Dorothy Day was a tireless social activist. She was closely associated with the Catholic Worker movement which advocated for the poor and homeless, and for non-violence.
There is a movement within the Catholic Church to canonize Dorothy Day, and while she certainly deserves any honor the church chooses to give her, there is a danger in being declared a saint.
As Jesus once pointed out, religious people love prophets after they are dead almost as much as they work to silence them while living. Dorothy Day was in trouble with the church much of her life. She identified herself as anarchist. She was not only against war, she was against the nation state. She was not only against poverty, she was against capitalism.
Dorothy Day was pro-choice and worked for women’s rights. Her criticisms of the church hierarchy lead the Archdiocese of New York to pressure her to change the name of her newspaper to avoid any link to the Catholic Church.
The thought of a statue of Dorothy day dangling on a rear view mirror should send shutters down the spine any who love the causes for which she lived and died. To reduce her fiery message to a beatific icon in the service of a church steadfastly opposed to many of the causes for which she stood, is the best way to turn a great prophet into a mere saint.