Category: Uncategorized

Dorothy Day: A Radical for God

9 Comments

A Humbling Admission

Remember those awkward middle school photos where your hair is askew and your fashion is dreadful? Most of us have them, but why admit it or bother to remember? In my intellectual and Christian development, I have an embarrassing confession nearly on par with my middle school photos, but I must admit it in order to explain the motivation behind this post. Eight years ago, I was a young and idealistic college student who wanted to change the world. I was also determined to do so by Christian means, and by Christian, I meant my own fairly narrow Evangelical understanding of the faith. Knowing me, and my zeal to help the marginalized, one of my favorite English professors at Hillsdale recommended I read 20th century Catholic authors Henri Nouwen and Dorothy Day. I’m ashamed to admit, but over the course of my sophomore through senior years, this professor suggested these authors not once, but several times; yet I politely (read: blithely) dismissed Dorothy Day as too much of a radical and socialist to be helpful. Never bothering to examine her life, I was sure that she was much too far left to be of any use to me as a role model. Now, a mere four years later, Henri Nouwen has become one of my very favorite authors, and Dorothy Day one of my heroes. I admire her commitment to the marginalized, love of writing, and deeply held convictions, and now must humbly admit: I was wrong. Do I agree with everything she said or did? No. Have I become a socialist? No. But then again, despite her vocal criticism of capitalism, she was not one either. As this post, and especially the following one will show, young and idealistic evangelicals, like me, have a lot to learn from the likes of Dorothy Day.

A Radical For God

A Catholic convert, radical, suffragette, civil rights activist, and pacifist, Dorothy Day was one of the most influential lay Catholics of the twentieth century. Her conversion to Catholicism consciously shaped her response to social justice and the issues of her day. Accused of being a Communist, Day’s concern for the poor and marginalized, as well as her commitment to pacifism, baffled many and made them uncomfortable.

Early Social Concern and Atheism

As a young girl, Day was drawn to the class-conscious fiction of Upton Sinclair and Jack London; she dreamt of writing books to convince readers of “the injustice of things as they were.”[1] While attending the University of Illinois, Day joined the Socialist party because she wanted “everyone to be kind” and “every home to be open to the lame.”[2] Interpreting religion as preaching “peace and meekness and joy” or rather, more plainly, “pie in the sky,” Day rejected it in favor of the Marxist promise to rid workers of their chains in the here and now.[3] She writes, “I wanted to have nothing to do with the religion of those whom I saw all around me.”[4]

Independence and Radical Affiliations

After a couple of years of independence from her family and university education, Day decided to drop out of college and move with her family from Chicago to New York to work.[5] Hindered by her dad’s influence among his journalist peers and his views of “womanly respectability,” Day struggled to find employment as a journalist; finally receiving an offer to write for the socialist paper the Call in 1916.[6] Dorothy Day’s radicalism led to her involvement with political protests, hunger-strikes, the women’s suffrage movement, and later, the Civil Rights movement.

By 1919, drawn to the bohemian lifestyle of her socialist friends, Day fell madly in love with Lionel Moise, and, defying social conventions, moved in with him. Their affair ended when Day discovered she was pregnant and Moise urged her to have an abortion. She did, but Moise left anyway.[7] After a subsequent marriage failed, Day wrote a novel and sold the movie rights, making enough money to buy a cottage on Staten Island where she began living with Forester Batterham.

Conversion to Catholicism

Day’s second pregnancy led to her conversion to Catholicism because she was determined to have her baby baptized whatever the cost; during her pregnancy, Day explains that she began to pray “for the gift of faith.”[8] For years, Day had been fearful she was sterile after her abortion, so she was understandably elated to be pregnant a second time, and interpreted it as a sign of God’s blessing. Yet, knowing nothing of the social teaching of church, Day felt torn between her attraction to the faith and betraying her loyalty to the poor, so deciding to convert was a struggle.[9] First baptizing her daughter, Tamar, Day herself eventually received the sacraments of baptism, first communion, and confirmation. Afterward, she began to lose her radical friends and parted from Forester.[10]

Advocacy For And Friendship With The Poor

During the Great Depression, not long after her conversion, Dorothy Day met Peter Maurin, whose friendship catalyzed her newfound faith and proclivity for writing, uniting them with her vocation oriented towards the poor. In 1933, Dorothy Day founded a newspaper, the Catholic Worker. It was “designed to raise consciousness about the church’s social mission, expose systemic and structural injustices, and appeal to workers who were being exploited by the industries they served.”[11] Including editorials, accounts of current happenings, and personal interviews, the Catholic Worker decried injustice in its many manifestations, including racism, which was woven into the very fabric of the American culture. From its founding, the Catholic Worker was clear “that racism could not be ignored when addressing the root causes of poverty and alternative Christian visions for society.” [12] Recording interviews, articles, and editorials, the paper “confronted head on unjust laws such as the Jim Crow laws in the South”[13] It also covered exploited women, child labor, labor strikes, anti-Semitism, and issues abroad.[14]

Not content to write about the condition of the poor, Day felt that to have an authentic witness, she must both live with them and share in their suffering.[15] To this end, she and others from the Catholic Worker founded a house of hospitality to provide shelter and food for anyone in need. In her house of hospitality, Day adamantly refused to allow others to post rules mandating anything; she insisted that everyone is equal and that all enter on the same level, arguing that they needed to help of their own volition. In this, she disputed the notion about the deserving or undeserving poor, which inherently classifies and attributes the value of individuals based on their contribution potential to society.[16] In the spirit of inclusion, operating from the belief that everyone is made in the image of God, the hospitality houses “embraced ecumenism and multiculturalism as a part of their identity,” welcoming immigrants and anyone in need, regardless of religious affiliation.[17]

Religious Belief As Motivation

After her conversion, the motivation behind Day’s involvement in political protests, pacifism, women’s suffrage, and civil rights changed. She believed that taking one’s baptismal vows seriously means putting “off the old person and [putting] on Christ, [growing] constantly in our capacity for love through the exercise of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.” [18] Thus, in her perspective, we are all called to be saints by “living out and bearing witness to [the gospel] in our daily lives.[19] Day’s writings reveal this deeply held conviction; in her choice of vocabulary, Day uses the word “love” more than “justice.” While her “daily activities were focused on charity and advocacy for people pushed to the margins of society,” she sees this as her way of loving her neighbor and living out her Catholic faith.[20] She wrote that “vigils, fasting, prayer, and marches were all indispensable,” but ultimately, she insisted, “[a]ll these means are useless unless animated by love.”[21] Day’s pacifistic stance rested on this love of neighbor; when Jesus tells us to love our enemies, Day insisted that he really meant it. Officially, the Catholic Church’s stance permits just war. Yet, even though Day’s pacifism was wildly unpopular during her lifetime, since her death, Day has been “widely credited with having restored the ideal of gospel nonviolence to a place of honor within the Catholic church.”[22]

Over the decades, Day went to prison multiple times; she always actively protested war and forms of oppression. In the 40s she vocally opposed Japanese internment camps;[23] in the 50s she refused to comply with air raids, was troubled by the public castigation of Communists, and protested capital punishment of Communist spies;[24] in the 60s she decried nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War in the 70s. Just shy of 75 years old, Day was jailed in 1973 for supporting Caesar Chavez and his protests supporting Mexican itinerant workers’ rights, standing up for the poor until the end of her days.[25]

The Catholic Worker

The Catholic Worker is more than a newspaper, more than Dorothy Day’s brainchild; still in existence today, it is a movement rooted in Catholic social teaching. Its houses of hospitality and farms host men and women who embrace “voluntary poverty as they minister to the destitute.”[26] Voluntary poverty is the central, orienting point of the movement; Catholic Workers see detachment from material possessions a way of resisting the current social order and visibly identifying with Jesus’ Kingdom.[27] They believe in “poverty freely chosen in community” as a way to protest pervasive destitution without community prevalent in the United States.[28] Their kitchens, breadlines, soup kitchens, and farms are places in which they practice the presence of God.[29] In them, they also pray the rosary, have study groups and forums, and spiritual readings at meals.[30] According to their website, today there are 236 Catholic Worker communities which “remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.”[31] As they continue to promote these ideas and stances for which Day so vocally advocated, Catholic Workers continue to work for justice, striving to live lives consistent with the message of the gospel.

Dorothy Day’s Legacy

Willing to risk controversy and take unpopular stances, Day never cowered, always ready to ask hard questions. In a film on her life, Entertaining Angels, Day declares, “‘If you feed the poor, you’re a saint. If you ask why they’re poor, you’re a communist. Well, we do both here. But we’re neither saints nor communists.’”[32] Staunch in both her pacifism and concern for social justice, Day is “widely admired as a heroic, even holy woman, uncompromisingly committed to social justice and the cause of the poor. She left a deep impact on the American Catholic church.”[33] Day “did not believe holiness was just for a few,” but held that it was a “common calling for all Christians.” [34] Her unique way of living out and bearing witness to the gospel was empowered by her religious devotion wherein she prayed, meditated on scripture, and said the rosary daily in her “continuous conversation with God.”[35]

[1] Dorothy Day, Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, Ed. Robert Ellsberg, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992), xv.

[2] Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist Dorothy Day, (New York: HarperOne, 1997), 39.

[3] Day, The Long Loneliness, 39, 41-2.

[4] Ibid., 43.

[5] Ibid., 50.

[6] William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), 56.

[7] Miller, Dorothy Day, 140-2.

[8] Day, The Long Loneliness, 136.

[9] Ibid., 150.

[10] Ibid., 162.

            [11] Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day for Armchair Theologians, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 53.

[12] Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day, 57.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Day, The Long Loneliness, 205.

[15] Ibid., 214.

[16] Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day, 61.

[17] Ibid., 62-3.

[18] Robert Ellsberg, “Day by Day.” U.S. Catholic 75, no. 11 (November 2010): 36. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16, 2016).

[19] Ellsberg, “Day by Day,” 36

            [20] Hinson-Hasty, Dorothy Day, 91.

[21] Quoted in Ellsberg, “Day by Day,” 36.

[22] Ellsberg, “Day, Dorothy,” 269.

[23] Miller, Dorothy Day, 353.

[24] Ibid., 434-9.

[25] Ibid., 500.

[26] Nancy L. Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, (Albany: State University of New York

Press, 1984), 5. Roberts notes that these volunteers often enter fields focused on the greater good, including “social work, editing, labor organizing and politics, teaching, writing, and nursing.”

[27] Rogers, Catholic Worker, 11.

[28] Ibid., 10.

[29] Mark and Louise Zwick, The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins, (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 322.

[30] Zwick, The Catholic Worker Movement, 322.

[31] http://www.catholicworker.org/index.html. Accessed 28 April 2016.

[32] Dean G. Peerman, “A people’s saint.” The Christian Century 114, no. 7 (February 26, 1997): 224-227. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16, 2016). 225-26.

[33] Ellsberg, Robert. “DAY, DOROTHY.” Reader’s Companion To American History (January 1991): 268-269. History Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed March 24, 2016). 268.

[34] Ellsberg, “Day by Day,” 36

[35] Ibid., 34.

What Evangelicals Can Learn From St. Vincent de Paul

10 Comments

Discipleship is a buzzword for Evangelicals, but what does it really look like to be one of Christ’s followers? Transformation into the image of Jesus means more than reading one’s Bible every day and praying. Its goal is a life molded into Christ’s image where the believer actually begins to look like Jesus in every aspect of his or her life. Christ’s life was characterized by caring for the poor, marginalized, and unwanted people and drawing them into a life of wholeness and reliance on the Spirit of God. Thus, for Evangelicals seeking lives transformed by Jesus, St. Vincent de Paul provides a robust example of a life lived by the grace of God for the good of humanity. We can emulate four areas he modeled: openness to the Holy Spirit, collaborative organizational models, relocation alongside of downward mobility, and the discerning use of social capital.

Vincentian spirituality has become increasingly attractive to Evangelicals seeking to reconnect with ancient forms of spiritual disciplines. As lectio Divina, centering prayer, spiritual direction, and other traditional ways of seeing the active presence of the Holy Spirit become a part of the vocabulary and habits of Evangelicals, their inner renovation will naturally produce fruit: they will learn to both love God and their neighbors more. The two walk in tandem as St. Vincent de Paul’s live indicated. His disponibilité to the Holy Spirit sensitized him to the priorities that the Spirit had, allowing him to live from a place of grace. Seeing himself as radically poor and in need of God’s grace, acknowledging his own acceptance and unworthiness, in turn made him “open to receiving every person, without judgment or disdain.”[1] As Evangelicals seek to engage social justice causes, they must do so by first acknowledging their own need for grace, and respond from that place to the needs of others.

The manner in which St. Vincent de Paul worked collaboratively must be an example to Evangelicals as they form partnerships and small groups. Even as the modern societies that bear his name are unashamedly Catholic in the United States, “Vincentian ecumenism expresses itself in a willingness to cooperate and collaborate cordially with others of goodwill in alleviating deprivation and suffering.”[2] Following this example, the Evangelical church ought to form both ecumenical partnerships and serve the needy without regard to religious affiliation or allegiance. Loving one’s neighbor is not limited to those from one’s own ethnic, social, or religious background as the story of the Good Samaritan indicates (Luke 10). Working collaboratively for St. Vincent de Paul also meant operating within the church to motivate his peers to pursue the true calling of the priesthood. The Tuesday Conferences roughly parallel modern small groups as weekly gatherings of disciples praying, and discussing how to live out their faith, where participants leave with “renewed zeal.”[3] These groups cannot be focused only inwardly, but must truly represent the church’s vocation as the Holy Spirit’s vessels by which he accomplishes transformation in a broken world.

Living and working among the poor and adopting a lifestyle of poverty as a Catholic priest transformed St. Vincent de Paul. It was not until after he became the priest of a poor rural parish just northwest of Paris in 1612 that de Paul’s inner transformation took place.[4] Addressing the members of the Congregation of the Mission, St. Vincent de Paul wrote, “Christ himself, the Lord of all, lived in poverty to such an extent that he had nowhere to lay his head. He formed his disciples, his co-workers in his mission, to live in the same sort of way so that individually they did not own anything. In that way, they were freer to combat greed for wealth in a better and more practical way, greed which is ruining almost the whole world.”[5] While he goes on to qualify somewhat the practicality of living in total poverty while trying to do mission, St. Vincent still insists that it should be “an ideal.”[6] Evangelicals today ought to consider the inner transformation that they too could experience if they were to follow in St. Vincent de Paul’s footsteps. Relocation and conscious choices towards downward mobility (the modern equivalent of a vow of poverty) seem radical to today’s Evangelicals. But if we espouse a belief in the priesthood of all believers, and desire to live whole-heartedly for Christ in his footsteps, then should we perhaps consider more seriously choices like these that men and women of the cloth have made for centuries? Has our American affluence made us so comfortable that we are unwilling to even consider the radical calls of gospel Jesus preached? Even if the Evangelical church were to encourage downward mobility and living simply for the sake of giving generously, this would be a significant shift from the current state of most churches.

Finally, integral to St. Vincent de Paul’s success were his friendships across social classes. While class stratification looks different in 21st century America than it did in 17th century France, in part because of America’s tragic history of race relations, socio-economic divisions alone still manage to divide people in significant ways today. St. Vincent was transformed by his friendships with the poor and called upon his wealthy friends to help his brothers and sisters. Relocation to form friendships with the poor, coupled with Vincent’s own inner transformation and acknowledgement of his own interior poverty, changed the way he leveraged his social capital. Drawing upon his friendships with the wealthy and powerful, Vincent unabashedly asked for them to come alongside him in caring for the abandoned children, prisoners, refugees, invalids, and the poor to whom he ministered.[7] As the Evangelical church seeks to participate in the Colossians 1:15-20 vision the restoration of all things, one key way in which it ought to do so is by encouraging those with privilege and power to acknowledge it and then leverage it on behalf of the disenfranchised and powerless.

 

[1] Frances Ryan and John E. Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac: Rules,

Conferences, and Writings, (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 17.

[2] Gallagher R.G.S., Sister Vera, Hearing the Cry of the Poor: The Story of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, (Liguori, MS: Liguori Publications, 1983), 21.

[3] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 25.

[4] Ibid., 17.

[5] Ibid., 93.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul: The Trailblazer. Trans. Gertrud Champe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 251 and http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=326 (accessed 26 March 2016).

Engaging Justice: Stories from the Past for Modern Evangelicals

6 Comments

Stories inspire the imagination and instigate change. From an early age, I have loved reading about heroes from the past who dedicated their lives to caring for those around them in need. Whether it was reading about the Resistance during World War II, the Underground Railroad, or the first Suffragettes, the lives of these men and women from the past made me want to grow up to help those less privileged and protected than I.

Studying the Biblical mandate to care for “the quartet of the vulnerable,” (including the poor, widows, immigrant, and orphan) has convinced me that the contemporary American church needs to engage the social justice issues of our days with both an understanding of the Bible and grounding in history.[1] The following series of blog posts will present the stories of past Christians and the justice movements into which they helped lead the church. It will identify best practices and modern application for the Evangelical church today in the hopes that the church will engage these examples of social engagement and embrace the deeply Biblical nature of their efforts.

Saint Vincent de Paul: Social Justice Motivated by the Love of God

             Ragged street children begged and homeless people filled the streets, while the toll of seemingly endless warfare, deadly pestilence, and famine plagued post-Reformation France. The wealthy carelessly ate cake and the French Church was corrupted from the inside; meanwhile, the majority of 16th century peasants struggled to make ends meet and stay alive. It is in this starkly divided and very desperate context that St. Vincent de Paul’s life sheds light on the way social justice and church reform go hand-in-hand.

A key figure in the renewal of faith in France, transformation of Catholic lay and religious leaders, and ministry to the destitute, was Saint Vincent de Paul (1581—1660). He navigated these tumultuous times with a vocation that he expressed thus: “To inflame the hearts of men. It is not enough for me to love God if my neighbor does not love him as well.”[2] Initially, St. Vincent became a priest for its financial advantages, not because he felt called by God or cared about the poor.[3] However, actually becoming the priest of a poor rural parish just northwest of Paris in 1612 and a three or four-year period of subsequent soul-searching deeply impacted de Paul.[4] He became “[e]xperientially aware of his own radical poverty,” and “was open to receiving every person, without judgment or disdain.”[5] By 1617, a shift in Vincent de Paul’s vocabulary indicates he had a growing personal relationship with the Lord, because he began consistently using the name “Jesus” instead of referring to him as “Christ.”[6] Concurrently, he began the first Confraternity of Charity where he empowered women to organize themselves into an organization to aid the poor.

At the beginning, the women of the aristocracy “were entirely out of touch” with the beleaguered state of the poor, but as they discovered their misery and “the depths of its horror” their indifference lessened.[7] They gave enough money to care for abandoned children, began to visit prisoners, and cared for the sick in hospitals. When their enthusiasm waned, St. Vincent called on them to give up their jewels to keep funding the care of the orphans and they did.[8] But the reach of the Ladies of Charity could only go so far; young women who were “willing to serve the poor and devote themselves to God” extended St. Vincent de Paul’s plan for mobilizing social action.[9] Caring for poor people, and the victims of famine and war, the Company of the Daughters of Charity were to be like nuns “without habits, veils, or solemn vows,” having the perspective of religious life with the vocation of missionary servants.[10] The houses of the poor served as their monastery, the local church as their chapel, and the streets of the city became their cloister.[11] Saint Vincent organized feeding for thousands of beggars, nursing for the sick, housing for abandoned children, and aid for the thousands of families living in squalor.[12]

In addition to administering these social justice initiatives, he devoted a lot of energy to bringing spiritual reform to the French Catholic clergy. One critical way he did this was by organizing and leading Tuesday Conferences, which were weekly meetings of priests to challenge and support one another in their vocations. The Tuesday Conferences always began in prayer and then attendees discussed thoughts and convictions about what it meant to be a priest.[13] These interactions were “mutually encouraging,” and attendees left the meetings with “renewed zeal.”[14] Their focus was twofold: on the life of the Church and their own spiritual development and devotion as priests.[15] The Tuesday conferences soon became popular, so that priests were “anxious to belong,” but “only those of exemplary life” were admitted.[16] “The Society of the ‘Tuesdays’ spread quickly to the great cities of the kingdom,” contributing to the spiritual renewal and reform movement in France.[17] As numbers at the Tuesday Conferences continued to grow, twenty-two of this society eventually became bishops, indicating that reform was moving up in the ranks of the clergy.[18]

In reminding priests of the importance of their vocation, de Paul underscored the sacrosanct nature of the priesthood; he saw its renewal as key to the revitalization of Catholicism in France. He warned them that in the Old Testament God had rejected corrupted priests who had profaned the temple’s holy objects.[19] St. Vincent was invited to address a retreat of ordinands; due to this initial success, he soon became responsible for this retreat every year before the candidates’ ordination and eventually addressed between 13,000 and 14,000 ordinands.[20] St. Vincent de Paul’s personal spiritual renewal allowed him to lead other clergy to see their religious vocations in a spiritual light. He founded the Congregation of the Mission to “help poor people of the countryside” and “priests in their vocations” in 1625. According to one biographer, once Vincent was “in touch with his own radical poverty and with the unconditional mercy of God, he entered into the freedom of the disciples of Jesus and became completely available to the Holy Spirit.”[21] History’s account of St. Vincent de Paul’s life indicates that the Holy Spirit used him both for social justice ends as well as to bring spiritual renewal to the Catholic clergy and church in 17th century France.

St. Vincent de Paul navigated relationships not only with the poor, but also with the wealthy and influential people of his day. Initially, he built a relationship with the de Gondi family, who were wealthy and noble Parisians. Through contacts from them and thanks to his likable personality, he developed a network of other wealthy people; he collaborated with affluent women and encouraged them to organize themselves to help the poor of their parishes, founding the first Confraternity of Charity, from which developed the Ladies of Charity.[22] He drew on his personal connections with wealthy people in order to fund his missions; when those sources were exhausted, he appealed to the highest authorities for financial backing. King Louis XIII entrusted him with distributing the substantial sum of 45,000 livres.[23] Yet “Vincent was not content with just collecting money; he organized payment and distribution as well,” always “insisting on the spirit of fairness which must govern the distribution of aid” as well as controlling and programing it well.[24] Furthermore, he made sure to circulate reports to his donors and make known to the public what his missionaries were doing to help war-torn people.[25] De Paul’s influence continued to grow over the course of his lifetime as his social network expanded and his connections with wealthy families and the court multiplied, making him an authority beyond the clerical world and into the salons of Paris and the court.[26] Not everyone was happy about St. Vincent’s success, however. When ladies of the court and maids of honor started visiting the poor and sick, dressing in “humble garments,” nobles complained that they might bring back something contagious, causing the queen come to their defense.[27] Throughout St. Vincent de Paul’s lifetime, he helped abandoned children, prisoners, refugees, invalids, and the poor, as his legacy as the patron saint of charitable societies reflects.[28]

St. Vincent responded to the misery of his day “determined to remedy it and finding an appropriate solution for every situation,” be it moral or physical.[29] Opening the doors of the Church to teaching the clergy to work with the laity, as well as valuing the contribution of women, St. Vincent de Paul paved the way for today’s social service institutions and charities.[30] Everything St. Vincent did was rooted in his faith: he believed that the invisible God “is alive and visible in our actions.”[31] With the missionary Christ as his model, he felt his call was to associate himself with Jesus in his redemptive mission.[32] Through this lens, he lived with disponibilité (or unrestricted readiness) to do the Lord’s will without his own preconditions.[33]

[1] Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Journey Toward Justice: Personal Encounters in the Global South, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 77.

[2] Pujo, Bernard. Vincent de Paul: The Trailblazer, Translated by Gertrud Champe, (Notre Dame,

IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 251.

[3] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 15, and Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 11.

[4] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 17.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 19-20.

[7] Jean Calvet, Saint Vincent de Paul, Translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard, (New York: McKay, 1948), 156.

[8] Ibid., 161.

[9] André Dodin. Vincent de Paul and Charity: a Contemporary Portrait of his Life and Apostolic Spirit. Trans. Jean Marie Smith and Dennis Saunders. Eds. Hugh O’Donnell and Marjorie Hornstein, (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), 33.

[10] Dodin. Vincent de Paul and Charity, 33.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., 43.

[13] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 25.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Calvert, Saint Vincent, 120.

[16] Ibid., 121.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Dodin. Vincent de Paul and Charity, 30.

[19] “Vous savez qu’anciennement Dieu rejeta les prêtres pollus qui avaient profané les choses saintes…. ” in André Dodin, Textes et Études Saint Vincent de Paul, (Paris: Aubier, 1947), 123.

[20] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 25.

[21] Ibid., 23.

[22] Ibid., 19.

[23] Ibid., 131.

[24] Ibid., 131-2.

[25] Ibid., 132, 134.

[26] Ibid., 142.

[27] Ibid., 123.

[28] Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 251 and http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=326 (accessed 26 March 2016).

[29] Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 251.

[30] Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 251.

[31] Ryan and Rybolt, Eds. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 32.

[32] Ibid., 32.

[33] Ibid., 34.