Three Catholics Who Lived Lenten Justice

The Lenten call for conversion and penance includes a renewed call to work for justice by being mindful of the poor and suffering.

“Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy,” exhorts Psalm 82.

That’s the essence of almsgiving, one of the charitable and sacrificial works emphasized during Lent meant to transform us “for good.” Almsgiving—the act of donating time, talent, or money to others—expresses the love of neighbor and enables justice to flourish as it helps reestablish the right order. Three Catholics of recent history who took the psalmist’s call to heart and worked tirelessly for the human rights of others are Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement and its newspaper; Diane Nash, a leader of the civil rights movement; and Paul Bokulich, a voting rights organizer of the same era.

Impelled by the Christian belief that all people are made in the image of God and are therefore endowed with equal and inherent dignity that needs to be respected and defended, Day, Nash, and Bokulich looked upon their neighbors as “another self” and worked to ensure they had the “means necessary for living with dignity,” as the Catechism urges. Their courageous efforts working for justice transformed lives and paved the way for a more equitable society.

Dorothy Day

For five years after converting to Catholicism after experiencing a bohemian lifestyle and writing for socialist publications, Dorothy Day sought a way to tie her faith with her work as a journalist and her passion for social justice.

On Dec. 8, 1932, the 35-year-old covered a hunger march in Washington, D.C., for Catholic magazines. It was the third year of the Great Depression, and the Communist-organized protest aimed to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed.

Day’s heart was with the protesters—most of whom were not Communist, she reported—and she longed to do more than simply report on their situation. It was a feast day honoring Mary, so after writing her story, she visited the crypt church of the then-under-construction National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

“There I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor,” she later recalled. “And when I returned to New York, I found Peter Maurin.”

Maurin, 55, a French immigrant and former Christian Brothers educator, was waiting at her apartment eager to share his vision to help build a society based on gospel values and Catholic social teaching “in which it would be easier for men to be good.”

Day saw Maurin as the answer to her prayers. Maurin saw Day as the answer to his own prayers. On May 1, 1933, they launched the Catholic Worker newspaper for a penny a copy to help people think according to gospel values.

The newspaper was the first step in fostering Maurin’s threefold “new social order.” It helped promote the other two goals: starting houses of hospitality for the hungry and homeless, and forming farming communes to enable people “to return to the land.” From those initiatives, the Catholic Worker movement was born.

Maurin died in 1949. Day continued serving the poor and marginalized until her own death in 1980. Today, some 200 Catholic Worker houses of hospitality exist across the globe, as do more than 20 Catholic Worker farms (most are in the United States). The Catholic Worker newspaper is still sold for a penny a copy. Day was given the title Servant of Godwhen her cause for canonization opened in 2000.

Diane Nash

A Chicago native, Diane Nash experienced racial segregation for the first time when she moved to Nashville, TN, in 1959 to attend Fisk University. Unwilling to accept the injustice of being treated as a second-class citizen, she resolved to bring about change.

She met the Rev. Jim Lawson, a Methodist minister who taught the nonviolent resistance of Mohandas Gandhi near the university. A Catholic, Nash embraced the practice after learning it is based on upholding truth and proceeding respectfully to transform hatred and injustice with love and forgiveness.

“Christ furnished the spirit and motivation, while Gandhi furnished the method,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once explained.

Two years later, Nash was a seasoned leader of the student arm of the civil rights movement, having organized the groundbreaking Nashville sit-ins that led that city to become the first in the South to desegregate lunch counters.

When the famed 1961 Freedom Rides organized by James Farmer were halted due to violent attacks in the Deep South led by segregationists and the Ku Klux Klan, Nash insisted they resume. She recruited new riders to continue the journey that aimed to desegregate interstate bus travel.

Not even a request from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, could dissuade her.

“Sir, you should know, we all signed our last wills and testaments last night before they left,” Nash told their assistant. “We know someone will be killed. But we cannot let violence overcome nonviolence.”

The rides resulted in a win for the civil rights movement when the Interstate Commerce Commission outlawed segregated bus travel and terminals that fall.

Nash later helped organize other landmark desegregation campaigns, including Alabama’s Selma-to-Montgomery marches. Nash was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022. She lives in Chicago.

Paul Bokulich

It was 1965 and Detroit native and former seminarian Paul Bokulich, 27, was a philosophy major at Wayne State University when he joined the March 21–25 Selma-to-Montgomery March in Alabama, which had been stopped twice before.

First, on March 7, state troopers violently dispersed the peaceful protestors. Again on March 9, the marchers knelt in prayer before postponing the walk until a court order providing federal protection was negotiated.

Although thousands joined the start and end of the march, Bokulich was among the few hundred who did the entire 54-mile walk, which was held to draw attention to racist voting policies and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.

The march achieved its goal. On Aug. 6, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

“It was a joyful celebration,” Bokulich recalled. “The whole impact of a mass of people coming together in one spirit.”

After the march, Bokulich married fellow Catholic activist Pat Grzych Michalak, 21. Taking a job with the Rev. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, they moved to Alabama where they lived among sharecroppers to work on voter registration drives, farm co-ops, and election campaigns.

Paul was jailed several times; pregnant Pat and their 1-year-old child were teargassed during a march once, and the family was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan.

Bokulich holds that the gospel spirit of the civil rights movement was foundational to its success.

“Violence was willing to be suffered, but not to be given,” he said, adding that a powerful part of the Reverend King’s message was, “Unmerited suffering is redemptive.”

“You can’t dispel darkness with darkness,” Bokulich said, paraphrasing King. “You have to have light to dispel darkness—and love to dispel hatred. It’s a great lesson, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference taught it.”

In 1972 the Bokulichs moved to Soquel, CA, where Paul ran a gas station/auto-shop and Pat did the bookkeeping. They reared eight children. Pat died in 2012. Paul still lives in Soquel.