I promised last week I think that I would post some unusual quotes from Merton that might raise a few eyebrows. It feels a bit odd to even read this stuff, which has been published for all to read. They were, at one time, private letters. This particular gang of quotes are from a series of letters to Rosemary Radford Ruether (read about her trough the link). They must have developed a pretty open friendship for him to say what he did. You can see him using her as a sounding board, as a confessor of sorts in certain ways. The letters are found, among many others, in the book The Hidden Ground of Love. This, as I said, is not your typical Merton fare. It is a bit on the disturbing side. We all go through times in our lives when we are to one degree or another, freaking out - this may have been one of his. Some of this, to me, is painful prophetic insight into the Church as well. Put your thick grown-up skin on and let's eves drop shall we...
January 29, 1967 To begin with the Church: I have no problem about "leaving" or anything. My problem with "authority" is just the usual one and I can survive it. But the real Church. I am simply browned off with and afraid of Catholics. All Catholics, from Ottaviani to Du Bay, all down the damn line. There are a few Catholics I can stand with equanimity when I forget they are Catholics, and remember they are just my friends, like Dan Berrigan and Ed Rice and Sister Mary Luke and a lot of people like that. I love the monks but they might as well be in China. I love all the nice well-meaning people who go to Mass and want things to get better and so on, but I understand Zen Buddhists better than I do them and the Zens understand me better. But this is awful because where is the Church and where am I in the Church? You are a person who might have an idea of the Church that might help me and that I might trust. An idea of the Church in which projects and crusades (ancient or modern) or ideas (new or old) or policies or orthodoxies (old or new) don't stand in the way between people. Is the Church a community of people who love each other or a big dogfight where you do your religious business, seeking meanwhile your friends somewhere else?
February 14, 1967 Many thanks for your good letter. It was what I needed, a sign that someone was there and that my own struggle with the institution was not madness, hubris or something. I do see, as you do, how demonic it can be... I agree with you all along about the hardening of the Church as institution and idol and its becoming against what it ought to be a sign of. If we and others see this problem - and it is pretty terrible - then there is something going on, anyway, and if there is smoke going up here and there that is something. I also think we will be a very scattered Church for a while. But as long as I know what direction seems to be the one to go in, I will gladly go in it.
So, in your book first of all: what you say about the Church as happening clicks perfectly...
What I don't know about is the Christology. I am not arguing about it. It is just that my coming into the Church was marked by a pretty strong and dazzled belief in the Christ of the Nicene Creed. One reason for this was a strong reaction against the fogginess and subjectivity and messed-upness of the ideas about Christ that I had met with up and down in various kinds of Protestantism. I was tired of a Christ who had evaporated. But that is not what is bugging me... ...What does bother me theologically (I am not enough of a theologian to be really bothered by theological problems) is the sense that, when you go back into the history of the Church, you run into a bigger and bigger hole of unconscious bad faith, and at that point I get rather uneasy about our dictating to all the "other religions" that we are the one authentic outfit that has the real goods. I am not saying that I want to be able to mix Christianity and Buddhism in quantities to suit myself, however. Far from it. I think you got me wrong on that.
That's a good bit for now. I'll quote more in a day or so. I think that's enough to chew on. Enough for those of us who have icons of big Tom already painted in our heads to hang on our walls, as well as enough for those who thought they had him pegged in a certain light. I also think, honestly, that obviously (to me) all this stuff isn't bad. Some of it is disturbing to him as well, because he's seeing something he may not have expected to see after all those years and there it is in front of him and he's trying to figure out what to do with it. Sounds familiar doesn't it. Yes it does. I find more camaraderie in the man now than I had before, but in different areas, ones I may not have anticipated.
"Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." John Wesley
"Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." Fulton J. Sheen
"...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen
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I promised last week I think that I would post some unusual quotes from Merton that might raise a few eyebrows. It feels a bit odd to even read this stuff, which has been published for all to read. They were, at one time, private letters. This particular gang of quotes are from a series of letters to Rosemary Radford Ruether (read about her trough the link). They must have developed a pretty open friendship for him to say what he did. You can see him using her as a sounding board, as a confessor of sorts in certain ways. The letters are found, among many others, in the book The Hidden Ground of Love. This, as I said, is not your typical Merton fare. It is a bit on the disturbing side. We all go through times in our lives when we are to one degree or another, freaking out - this may have been one of his. Some of this, to me, is painful prophetic insight into the Church as well. Put your thick grown-up skin on and let's eves drop shall we...
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