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[[File:Peter Maurin.jpg|thumb|Peter Maurin]] The creation of the Catholic Worker, of course, cannot leave out it’s co-founder, Peter Maurin. According to Egan Eileen, Maurin was, “bursting with ideas on how to remake society and purge it of its evils through living according to the Gospel and Christian tradition, and would share them with anyone who would listen.” <ref>EILEENEileen, EGANEgan. "THE FINAL WORD IS LOVEThe Final Word is Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement." Crosscurrents no. 4 (1980): 377-384</ref> George Schuster, a mutual friend of Maurin and Day, recommended that the two meet and discuss their common interests. Shortly after Schuster made the suggestion, Maurin showed up on the doorstep of Day’s home and five months later the Catholic Worker was born. It was Maurin’s ideas and Day’s ability to see them through and conceive of practical applications for the implementation that enabled the Catholic Worker to become a reality. Both Maurin and Day were brought together by their restless interest in lifting society up, creating communities that made it just a little better easier to be good. So, putting all of this together, the Catholic worker was a response to the poverty produced during the Great Depression--a product of Dorothy Day’s political activism, her conversion to Catholicism, and Peter Maurin’s passion for conforming society to Christ’s vision in the Gospel. It’s ideological roots can be described as radically Christian.

The Catholic Worker stands as one of the most successful and interesting social movements of 20th century America--successful, not in terms of the sheer number of communities that it produced, but in the authentic service it offered to the poor and oppressed. Those in Catholic Worker communities lived a reading of the Gospel that was necessarily active, politically speaking. Having a relationship with Christ was not simply an individualistic endeavor, but one that demanded movement towards the other. Both Day and Maurin understood that love of God, if authentic, should overflow into the lives of others. The Catholic worker was most fundamentally about love. For Day, love was found in community with others--it was how one encountered God. Day articulates this in the very postscript of her memoir, <i>The Long Loneliness</i>, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”<ref>Day, Dorothy.<i>The Long Loneliness</i>, (New York: Harper One, 1952).</ref> So then, the Catholic worker was about bringing love to those who did not know it, who were cast aside by society, shamed by their communities, and ridiculed by the culture. To Day and Maurin, this is what it meant to live like Christ. The true Christian did not simply take up this task as a once a year service opportunity, they lived it daily. Moreover, the Catholic Worker stands as a testament to the synthesis between political progressivism and Christian ethics. Christianity, Catholicism in particular, should engage with politics; it should always promote a preferential option for the poor. Finally, the Catholic Worker foreshadowed the theological posture of Vatican II; it encouraged love of God to be active in the world and confirmed the laity's call to holiness.