What it came down to was that the Catholic Worker was an extraordinary combination of anarchy and dictatorship.”[47] Michael Harrington, a member of the movement as a young man, had a similar impression: “we were living in a community where, whenever we made a decision, we all had a completely democratic, anarchist discussion, and then Dorothy made up her mind. The place was run on a führer concept, and Dorothy was the führer.”[48] Day ensured that “certain convictions (pacifism, personalism, the centrality of the works of mercy) prevailed in the Worker publications as non-negotiable and publicly expressed values.”[49] It was one of these convictions—pacifism—that inspired Day’s most ambitious attempt to exercise control, not only over the New York Catholic Worker community, but over the movement as a whole: unflinching in her commitment to nonviolence during World War II, Day insisted that Catholic Worker communities throughout the country adopt a pacifist position in their publications or disassociate themselves from the movement.
Furthermore, Day often used her influence to ensure that her conservative orientation to Church theology and hierarchy predominated, in form if not in spirit. This was most evident, perhaps, in Day’s approach to her role as overseer of the New York Catholic Worker paper. Day used this privileged position to supervise the hiring and activities of editors as well as the contributions of writers, closely monitoring the paper’s content: “Day allowed her writers and editors creative freedom,” Nancy Roberts writes, “but within what she perceived as Catholic Worker principles. She usually screened everything that went into the paper, with few exceptions.” Rather than risk a quarrel with the matriarch, many writers resorted to “self-censorship.”[50] This meant, for one thing, that no criticism of church officials was to be found in the paper. It also meant that the paper carried many articles espousing traditional roles for women and was prevented from becoming an active advocate for women’s liberation after the emergence of the women’s movement. Additionally, Day used the paper as a means of promulgating a very conservative view of abortion and birth control, labelling both “genocide.”[51]
Finally, Day’s de facto authority as watchful “mother and grandmother”[52] of the movement meant that “Certain behavioural
