Dorothy Day's Transposition of Thérèse's “Little Way”

Abstract

[Despite initial disdain, Dorothy Day (1897–1980) eventually published an extended study of Thérèse of Lisieux, declaring Thérèse's “little way” as the method par excellence of the social transformation practiced by Catholic Workers. To transpose convincingly the Little Way from an insular 19th-century French convent to the New York City streets of the Great Depression and World War II, Day had to (re)construct both Thérèse's interior life and her social loving. She did so in a distinctly Roman Catholic manner.]