It's sometimes hard for us to imagine now, but Milwaukee -- thanks to its immigrant past and its industrial heritage -- was long associated with radical movements.

From the German immigrants that fled political persecution and came to Milwaukee, to the marchers shot dead in in 1886 in Bay View as they protested peacefully for the eight-hour workday, to anarchists shot dead a block away in 1917, to the long tradition of sewer socialism to Father James Groppi, Milwaukee has a storied history of radicalism.

Even the founder of The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, is represented here because her diaries are part of a special Catholic Worker collection at Marquette University's Raynor Memorial Libraries. Day, who sought to wed her religious devotion to her passion for social justice, has been floated as a candidate for canonization.

Those diaries have been edited into an anvil of a book by Robert Ellsberg, who was himself part of The Catholic Worker community. He served as that newspaper's managing editor for two years. Based in Ossining, N.Y., Ellsberg talked to us about Day, about The Catholic Worker and about Marquette University Press' recent publication of "The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day."

OMC: Can you tell us briefly about The Catholic Worker newspaper and how it got started?

RE: The Catholic Worker was founded in May 1933, 75 years ago, by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Day was a recent Catholic convert, a single mother, who had spent her youth engaged in various radical causes, as both a journalist and activist. After the birth of her daughter she felt a strong attraction to the Catholic church, but she felt a great longing to connect her faith with her commitment to the poor and the cause of social justice. There wasn't a clear space in the church at that time for making such connections.

But then she met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant and self-styled "peasant philosopher" 20 years her senior, who convinced her that they should start a movement to proclaim and live out the radical social message of the gospels. They began with a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, and soon after established "houses of hospitality" in New York City and elsewhere to practice the "works of mercy"--feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless.

This was based on the gospel text where Jesus says "Inasmuch as you have done these things for the least of these, you have done them for me." The Catholic Worker combined direct service of this kind with protest against the social structures that cause so much poverty. Over time, a commitment to peace and nonviolence became prominent themes of the movement, and Dorothy was arrested many times over the years for acts of civil disobedience. She died in November 1980, but the movement and the paper live on, and her influence in the church has never been wider.

OMC: So Dorothy really was the spark that created The Catholic Worker?

RE: Although she gave credit to Peter Maurin for providing the big ideas and the inspiration, there is no doubt that Dorothy Day was the driving figure in the movement. She set the editorial policy and the overall tone, and her writings were the heart of the paper. But her role ultimately transcends the CW movement. At the time of her death, Commonweal magazine called her the most interesting, influential and important figure in the history of American Catholicism.

OMC: What is it about her life and her involvement that makes her diaries of interest to those interested in The Catholic Worker and in Catholicism and theology in general?

RE: For those who know her through her books or writings in The Catholic Worker, I think what is most important is what the diaries reveal about her interior life and her struggles to cope with frustration, depression and sorrow. I don't mean that in some clinical sense. But people have the idea that because Dorothy Day chose this very difficult life of living among the poor and marginalized, that she must have found it all very easy. In fact you see how much will and discipline went into her vocation -- and how much this was sustained by her deep faith and her spiritual practice.

She rose early every morning to go to Mass. She reflected on scripture. She prayed the monastic hours from a breviary. All of this was the foundation for a spiritual practice that consisted largely of responding to the duties and encounters of everyday life with a spirit of love, patience and forgiveness.

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