This post at a blog hosted by the Ratzinger Fan Club, Against the Grain, gives a brief overview of the “preferential option for the poor” in Catholic Social Teaching. In the process, Christopher writes,

Fr. Robert Sirico’s approach strikes me as being suprisingly close to Dorothy Day’s — at least in spirit, if not in policy. Browse through her extensive writings and you’ll encounter a strong believer in personal responsibility and self-empowerment, highly critical of state-sanctioned welfare and handouts which leave the poor in a state of dependency.

Contrary to the Catholic Workers of today who indulge in either general dismissals or denunciations of ‘the neocons’, I believe Ms. Day would have the desire and the capacity to truly listen to somebody like Fr. Sirico, or Michael Novak for that matter. They may not see eye to eye on the merits of the free market, but it’s likely that they would have mon ground in an appreciation of the personalism and social thought of Pope John Paul II.