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Sept. 14, 2006
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Friend of Dorothy Day still presses
for social justice |
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Name: Mary Durnin
Age: 90
Occupation: Long time social justice activist and retired employee of Interfaith for the Elderly
Parish: Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee
Book recently read: “Do You Love Me?: Jesus Questions the Church,” by Fr. Michael H. Crosby
Favorite movie: “The Mission"
Favorite quotation: “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” (Submitted photo by Sr. Marion Verhaalen) |
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On a recent late summer day, Mary Durnin enjoyed a walk in the multicolored flower garden of the intimate southside rest home, where she now lives. However, she longs to be on the streets of the inner city, praying for those who have died violent deaths in Milwaukee.
Now 90 and struggling with congestive heart disease, Durnin worked for social justice and peace with Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, in Nicaragua and in Milwaukee.
Until three years ago, Durnin lived on Milwaukee’s eastside. “A couple thousand times, I went with Milwaukee Innercity Churches Allied for Hope (MICAH) to pray for those who died by violence. We prayed for their family, the neighborhood, the perpetrator and his or her family. The group would also stencil an angel on the sidewalk or street at the site of the violent death,” she said.
Durnin is on oxygen most of the time, but she spoke clearly after she took a sip of water. “I went as long as I was able,” she said of her prayers for those who died violent deaths. She said she and other MICAH members also pray for those who die violent deaths in the suburbs. “It’s hard for me not to be out in the streets, but God knows what he’s doing. I don’t some time. I hope God will provide fuel for those who will be active,” she said.
Durnin grew up in southern Door County in a French-Belgian family.
“My people were of peasant stock. But their theology was like that of Dorothy Day. They couldn’t express it in words. They just lived it,” recalled Durnin.
While a Marquette University student, she heard a professor talk about Dorothy Day. Soon after, she connected with the Holy Family House of Hospitality on Fifth and State Streets in Milwaukee.
According to Durnin’s close friend, Sr. Marion Verhaalen, a School Sister of St. Francis, that experience, “awakened in Durnin a sense of being with the poor. In 1939 she wrote Dorothy Day, who had established the Catholic Worker Movement in New York City. She used her last money to buy a bus ticket to New York.”
“I loved to travel, but part of the theology of it was to be with the poor and help the poor,” said Durnin. She remembered helping Day with the works of mercy and handing out clothes to the poor as well as selling The Catholic Worker Newspaper for 1 cent on the streets of New York.
Reflecting on Day, Durnin said, she was majestic. She spoke with authority for the poor and for social justice.
After several years in New York with Day, Durnin married and gave birth to three children with her husband, Charles. They moved to Wisconsin, settling in the Appleton area. “All our neighbors were poor. We would swap clothes for our children. I was real involved with my neighbors. We were not all Catholics, but we would pray together. It was kind of “pre-Renew”, she said, referring to the Catholic renewal program.
Durnin and her husband had four more children, but after he died in 1965, she moved her family to Milwaukee. She struggled to raise her children and endured the death of her eldest daughter, Maeve, from leukemia, at age 9. One of Durnin’s children, recalled, “Maeve would always tell my mother after dinner not to come into the kitchen because the “brownies” were working. I didn’t want to do the dishes, but Maeve was naturally good.”
Durnin remembers the love and support she received from Day in her struggles with sorrow and poverty. Sr. Verhaalen, who has written about Durnin, quoted one of Day’s letters: “I often think of you in your troubles with love and reverence. You truly share the poverty and suffering of the apostolate. The most fruitful work, the hidden work more important than ours.”
Once Durnin’s family was raised, she went to Europe as a pilgrim.
“The Roman Catholic Chaplaincy of the University of London, gave me love, a home and work – even though I was an illegal alien,” she said.
She also traveled to Rome for Pope John Paul I’s funeral and the election of his successor.
Eventually Durnin, who earned an associate degree in social work at MATC, began working for Interfaith Services for the Elderly. There she met Sallie Pettit and Martha McCormick-Vasquez, who founded the Ecumenical Refugee Council.
In the mid 1980s, Durnin traveled with the women to Nicaragua to bring medical supplies to the poor. Another time she went with McCormick, now deceased, to Colombia, where McCormick worked with the poor.
From Durnin’s perspective, “the church is now entering a third cycle into John’s Gospel of the mystics of John and of Mary Magdalene. Still the old church is part of this cycle. Men and women need to be transformed to doing the will of God or being a mystic. You pray and ask for discernment, and you wait and wait. Perhaps in the middle of the night a thought will come and take over and tell you the way,” she noted. |
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