Radicalism to Faith & Faith to Radicalism

Radical Catholic Mom has a great post over at her blog. Here is the URL to the whole post:
http://radicalcatholicmom.blogspot.com/2008/04/converting-movement.html

And, here are my favorite parts of the post:
I have added my own notes, graphics, bolding and formatting -- it is how I learn and this is, after all, my "Catholic Notebook"

"Prior to Dorothy Day, when a person said "Labor Union" it was equivalent to "Communist, Socialist, Radical, Atheist" even though many who were in it were none of the above. They were just hungry. (note from Soutenus: read Day's The Long Loneliness)

Dorothy's Catholic Worker Movement was radical on two fronts.

1. It was radical in the secular sense because it espoused the belief that all people were equal and should be treated with dignity, especially those uneducated workers who produced the wealth of the country.
   
2. What made it doubly radical, though, was that she Christianized it.
   

When Dorothy became a Catholic she didn't know many other Catholics. She still hung out with her radical friends. While it was true that nuns and religious had served the poor for thousands of years, it was rare for non-religious to get out there and get their hands dirty. She brought the Radicalism to the Faith and the Faith to the Radicalism.
Her movement shocked the middle class and upper class church going crowd. It was scandalous. She insisted that our Faith was supposed to be a "Scandal."

Years later, it turns out that Dorothy's ideas were on the correct side of history. While it is true the middle class is hurting, the way we live has benefited from the vicious fights of the teens and 20s. Most of us have a weekend. Most of us are used to the 8-9 hour day. We are not working the 18 hour days. Most of us have benefits, though we see those slipping away at an ever faster rate.