(Helen M. Alvare served as the spokesperson on pro-life issues for the National Council of Catholic Bishops from 1990-2000. She is now an associate professor of law specializing in marriage and family issues at the George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, VA.)

Kristen: What is it like being at the center of a media storm?
Helen: Something in me is attracted to a storm. I can evaluate it. A controversial movement needs many kinds of personalities– you need the counselors, the organizers, the demonstrators outside the court. That’s not me. I am a thinker and a speaker, not a rallying person. Getting on 60 Minutes in front of millions of people doesn’t bother me in the least. It doesn’t give me a rushed up beat of the heart and that’s a grace. At the same time, it’s high profile work. Mistakes are embarrassing.

(Dorothy Day was a Catholic convert in the 1930s who started the Catholic Worker movement with her friend, Peter Maurin. She was famous for serving the poor. To order her autobiography, click on The Long Loneliness.)

In 1922, Dorothy Day was arrested for the second time. Doing jail time as a suffragist in Washington, DC among socialites and intellectuals was vastly different from doing time among prostitutes dragged before the “morals court”.

She later wrote, “I do not think that ever again, no matter of what I am accused, can I suffer more than I did then from shame and regret, and self-contempt. Not only because I had been caught...but because of my own consciousness that I deserved it.” What exactly did she do?