The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities of Catholics and their associates founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Its aim is to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ." One of its guiding principles is hospitality towards those on the margin of society, based on the principles of communitarianism and personalism. To this end, the movement claims over 213 local Catholic Worker communities providing social services. Each house has a different mission, going about the work of social justice in its own way, suited to its local region.

Catholic Worker houses are not official organs of the Catholic Church, and their activities, inspired by Day's example, may be more or less overtly religious in tone and inspiration depending on the particular institution. The movement campaigns for nonviolence and is active in opposing both war and the unequal global distribution of wealth. Dorothy Day also founded The Catholic Worker newspaper, still published by the two Catholic Worker houses in New York City and sold for a penny a copy.

The Catholic Worker is a newspaper published 7 times a year by the Catholic Worker Movement community in New York City. The newspaper was started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin to make people aware of church teaching on social justice. Day said the word "Worker" in the paper's title referred to "those who worked with hand or brain, those who did physical, mental, or spiritual work. But we thought primarily of the poor, the dispossessed, the exploited." When Communism was popular in the United States during the Great Depression, Day and Maurin wanted to teach what they thought was a well kept secret: the very progressive teaching of the church, so that the poor, mostly Catholic, would turn to their own tradition for the solution.

Origins

It first appeared on May first, 1933 in an edition of 2,500 copies, to make people aware of the social justice teaching of the Catholic Church as an alternative to Communism during the depression. Its stated goal was to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Circulation rapidly rose to 25,000 within a few months, and reached 150,000 by 1936.