Dorothy Day once told me, “When they call you a saint it means that you are not to be taken seriously.” Yet she took saints extremely seriously.
Robert Ellsberg
Robert Ellsberg is the editor in chief and publisher of Orbis Books.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
Dorothy Day didn’t want to be called a saint. She wanted to be one.
What caused Dorothy Day to stand out in her time, as it does still, is the way her spiritual life was expressed not only in her daily prayer but in her response to the needs of her neighbors, to the poor and to the demands of history.
Posted inFaith, Features
Walking the path of holiness: What I’ve learned from a lifetime of studying saintly lives
In the anniversary edition of All Saints, Robert Ellsberg reveals his background with the saints and how he was inspired by so many ordinary and extraordinary people.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
‘I have never met a real contemplative who found Merton useful’: Letters reveal Sister Wendy’s ambivalence about Gethsemani’s famous monk
This selection from our conversations about the Trappist monk Thomas Merton is one of the fascinating threads in the book, which turned out to be about more than it seemed.
Posted inFaith, Last Take
R.I.P. Tom Cornell, prophet of peace and lifelong friend of the Catholic Worker
Tom Cornell, who died on Aug. 1 at the age of 88, was truly one of the architects of the American Catholic peace movement.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Fifty years ago, my father leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. It changed his life — and mine.
Half a century later, Robert Ellsberg looks back on his father’s famous release of the Pentagon Papers—and the consequences of that decision for his father, for him and for the nation.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
Remembering Janice McLaughlin, the Maryknoll sister who found freedom in the struggle for African liberation
Even as a child she sensed that Africa was her destiny, the roots of her mission vocation found in a fourth-grade geography textbook that pictured giraffes loping across the plain
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Remembering John Howard Griffin at 100: Catholic Convert who wrote ‘Black Like Me’
‘Black Like Me’ went beyond social observation to examine an underlying disease of the soul.
Posted inColumns, Politics & Society
Remembering the revolutionary priest and poet, Ernesto Cardenal
Thomas Merton wrote an introduction to a lyrical book of reflections by Cardenal, Vida en Amor: “In a time of conflict, anxiety, war, cruelty, and confusion, the reader may be surprised that this book is a hymn in praise of love, telling us that ‘all things love one another.’”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
“Writing is the way I fight”: Remembering James H. Cone
God bless you, James: author, teacher, wrestling partner, spiritual godfather, beloved friend.