Love Is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day

Love Is the Measure offers a richly illustrated biography of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and one of the most extraordinary and prophetic voices in the American Catholic church. Jim Forest, who worked with Day in the 1960s, provides a compelling portrait of her heroic efforts to live out the radical message of the gospel for our times. A journalist and radical social reformer in her youth, at home in the bohemian Greenwich Village of the 1920s, Day surprised her friends with the decision in 1927 to enter the Catholic church. Her conversion, prompted by the birth out of wedlock of her daughter Tamar, left her searching for some way to reconcile her faith with her commitment to the cause of the poor and social justice. The answer followed her meeting with the French peasant-philosopher Peter Maurin, who inspired her to start The Catholic Worker, both a newspaper and eventually a movement. Enunciating a radical social vision rooted in the gospel, Day and those who joined her devoted themselves to the Works of Mercy while struggling to create a new society "where it is easier to be good." An ardent pacifist, Dorothy Day challenged consciences within the church and society with her total opposition to war and her commitment to voluntary poverty. Forest chronicles her frequent arrests in the cause of peace, while stressing throughout the unique spiritual vision that underlies her dramatic witness.