Roundtable Discussions for the Clarication of Thought

My program stands for three things: Round-table discussions is one and I hope to have the rst one at the Manhattan Lyceum the last Sunday in June. We can have a hall holding 150 people for eight hours for ten dollars. I have paid a deposit of three. I have no more money now but I will beg the rest. I hope everyone will come to this meeting. I want Communists, radicals, priests, and laity. I want everyone to set forth his own views. I want clarication of thought. We need round-table discussions to keep trained minds from becoming academic. We need round-table discussions to keep untrained minds from becoming supercial. We need round-table discussions to learn from scholars how things would be, if they were as they should be. We need round-table discussions to learn from scholars how a path can be made from things as they are to things as they should be.
Maurin, Peter. Quoted by Day, Dorothy. "Loaves and Fishes". The Catholic Worker, May 1967, 5,6/ The Catholic Worker Movement. http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=851.

__________________________________________________________________
Our Houses of Hospitality are scarcely the kind of houses that Peter Maurin has envisioned in his plan for a new social order. He recognizes that himself, and thinks in terms of the future to accomplish true centers of Catholic Action and rural centers such as he speaks of in his column this month.

Our houses grew up around us. Our bread lines came about by accident, our roundtable discussions are unplanned, spontaneous affairs. The smaller the house, the smaller the group, the better. If we could get it down to Christian families, we would be content. Ever to become smaller-that is the aim. And to talk about incorporating is somehow to miss the point of the whole movement. So all right, St. Joseph, if you have brought about clarication of thought by your little joke on your feast day, all right, we are grateful to you. Meanwhile there is that printing bill of $1,100 that needs to be paid. We are only hinting at you about this, because St. Francis de Sales is the special patron of writers and journalists. Maybe we had better ask him.
Day, Dorothy. "Day After Day - September 1942". The Catholic Worker, September 1942, 1, 4. The Catholic Worker Movement.http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=385.

__________________________________________________________________
Discussion groups, round table discussions, also have a great part to play in our work, and are indeed part of a Works of Mercy program. "There can be no revolution without a theory of revolution," Lenin said, and to understand the personalist revolution we need to work for clarication of thought. Conict of ideas, endless discussions, which seem to lead nowhere,-truly lead to development of a program and an understanding of the part each can play in the Catholic revolution in which we are taking part. We learn to take from each other what we can get in the way of cooperation, we learn the art of human contacts, we learn to "be what we want the other fellow to be," as Peter Maurin puts it.
Day, Dorothy. "Day After Day - More Houses of Hospitality Are Needed". The Catholic Worker, March 1938, 1, 4. The Catholic Worker Movement.http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=331.

Roundtable Discussions for the Clarication of Thought

Round Table discussions go on everywhere, when two or three gather together. Perhaps there is too much of it in an informal way, and not enough of it in a formal way. We have regular Friday night meetings, when speakers come and present a point of view lead in a discussion, or give a spiritual conference. There are discussions when visitors gather together, and whole groups, classes from seminaries, colleges and schools come together to ask questions and to enter into controversy. There are the retreats at Maryfarm, which in the past have been glimpses of heaven to a great many, an enlightenment, a conversion, a time of peace and study and rest. Peter used to enter upon discussions on street corners, over restaurant tables, in public squares, as well as in the ofce, at all times of the day and night. He believed in catching people as they came, and often the discussions would go on all night. One is reminded of St. Paul who talked so long that the young man fell off the window seat out of the open window, and was picked up for dead; St. Paul had to revive him. And St. Catherine of Sienna, it is said, talked until she put people to sleep and then woke them up to listen some more. But Peter can talk and discuss no longer. He is over seventy, and his mind is tired and his memory bad. He has been a great leader, and his writings still inspire. And now signicantly enough, many young people all over the country are trying to put into effect his ideas, both in publishing, in running centers of training, in establishing themselves on the land and here these discussions are being continued. If you cannot nd enough people around Mott street to talk to about these ideas, and books that Peter has recommended, one can go to John Straub or Walter Marx in Washington or the Center for Christ the King at Herman, Pennsylvania, or to Loveland, Ohio where there are a number of families, as well as the great school of the apostolate for women, THE GRAIL. Or there is a center at Brookeld, Conn., where there are four families on the land. Everywhere, the discussions started by Peter, are going on. The candle he has lit has been lighting many another candle and the light is becoming brighter.
Day, Dorothy. "Letter To Our Readers at the Beginning of Our Fifteenth Year". The Catholic Worker, May 1947, 1,3. The Catholic Worker Movement.http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=155.

__________________________________________________________________
We are always wondering what is the fundamental and most important aspect of the work to stress. Over the week-end, in spite of snow and ice and no taxis coming up the icy hill, and our own old station wagon right now on the bum, we had constant visitors. Fr. Michael, one of the mission band from Richmond, Va., came for an overnight visit, gave us a conference on Faith, Hope, and Charity in the evening, offered Mass for us in the morning and led a meditation on the Our Father, and then departed to our great regret around noon. Former Lt. Straub arrived for the week and helped chop wood and visited up and down the hill. We belabored him for going on to law school instead of stopping to think of the apostolate. "Woe to you lawyers," John Daly proclaimed; he is a lawyer himself and a graduate of Georgetown. Hans, who can cook, carpenter, do electrical work and farmwork, begged me one day, "Can't you nd a farmer, a carpenter, a shoemaker, or someone besides talkers?"And he shook his head woefully. In vain do I remind him that round-table discussion is the rst plank in our platform and serves the purpose of indoctrination and clarication of thought. "If they would only go out and sit under a tree," he said sadly, surveying the grey and wintry scenes out of doors.
Day, Dorothy. "On Pilgrimage - March 1946". The Catholic Worker, March 1946, 2. The Catholic Worker Movement.http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=420.