another half-built cathedral

As with Chesterton before her and Thomas Merton after her, [Dorothy] Day’s ideas were never refuted, just misrepresented, overplayed, and then left for dead in media res, another half-built cathedral, surviving on a thread of memory and the steel of committed disciples and friends. Rereading her today, one does not find a simple program for social reform so much as an existential critique of easy conscience. Dorothy Day didn’t have all the answers, but she had all the right questions. Better than any we are asking today. But such a nontriumphalist vision is hard for us to appreciate these days, given media that bleach the thought of even our most enlightened souls in the dye of misrepresentation, slander, and spin.

Robert Inchausti, Subversive Orthodoxy (2012)