Peter Maurin
Peter Maurin took his first vows as a Christian Brother in 1895 in Paris. After the secularization of France in 1902, he became involved in a French Catholic social movement and later moved to Canada in 1909 and to the US in 1911. He co-founded the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day in 1933.
His program of Roundtable discussions, houses of hospitality, and Catholic Worker farms remains central to the Catholic Worker Movement.
Photo of Peter Maurin courtesy of the Marquette University Archives
Additional resources:
Peter Maurin's Easy Essays (sample Easy Essays are included below)
Easy Essays
By Peter Maurin
The Duty of Hospitality
People who are in need
and are not afraid to beg
give to people not in need
the occasion to do good
for goodness sake.
Modern society calls the beggar
bum and panhandler
and gives them the bum’s rush.
But the Greeks used to say
that people in need
are the ambassadors of the gods.
Although you may be called
bums and panhandlers
you are in fact the Ambassadors of God.
As God’s Ambassadors
you should be given food,
clothing and shelter
by those who are able to give it.
Muslim teachers tell us
that God commands hospitality,
and hospitality is still practiced
in Muslim countries.
but the duty of hospitality
is neither taught nor practiced
in Christian countries.
The Municipal Lodgings
That is why you who are in need
are not invited to spend the night
in the homes of the rich.
There are guest rooms today
in the homes of the rich
but they are not for those who need them.
And they are not for those who need them
because those who need them
are no longer considered
as the Ambassadors of God.
Hospices
We read in
The Catholic Encyclopedia
that during the early ages of Christianity
the hospice (or the House of Hospitality)
was a shelter for the sick, the poor,
the orphans, the old, the traveler,
and the needy of every kind.
Originally the hospices (or
Houses of Hospitality)
were under the supervision of the bishops,
who designated priests
to administer the spiritual
and temporal affairs
of these charitable institutions.
The fourteenth statute
of the so-called Council of Carthage,
held about 436
enjoins upon the bishops
to have hospices (or Houses of Hospitality)
in connection with their churches.
Parish Houses of Hospitality
Today we need Houses of Hospitality
as much as they needed them then,
if not more so.
We have Parish Houses for the priests,
Parish Houses for educational purposes,
Parish Houses for recreational purposes,
but no Parish Houses of Hospitality.
Bossuet says that the poor
are the first children of the Church,
so the poor should come first.
People with homes should
have a room of hospitality,
so as to give shelter
to the needy members
of the parish.
The remaining needy
members of the parish
should be given shelter in a Parish Home.
Furniture, clothing, and food
should be sent to the needy
members of the parish
at the Parish House of Hospitality.
We need Parish Homes
as well as Parish Domes.
In the new Cathedral of Liverpool
there will be a Home
as well as a Dome.
So people no longer consider
hospitality to the poor
as a personal duty.
and it does not disturb them a bit
to send them to the city,
where they are given the
hospitality of the “Muni”
at the expense of the taxpayer.
But the hospitality that the
“Muni” gives to the down and out
is no hospitality
because what comes from the
taxpayers’ pocketbook
does not come from their heart.
So hospitality, like everything else,
has been commercialized.
So hospitality, like everything else,
must be idealized.
Better or Better Off
The world would be better off,
if people tried
to become better.
And people would
become better
if they stopped trying
to be better off.
For when everybody tries
to become better off,
nobody is better off.
But when everybody tries
to become better,
everybody is better off.
Everybody would be rich
if nobody tried
to be richer.
And nobody would be poor
if everybody tried
to be the poorest.
And everybody would be
what he ought to be
if everybody tried to be
what he wants
the other fellow to be.