Legacy
Her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, was published in 1952. Day's account of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves and Fishes, was published in 1963. A popular movie called Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story was produced in 1996. Day was portrayed by Moira Kelly, and Peter Maurin was portrayed by Martin Sheen, actors later known for their roles on The West Wing television series in the United States. Fool for Christ: The Story of Dorothy Day was a one-woman play performed by the late Sarah Melici, which premiered in 1998 and performed until 2011. A DVD of the play has been produced.
The first full-length documentary about Day, Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me a Saint, by filmmaker Claudia Larson, premiered on November 29, 2005, at Marquette University, where Day's papers are housed. The documentary was also shown at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and is now available on DVD. Day's diaries, The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, edited by Robert Ellsberg, were published by the Marquette University Press in 2008. A companion volume, All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day, also edited by Ellsberg, was published by the Marquette University Press in 2010. Also published in 2010 was Carol Byrne's study of Day, The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis. Bill Kauffman of The American Conservative has written of Day:
| “ | The Little Way. That is what we seek. That—contrary to the ethic of personal parking spaces, of the dollar-sign god—is the American way. Dorothy Day kept to that little way, and that is why we honor her. She understood that if small is not always beautiful, at least it is always human. | ” |
Day has been the recipient of numerous posthumous honors and awards. Among them: in 1992, she received the Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey, and in 2001, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
Day's life was marked by controversy. The Catholic Worker lost many subscribers when it took a pacifist stance in World War II. Subscribers also decreased when Day visited Cuba and praised Castro's "social reforms" in the 1962-1963 issues of the Catholic Worker. Day seemed unaffected by Pope John XXIII's excommunication of Castro on January 3, 1962. She also ignored the request of New York Chancery officials, representing Cardinal Spellman, that she stop using "Catholic" in the title of her paper, according to the written accounts of Ammon Hennacy and Michael Harrington, as well as others in the movement. In a recent book, cited below, Carol Byrne asserts that Day attempted to advance a "Christian Communism," presented Lenin and Marx as secular saints, and never gave up her belief in class warfare. As another example, Nancy L. Roberts notes that Father Daniel Lyons, S.J., "called Day 'an apostle of pious oversimplification.' He charged that the Catholic Worker 'often distorted beyond recognition' the position of the Popes" (p. 161).
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)