Hans Blaster
Hood was a loser.
- Mar 11, 2017
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Thanks. I see then...Catholic Monk who later became interested in eastern religions.
Five years earlier, Nov 2 1963, was the assassination of president Ngo Dinh Diem of Viet Nam. A fairly unknown killing with massive consequences for Viet Nam, the USA, and the world. And he was the Catholic that JFK couldn't bring himself to be. And I don't know if it is a coincidence that twenty days later JFK was assassinated.Martin Luther King assassinated 4/4/1968
Bobby Kennedy assassinated 6/6/1968
Sudden death of Thomas Merton 12/16/1968
Coincident? Conspiracy theory? I think there is more to it.
Of course he could never be like Ngo, Kennedy married a woman.And he was the Catholic that JFK couldn't bring himself to be.
Catholic Monk who later became interested in eastern religions.
Actually that video I came across has NOTHING to do with American politics. It was just an illustration of someone getting their facts really badly wrong. Far more badly wrong than the date of death of Thomas Merton.What on earth does this have to do with American Politics????????
I guess it's a little inside baseball we Catholics are using but we just presume everybody knows who Thomas Merton was. I mean really ... how can anybody not know.That would be the most parsimonious explanation. Before ground fault interrupts, alot of people died electrocuted in bathrooms, for similar reasons.
I guess it's a little inside baseball we Catholics are using but we just presume everybody knows who Thomas Merton was. I mean really ... how can anybody not know.
Presume, I think that is the operative word. Perhaps it is because he is a little before my time. I looked over his bio on the wiki, and I don't know of anyone I'd see interested in his writings. I certainly wouldn't have been. Maybe it's more of a think for urban or intellectual Catholics and not our rural sort.I guess it's a little inside baseball we Catholics are using but we just presume everybody knows who Thomas Merton was. I mean really ... how can anybody not know.
Yes. In his book, "The Seven Storey Mountain" he didn't mention his relationship with a woman when he was unmarried and later had a child. IIRC, his child later died.Trad Caths have their own conspiracy theories around Merton's death, that it was a kind of divine chastisement.
I'm just willing to leave it as a tragic accident or mystery.
Dabbling in eastern religions was the least of Merton's "sins", if you can even call it that (by modern post Vatican II standards, it really wasn't). Like the affair he had with a nurse, for instance.
In the end, it just shows that Merton was deeply human, though, and I think he would be the first to admit that. He went into the monastery wanting to escape "the world", wrote a popular book about the grandeur of monastic asceticism, then came later in life to realize his relationship with monasticism had to be much more complex, because he was becoming something more than just a silent Cistercian monk. The more he retreated from the world, the more he felt drawn back into it, on a deeper level. Authenticity and growth, and spiritual bypassing, just don't go together. They are like oil and water.
Correct. He wasn't a politician. He was Anglican, later Catholic monk, had a mother who died, and was influenced by Quakers.Thanks. I see then...
not of interest to Am. Pol, now or then.
I do admire him greatly, and I love some of the prayers he wrote.I was in a Catholic college in 1968, a Catholic college that Thomas Merton had briefly attended (I believe for a summer session) and I never heard any talk about his anti-war views, nor did I for many years, even after reading his books.
He went to the far east because he had become very interested in interspiritual prayer, and had met with Buddhist monastics, learning that many of their prayer and community traditions were very similar to those of Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky.
If the government wanted to silence anti-war Catholics, they would have murdered Frs. Daniel and Philip Berrigan (I believe they were Jesuits, and I know that one was imprisoned for years.) Thomas Merton was not a threat to them.
You are missing some amazing writing. He gave up the cultural pleasures of NYC and Paris to live in a quiet monastery in the country where the monks worked the fields, practiced silence, and chanted the psalms seven times a day. It was there he found God and used his talents to inspire millions.Presume, I think that is the operative word. Perhaps it is because he is a little before my time. I looked over his bio on the wiki, and I don't know of anyone I'd see interested in his writings. I certainly wouldn't have been. Maybe it's more of a think for urban or intellectual Catholics and not our rural sort.
Sounds like my childhood, but without the pointless chanting. I've never had any interest in this kind of writing, so I don't think *I* would miss much.You are missing some amazing writing. He gave up the cultural pleasures of NYC and Paris to live in a quiet monastery in the country where the monks worked the fields, practiced silence, and chanted the psalms seven times a day. It was there he found God and used his talents to inspire millions.
You have a good point. Merton seemed to me to be off that radar. The Berrigan and even Muhammed Ali among many other prominent figures protested the war more publicly. One of the articles mentioned that the CIA was flooded with money in those days in SE Asia. So a hit could have happened, not coming from on high but a decision of simple agent in the street.I was in a Catholic college in 1968, a Catholic college that Thomas Merton had briefly attended (I believe for a summer session) and I never heard any talk about his anti-war views, nor did I for many years, even after reading his books.
He went to the far east because he had become very interested in interspiritual prayer, and had met with Buddhist monastics, learning that many of their prayer and community traditions were very similar to those of Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky.
If the government wanted to silence anti-war Catholics, they would have murdered Frs. Daniel and Philip Berrigan (I believe they were Jesuits, and I know that one was imprisoned for years.) Thomas Merton was not a threat to them.
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