Category: Merton, Thomas
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What is the Opposite of ‘Desuetude’?
Consuetude. Disuse versus usages and customs. Conseuetudines Camaldulenses: Customs of the Camaldolese. Cf. Thomas Merton, Journal, vol. 5, p. 349.
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Tom and Van: A Tale of Two Idealists and their Disillusionment
Thomas Merton and Jean van Heijenoort were both studies in youthful idealism. Both made drastic life decisions early on, and both sacrificed much for their respective ideals. Van joined Leon Trotsky to save the world rather than attend the prestigious Ecole Normale in pursuit of a bourgeois career. While Van was motivated by a desire…
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Merton on the Monastic Journey
Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey, p. 155: If a solitary should one day find his way, by the grace and mercy of God, into a desert place in which he is not known, and if it is permitted to him by the divine pity to live there, and to remain unknown, he may perhaps do…
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A Monk and His Political Silence
Mary Gordon, On Thomas Merton (Boulder: Shambala, 2018, 118): By the late fifties Merton was deeply disturbed about his political silence. Should he have been? This world is a passing scene. The temporal order is next to nothing compared to eternity. That is the old-time Roman Catholic teaching that justifies the world-flight of monks and…
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Review of Mary Gordon, On Thomas Merton
The review is by Gary WILLS, not Willis. It is well worth reading. But, as someone who has read all seven volumes of Merton's Journals, I find this unfair: In 1965, to keep him [Merton] on the vast grounds of the abbey, the abbot approved a state of virtual secession within the monastery. Merton could…
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On Keeping a Journal
Thomas Merton, Journals, Volume Two, p. 333, entry of 10 July 1949: Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in the interior life as one sometimes thinks. When you re-read your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still,…
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Merton the Conflicted
Thomas Merton's sense of the reality of the Unseen Order was weak and underdeveloped because of the strong lure of the secular — to which, however, he never entirely succumbed, pace the thesis of David D. Cooper's excellent but mistaken Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist (University of Georgia Press,…
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If God Created the World, Who Created the Creator? A Good Koan?
Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 5, p. 183, entry of 25 December 1964: St Maximus [the Confessor] says that he who "has sanctified his senses by looking with purity at all things" becomes like God. This is, I think, what the Zen masters tried to do. A letter from John Wu spoke of running into [D.…
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On the ‘Inconceivability’ of Death
Thomas Merton poses the problem in his Journals, vol. 6, pp. 260-261, entry of 8 July 1967: Victor Hammer is critically ill . . . . Death is shocking in anyone, but most shocking in the case of someone of real genius and quality and someone you know and love well. The blunt fact is that…
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Aquinas Falls from the Pedestal
Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 5 (1963-1965), p. 295: In the refectory the other day articles on the Council [Vatican II, 1962-1965] were being read and a lot was said about St. Thomas [Aquinas] — he is no longer on an official pedestal — he is no longer the one to be followed as chief authority…
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Thomas Merton’s Hostility to Scholastic Manualism and the Forgotten Fr. Hickey
As much of a flaky liberal as Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968) is, both politically and theologically, I love the guy I meet in the pages of the seven volumes of The Journals of Thomas Merton. I am presently savoring Volume Six, 1966-1967. This morning I came upon the entry of May 21, 1967, Trinity…
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The Point of Solitude
Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 7, p. 276: The point of solitude is to preserve myself from a certain sort of contagion. I would add that being alone is not enough if you are feeding on media dreck 'in solitude.' For then you are exposed to the contagion of 'discourse' that agitates but does not enlighten.…
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The Ever-Increasing Frenzy, Tension, and Explosiveness of This Country
Try to guess when the following was written, and by whom. Answer below the fold: Ever increasing frenzy, tension, explosiveness of this country. You feel it in the monastery with people like Raymond. In the priesthood with so many upset, one way or another, and so many leaving. So many just cracking up, falling apart.…
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Why Evelyn Waugh Wanted Thomas Merton to Shut Up
Worth reading and the same goes for some of the comments. Here is an overly harsh comment that yet makes an important point: A. I. Reeves Sonya Roberts • a year ago According to Sonya Roberts on Merton, "we can readily identify with his journey of faith." Oh can we just? Well, I, for one,…
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St. Valentine’s Eve at the Oldies: Love and Murder
We'll start with murder. David Dalton (Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion 2012, pp. 28-29, hyperlinks added!): Most folk songs had grim, murderous content (and subtext). In Pretty Polly a man lures a young girl from her home with the promise of marriage,and then leads the pregnant girl to…