Peace activist follows in Granny's footsteps

Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, visits with her young granddaughter, Martha Hennessy, in this undated family photo.

Martha Hennessy, a peace activist carrying on the legacy of her grandmother, Dorothy Day, will speak in Toledo Monday about the Catholic Worker Movement her grandmother co-founded as well as her recent visits to Iran, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories.

Ms. Hennessy, 54, is one of nine children born to the only child of Ms. Day, who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 and devoted the rest of her life to serving the poor.

The Rev. Jim Bacik, pastor of Toledo's Corpus Christi University Parish, cited historian David O'Brien's observation that Ms. Day is “the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism.”

Father Bacik said Ms. Day was an example of “hands-on love,” a lay person who lived amid the squalor of city slums and treated the poor and outcasts with respect and dignity.

A bas-relief sculpture of Ms. Day is on display near the baptismal font in Corpus Christi, an honor that was decided by a vote of parishioners.

Ms. Hennessy, in an interview this week from her home in Vermont, said she has been politically active all her life, beginning with protests against the Vietnam War and nuclear power. But she toned down her activism while rearing three children.

Now that her son and two daughters have graduated from college, Ms. Hennessy said she has more time to speak out.

“Watch out,” she said.

Ms. Hennessy was arrested in 2007 and 2008 for protesting the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and earlier this year took part in a nine-day fast for peace.

She recently taught conversational English to Kurdish children in Iraq and met with Palestinians on the border of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip.

It was only a few years ago that Ms. Hennessy chose to renew her involvement in the Roman Catholic roots of her grandmother.

Her mother, Tamar Hennessy, had rejected Catholicism, but she was a deeply spiritual person, Ms. Hennessy said.

“She was really tuned in to the human condition. … She clearly got the message of Dorothy's works and she lived it too. But she was very different from her mother. She had to carve out her own space,” she said.

For much of her life, Ms. Hennessy was torn between her grandmother's Catholicism and her mother's decision to quit the church.

Then, while working as an occupational therapist on temporary assignment in Hawaii, she began attending Mass with her landlady. The combination of religion and the dramatic backdrop of Hawaii created a powerful draw to the church, she said.

“Then Tamar died in March, 2008, and since her death I've really sensed an acceleration of my faith,” Ms. Hennessy said, adding that a Father John Hugo silent retreat — which her grandmother had often attended — “solidly put me back into the church.”

It has not been an easy path, she added.

“It's a struggle. There are many shortcomings of the institution that I struggle with and that Dorothy struggled with, even with her conversion. And I think that tension will always be there,” she said. “What gives me a very solid foundation is knowing that Jesus stood up to empire and was willing to die resisting empire. That just gives me a lot of hope.”

Tamar Hennessy moved to Vermont in 1957 and Ms. Day visited her daughter and grandchildren “on a consistent basis,” her granddaughter said.

She remembers her grandmother as a loving, generous, devout, and formidable woman.

“First and foremost she was my grandmother. We called her ‘Granny.' But as a child, I certainly had a sense of her power,” she said. “She was a great mother and grandmother. She was very personable. It was very hard for her to be a single working mother and starting a movement when my mother was 7. She had to be traveling and separated from Tamar.”

She said Ms. Day often gave her beautiful gifts she received in her travels, including a Sicilian rosary, African prints, woven fabrics, an icon, and books.

“She did not proselytize at all, but she was very religious,” Ms. Hennessy said. “As a child I was comfortable with saying the rosary at bedtime with her. As a teenager, I became more uncomfortable with her religiosity and my mother had trouble with Catholic doctrine, having nine kids and no husband to help her out.”

Ms. Day “was always handing me books to read,” she said, “and now in my middle age, looking back I see she left me a lot of crumbs to follow along the path.”

Father Bacik said that while Ms. Day voluntarily chose to live in poverty, she had a very rich spiritual life.

“On a daily basis, she participated in morning prayer and went to Mass, read Scripture, meditated, prayed the rosary, visited the Blessed Sacrament, and had a great love for the Bible.”

Ms. Hennessy laughed about the polar-opposite reactions she gets when people discover she is Ms. Day's granddaughter.

“One response over the years has been, ‘Who's Dorothy Day? Do you mean Doris Day, the actress?' The other is, ‘[Gasp!] Oh my goodness!' from people who hold her in great reverence.”

Ms. Hennessy in recent years has traveled to Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and the Middle East and gives public talks on peace and justice issues.

“There's real brutalization of the people and it's also happening here in America. We brutalize our own poor here,” she said. “I'm very concerned with what is happening in the United States right now.”

Martha Hennessy will speak on “The Mystery of Faith and the Catholic Worker Movement” after the 9:30 a.m. Mass on Monday at Corpus Christi University Parish, 2955 Dorr St. Information: 419-531-4992 or online at ccup.org.

Contact David Yonke at:dyonke@theblade.com or 419-724-6154.