The Luxury of the Church

"Of course I criticized the luxury of the Church.  Rectories to house a half a dozen priests were as large as the homes of the rich, the Schwabs, Morgans, Rockefellers.  In a big city like New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston, priests live like Cardinals, like Princes of the Church.  I am not judging them as to whether they are poor in spirit, to make up for their 'appearance' of wealth...It is the scandal of our day in America."  Yet, finally, as she says in The Long Loneliness: "I loved the Church for Christ made visible.  Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me.  Romano Guardini said the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from his Cross and one must live in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction with the Church."

Yet she did not give herself over to the always-inviting role of the carping critic of the Church. As she came to understand the history of the Church, its traditions and teachings, she found herself drawn more and more to it. Years later she would say that "I never regretted for one minute the step which I had taken in becoming a Catholic."--William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 198.