Finding family at the Catholic Worker

National Catholic Reporter, March 7, 2003 by Margot Patterson

"I think it's hard to be a family in America," said Stiehler. In contrast to friends who commute to work and leave their kids for eight to 10 hours at a stretch, Stiehler said he and his wife have meaningful work, set their own hours, and have their two small children with them most the day.

"We have this great life. Everyone thinks we have this life of penance. We get to spend time with our kids. We have control over our work. We're around our kids all day," Stiehler said.

A work in progress

Over the past 70 years the Catholic Worker has changed in many ways. Tom Cornell remembers when Catholic Workers lived on donated food, much of it rotten. Living conditions were horrible, he said, and the food "execrable." Now the nation has become much more affluent, and with it the Catholic Worker movement. Contributions of food and money to the Catholic Worker have become more plentiful. "It's hard to be poor in America," said Cornell. "Here we are dedicated to voluntary poverty and look how wen we live."

Kennedy at Maryhouse observed that the Catholic Worker started at a time when there were bread lines. Today, Kennedy said, there are many more social services available to people, and the Bowery in New York City is empty because many alcoholics are in detox. "The Catholic Worker is meant to be responsive to the needs of the society, and depending upon the needs it will change," Kennedy said.

Increasingly, those needs extend to living out a different model of family life.

In Las Vegas, Occhiogrosso said that she thought that in previous generations people wanting to live a religious life entered a religious order. Today, she said, lay movements like the Catholic Worker have influenced many young Catholics to embrace a lay religious calling.

"We're living in different times," Occhiogrosso said. "People have had all the material things they need and have an ability to let it go because they've had it. There are a lot of cultural forces that are making it more attractive for couples to search out an alternative way. The beauty of the Catholic Worker is that it is a movement, and it's meant to be organic without losing sight of the powerful principles that are part of the tradition."

Today, as 70 years ago, the Catholic Worker movement is a work in progress.

On a cold night at the Peter Maurin Farm, Ralph Dowdy, 60, talked about what had brought his wife and him to the farm with their two children 17 years ago. For Dowdy, the anarchism of the Catholic Worker is a great part of its appeal. "There's too much fencing of people. Where's the motivation that's needed to really put your passions into whatever you do? Society destroys that. We've become so bureaucratic," Dowdy said.

In contrast, the Catholic Worker offers an exhilarating, even dangerous freedom. "The freedom you have. People can't take it in," said Dowdy. "I could stay in bed all day long, and nobody is going to say you've got to get up."

A little later, Marvin Bu-ga-lu Smith is buttonholed in the kitchen. A wiry black man with brio, Smith, just on his way out the door, wears a fur-trimmed suede coat and looks every inch the eccentric musician he is.