The Spirit of Dorothy Day

I attended a fund-raising breakfast this morning for three programs in Spokane under the umbrella Transitions. The programs help women and children in a variety of ways. At the Women's Drop-In Center homeless and low-income women have a place to hang out during the day and just chat or participate in classes. The Transitional Living Center provides apartments for homeless women and children. And Miryam's House offers shelter for women without children.

I'm blogging about the programs here, because Transitions is sponsored by four different groups of women religious -- The Sisters of St. Francis Philadelphia, Sisters of the Holy Names, Sisters of Providence and Sinsinawa Domincan Sisters.

If your stereotype of nuns is still grounded in the rule-slapping crabby woman garbed in stifling habits, you haven't met the modern sisters who do this amazing work all over the world.

The Transitions programs continue a long tradition in the Catholic Church of forming relationships with people living in poverty. Only through relationship can true help be given. One of the most famous Catholics to do this work in a radical way was Dorothy Day in the Catholic Worker movement which began in the 1930s.

This preferential treatment for the poor is what keeps many Catholics fastened to the church and provides hope of a different way during those times when the heirarchy seems to be so preoccupied with rules and power.