The Long Loneliness

In The Long Loneliness, Day and her friends are guided by ideology, whether those beliefs are political, religious, or both. Peter Maurin functions according to many of his own ideologies, including a “green revolution,” and the idea of “cult, culture and cultivation,” which become the theoretical basis of the Catholic Worker Movement. For what they do, ideology is everything, as it is strong and detailed convictions that will allow the movement to succeed. Day often worries that she is not living up to the standards she has set for herself, and spends much of the memoir striving to be the person that fits the lofty expectations that her political and religious beliefs have set for her.

From a young age, Day had an urge to pray. Though she was not raised in a religious family, she always felt a connection to God and the spiritual. This desire to connect with God is her motivation for much of what she does, from writing about workers’ rights, to helping the poor and destitute, to creating The Catholic Worker Movement, which combined all of her interests and motivations. She does not proselytize, but rather seeks to use her life as an example of one enriched by a religion that does not narrow her views, but expands them, allowing her to follow an ideology along the lines of anarchism, but also one of compassion.