. A Catholic wondering what political action based on the Gospel looks like—that eschews systems of power—might pay a visit to St. Joseph House.

In soup-splattered shirts reading “Disarm” or “Capitalism Breeds Poverty,” fueled by the continual divestment of their own power and resisting their own privilege, the volunteers are united by a commitment to dedicate their money — what little they have of it — to the causes listed in their newspapers and signs, and to use their lives to serve their neighbors.

“Where else can you be around reality like this?” asked James Murphy, his voice tinged with exhaustion and awe. “This place is alive.”

 

Renée Darline Roden is a graduate student in journalism and religion at Columbia University.

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Published with support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.