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Today I had an opportunity to go to the Marquette University archives to do some research on Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker. The results of my research can be found below and eventually on the Catholic Worker and Military Training on Catholic Campuses page. I have not done any research for awhile but when it was done, as before, it felt good.

Also while researching this question I discovered information on what Dorothy Day thought about the principle of subsidiarity , the principle that political power should be exercised by the smallest or least central government. A similar principle comes out in the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and I had been seeking Dorothy Day’s view on the subject for awhile.

Research gets you close to the ‘truth’, at least, what Gandhi called, your ‘opinion of the truth.’ There is something special about that as there is watching a plant grow from seed. It is the joy of research. Here are the tentative results of today’s research:

What is the story behind Dorothy Day accepting the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame?

The brief answer to this question is she was never given a chance to refuse as the award was bestowed on her by Notre Dame.

Here is the story:
On March 8, 1972 Notre Dame issued a press release for release on March 12, 1972 that Dorothy Day has been named the 1972 recipient of the Laetare Metal, the University’s highest honor.

On March 9, 1972 Rev. Theodore Hesburgh CSC, President of Notre Dame, sent a Western Union Telegram to Dorothy Day.

Dorothy Day received the telegram on a sick bed in New York.
Starting immediately Dorothy received numerous congratulatory telegrams and letters from all over the country. A few of them are: March 11, 1972 from Archbishop Raiond, Apostolic Delegate; March 13, 1972 Supreme Court Justice Brennan, March 16, 1972 from President Richard Nixon.

News articles, like in the New York Times, started to appear on March 12, 1972.

Dorothy Day made several attempts to call Father Hesburgh and wrote him around March 14, questioning, if not rejecting the honor. She was not able to reach him since he was in Europe after the press release and traveling this country

He did write back to her on March 24th apologizing that he had not earlier responded to her letter and said he had tried to call her. He says he hopes that she would accept the Laetare Medal and how Notre Dame was not embarrassed because of the IRS suit against the Catholic Worker. He ends the letter with the statement: “Do say you will receive the Medal at it will make all of us very happy.”

On March 27, 2010, about the time she would have received Father Hesburgh’s letter, she wrote a handwritten 12 page letter to Father Hesburgh that was not sent. She said how she was trying to get a hold of him but the phone number given her had no answer. She says how the award was not really offered to her, “since that would have given me a chance to refuse it”. She said the award was “bestowed on her.” She said she was honored by the award but still thought it was in the best interest of Notre Dame, because of her status as a “tax refuser”, not to give her the award. She then goes on for many pages to talk about Peter Maurin, her Christian Anarchism and the principle of subsidiarity as why she refused to pay Federal Taxes. She describes subsidiarity to “mean each individual, each family, each parish, each local community would do what they could, before calling upon the larger authority, in this state, the Federal Government, to enter in.”

The unsent letter by Dorothy comes to an abrupt end on p. 11 and one can only speculate that Dorothy received Father Hesburgh’s letter at that time explaining that Notre Dame was “not embarrassed because of the IRS suit.” He goes on to say in this March 24th letter: “To be honest with you, the only real embarrassment would be for you not to receive the Medal.”

Father Hesburgh wrote that he could give it to her quietly at “any place of your choice” although he would prefer to give it to her at graduation.
Dorothy must have told him she would prefer to have the award “bestowed” on her quietly since on May 17, 1972 Father Hesburgh wrote to Dorothy saying “please don’t worry about not being here at graduation time. Much as we would like to have you, we most of all want you to be at ease and to receive the Medal at a most convenient time and place for you, with as much pride and as little fuss as possible.”

However, at the end the Laetare Medal was bestowed on Dorothy Day at graduation at Notre Dame. There is no known record of her acceptance speech.

In summary, it is my opinion that Fr. Hesburgh, perhaps knowing of Dorothy’s refusal to accept honors from Catholic Universities with military on campus, announced the award was going to be given to Dorothy without talking with her by phone or mail. She seems to have tried to refuse the award but, as she says, was not really given a chance to that, since the Laetare Medal being bestowed on her was publicly recognized before she could refuse it. Jane Sammon of Maryhouse, Catholic Worker house in New York, in a sense was right when she said the “award slipped by her” and Dorothy’s description of how she was “never given a chance to reject it” is true.

It is ironic that Notre Dame who bestowed the medal on her and Marquette University, the home of the Catholic Worker archives, are the only two Catholic Universities in the United States to offer base military training schools of Army, Navy/Marines and Air Force on campus, something Dorothy opposed. This paradox is the material for another story.

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