[Peace] from Dorothy Day, on war and penance

[Stuart Levy]

Reading a little from the writings of Dorothy Day,
one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement.
(Many of her writings are on line, in the Dorothy Day Library:
    http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/ 
)

Here's a bit of her monthly column from summer of 1976, 
   http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=570

 [...] Perhaps the July - August issue will come out too late, to remind them
    of the anniversary of our great shame -- the dropping of the atomic bomb on
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Every year Ammon Hennacy, who was one of
    [The Catholic Worker's] editors, fasted completely from all food,
    except water, and picketed one of the Federal buildings, to do penance or,
    rather, to call us all to penance for this great crime of mass slaughter.
    Each year he added one day to his fast, for every year which had passed
    since the bomb was dropped. Eventually, he fasted 25 days straight.
    Let us all remember Ammon on that day.

[...]

    When Lewis Mumford, a great man of letters, was asked on television what
    his message was to the American people in this Bicentennial Year,
    he answered in one word, "Repent."

Hear that.  We have enough more to repent today, 34 years later.