Comrades Stumbling Along

We hosted a fantastic conference on the life and work of Dorothy Day last week at the University of Saint Francis. I was delighted that the priest-scholar Robert Wild from Madonna House in the Ottawa Valley was able to come and give a paper on the "Eastern" connections as it were. His lecture drew on his book, Comrades Stumbling Along: The Friendship of Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Dorothy Day as Revealed Through Their Letters (Alba, 2009), 173pp. The correspondence between these two women is as fascinating as they themselves were. Doherty, a Russian Orthodox who wound up in Canada, and Day, an Episcopalian who wound up in New York: both found themselves in the Catholic Church at the same time with a similar vision and mission to serve the poor, which they did in unique and lasting ways. Born within a year of each other, and both dying in the 1980s, these two fascinating, deeply challenging women have left behind a legacy on this continent that continues to enrich the lives of many. Eternal memory indeed!