Mary House - New York City

 

    The New York City Catholic Workers have 2 houses, located a couple blocks from each other. There’s St. Joseph’s House (usually just refered to as “St. Joe’s) the older of the two, which houses mostly men and runs a soup line 5 mornings a week. They’re the subject of another post. My stay in NYC saw me living at Mary House.
    Originally a music school, Mary House does house a few male Catholic Worker folks such as myself but mostly exists to serve women. This both looks like housing folks who wouldn’t have a stable place otherwise as well as welcoming non-resident women to come take a shower, access their clothing room, or grab lunch from noon till 2:00 Tuesday through Friday.

    The morning house person is responsible for answering the phone and doors, letting folks in for showers and clothes on the appointed days, as well as preparing lunch for the house and other folks. There’s usual another person or two who help out during the lunch shift when theres an increase in traffic coming through the house.

An afternoon person then takes over from 2 till 5 which is dinner time and then a third house taker is responsible for 5 until close. An unusual but useful setup between May House and Saint Joe's is that dinner is prepared each night in a large batch at Saint Joe's and then split in two and walked over to Mary house in a big shopping cart!

Many of the folks who take on these responsibilities live at Mary House but there are other friends and volunteers who help out as well.

    New York was a longer stay on my journey and I was around for the easing of some of the covid protocols that had been in place since the start of the pandemic.
    For lunch this transition meant that when I first got there meals were served to go out the front door. One of those pop up canopies was erected everyday by Felton and water or other refreshments offered while folks sat around in folding chairs eating or just relaxing.

    As covid protocols were lifted the women were once again welcomed into the house as they had been before the pandemic. Like many CW houses there were some folks who came in, ate and left quickly and other folks who sat around chatting or warming up for the whole 2 hours the dining room was open. 

Some version of soup was a popular lunch dish for the house.  Lentils, split peas, vegetables,  potato, chicken noodles all made regular appearances.

During my visit Mary House also saw an increase in folks coming to the door looking for clothing. These were refugee folks who'd been shipped up from Texas during that political stunt. What made it worse was that the season was changing from late summer to autumn and getting quite chilly and these folks didn't have sufficient layers. The CW didn't have too many clothes when they first were coming by but a well placed sign and social media post saw pulled off clothes pouring in before long. 

    Mary House is also the location for the NYC Worker's Friday night clarification of thought happens, known simply as “the Friday meeting.” Different speakers talk on a variety of subjects. During my visit there were discussions on the Catholic Worker during covid, Iran, CW pacifism, the Afghan refugee crisis, and Taisia prayer. These too had only just restarted after a long hiatus because of covid.
    The meetings generally take place in the auditorium (its an old music school remember!) and are open to the public.

    The auditorium also hosts the mailing operationg for The Catholic Worker newspaper. My longer stay allowed me to see the whole process for getting the paper out. First it comes in from the printer. Labels are then printed and stuck onto copies of the paper that had already been folded in half and tabbed shut all by hand. 

 

There is a very delicate process in which this is done because the papers have to all be kept in zipcode order as they will eventually be bagged into specific groups to be sent to the post office. A team of people work on it piecemeal for weeks. Eventually a U-haul truck is rented and all those bags are loaded up and taken to the post office. Usually by the time the mailing process for one paper is finished the next one is getting ready to arrive from the printers.

    There are regular opportunities for prayer at Mary House with vespers said every night and the rosary done each morning at 7:30 in the chapel. Some weeks there’s a mass in the dining room on Thursday evening. 

    All of these activities; prayer, friday meetings, helping with the newspaper mailing, mass are optional. Mary House functions by the anarchist voluntary association methodology. It seems like everyone would find their niche and fit in somewhere.
    One curiousity of Mary House is that after Dorothy Day died they didn’t really clean out the bedroom site used the last decade of her life. Much of the same furniture (though some of it reupholstered), books, and artwork are still in the room. Me and my friend Iris got tochec check it out one day. 

I also took the free Staten ferry out to the island and made a journey down to Dorothy's grave.