March 16: Calling on the Irish to Save Civilization... Again

Roundtable Discussion at Canterbury House
(rectory at St. Thomas of Canterbury at 4827 N. Kenmore)

Dinner: 6 PM
Discussion: 6:45 PM

Photo courtesy of Fordham University Press

First there is an Irish monk, copying a Latin manuscript salvaged from one of the fallen outposts of the Roman Empire. His brothers are engaged in similar work all across Ireland. For the geographic area we now know as Europe, civilization has effectively ended. 
 
Next, during the Great Depression, there is a house in a poor neighborhood in New York City. Catholic Workers there provide shelter to people struggling - to find work, to stay sober, to keep a place in the hollowed-out society they used to be in. 
 
What do the monk and the Workers have in common?
 
The Catholic Worker Movement’s program of action is partly based on the work of ancient Irish saints. Founded by Peter Maurin and Servant of God Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker’s program has three “pillars”: clarity of thought, houses of hospitality and Catholic Worker farms.  
 
Peter Maurin often spoke of the “Three C’s”: Cult, Culture, and Cultivation.  “Cult” can be understood as liturgy, “culture” was literature and the arts, and “cultivation” agriculture.  The Catholic Worker’s program of action is an attempt at synthesizing these Three C’s into our lives and society.  Jesus – in the poor, the Eucharist, and prayer (cult) – was at the center of the program.
 
Responding to a Red Revolution with a Green Revolution
 
When the Catholic Worker started in 1933, the Great Depression was in full swing. Millions were unemployed and people were looking for ways to address the deep uncertainty of this era.  Communism was one of them. 
 
Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, and by extension, the Catholic Worker movement, proposed a different response, which they sometimes called the Green Revolution.  Maurin wrote a series of funny, pithy, and almost poetic writings that condensed complex ideas into easy-to-read essays.  These are known as Peter Maurin’s “Easy Essays”.  
 
Addressing communism, he wrote:


The only way
to prevent
a Red Revolution
is to promote
a Green Revolution.
The only way
to keep people
from looking up
to Red Russia
of the twentieth century
is to make them look up 
to Green Ireland.
of the seventh century.

 
In another Irish essay Peter Maurin writes:


The Holy Father and the Bishops ask us
to reconstruct the social order.
The social order was once constructed
through dynamic Catholic Action.
When the barbarians invaded
the decaying Roman Empire
Irish missionaries went all over Europe
and laid the foundations of medieval Europe.
Through the establishment of
cultural centers,
that is to say, Round-Table Discussions,
they brought thought to the people.
Through free guest houses,
that is to say, Houses of Hospitality,
they popularized the divine
virtue of charity.
Through farming colonies,
that is to say, Agronomic Universities,
they emphasized voluntary poverty.
It was on the basis of personal charity
and voluntary poverty
that Irish missionaries
laid the foundations
of the social order.

 
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day looked to the early Irish monks for inspiration, though the founders of the Catholic Worker spoke of “reconstructing the social order,” as Pope Pius XI asked of Catholics. They did not view themselves as saviors of civilization. But with society increasingly polarized and fragmented, there is hunger for a new civilization, one shaped not by conquest and taking, but by charity, voluntary poverty, and truth open to all people.

Canterbury House is pleased to announce that Lincoln Rice, who edited and annotated Peter’s Essays in the book “The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin,” will be leading a round-table discussion on Maurin’s “Irish” Easy Essays. Join us on March 16th at Canterbury House as we kick off St. Patrick’s Day a little early, to learn how Peter’s program - rooted in Ireland and its saints - can bring light to our own “dark age” in Chicago.

Contact James Murphy with any questions.

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