Introduction
John Cyrus Cort (December 3, 1913 – August 3, 2006) was a Christian socialist writer and activist.He was the co-chair of the Religion and Socialism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was based in metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts.He fathered 10 children with his wife, Helen Haye Cort, and he cantored in his local parish until his death.
Biography
John Cyrus Cort was born in New York City on December 3, 1913, to Ambrose Cort, a public school teacher, and Lydia Painter Cort.Cort attended public schools in Hempstead, New York.Soon after graduating from Harvard College (class of 1935)and converting to Catholicism, he was moved by a speech by Dorothy Day. The novel Moon Gaffney, by Harry Sylvester, was dedicated to Cort and Day. He was one of the earliest Catholic Workers who started at the Mott Street House in 1936.He worked with the Catholic Worker for a few years. For several years he edited the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists' Labor Leader. He served on the editorial staff of Commonweal magazine from 1943 to 1959. In the early 1960s he was a regional director of the Peace Corps in the Philippines, and was appointed by Governor Endicott Peabody as the director of the Massachusetts Commonwealth Service Corps. In the 1970s he directed the Model Cities Program in Lynn, Massachusetts and administered a number of Great Society social programs in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Cort wrote several books and articles for magazines. He was the founding editor of the Religion and Socialism Commission's Religious Socialism magazine.He contributed to the American Friends Service Committee's Peacework magazine.
He was described as "personally conservative but socially and politically radical, well-read but never pedantic, funny, chivalrous, of broad culture but a man of the people." Unlike most Catholic Workers, John Cort was not a pacifist, but he did oppose the Vietnam War using the Just War theory.
Cort died August 3, 2006, in Nahant, Massachusetts and buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Nahant. Cort's papers are housed at the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives at Catholic University of America.
Selected bibliography
- Christian Socialism: An Informal History, published in 1988 by Orbis Books. ISBN 0883446006
- Dreadful Conversions: The Making of a Catholic Socialist Fordham University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0823222568