ITMS Board Candidates 2023-2025
There are thirteen candidates for six available positions on the Board of Directors of the International Thomas Merton Society for the term starting June 2023 and ending June 2025. As provided in the Bylaws of the ITMS, officers and directors of the society serve for two years. Terms run from General Meeting to General Meeting. Officers are elected by the Board of Directors, and board members by the membership at large. Elections for the Board of Directors will take place in the coming weeks by both online and paper voting. Members whose email addresses are on file will receive an invitation to vote electronically no later than April 1. Members with no available email address will be sent a paper ballot. Any ITMS members who would prefer to vote by mail may request a paper ballot by contacting the ITMS prior to April 22 by email or by calling 502-272-8177. Six directors are selected from a slate of thirteen candidates assembled by the Nominating Committee: Paul Pynkoski, chair; Christine M. Bochen; Deborah P. Kehoe; Emma McDonald. Click here for the list of current officers, board members, and international advisors.
Rose Marie Berger is a poet and peace activist who is poetry editor and senior editor for Sojourners magazine, for which she writes a regular column. She presented the keynote address, "Direct Transmission of Faith," at the ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting in 2019. She is co-editor of Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and World (2020) and author of the poetry collection Bending the Arch (2019). She lives in Oak View, California. She is a current member of the ITMS Board.
Elizabeth Burkemper is a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she received a Master of Arts in Religion and Ecology and where she now works with the Life Worth Living Program. She earned her undergraduate degree in Peace Studies and Sustainability at the George Washington University. A 2017 Daggy Scholar, she presented on "Countering 'Strangeness' in Late Capitalism" at the 2021 ITMS General Meeting. She is a member of the St. Louis Area Chapter of ITMS.
Roger Butts is a Unitarian Universalist minister who has served congregations in Iowa and Colorado and presently in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. His 2021 book, Seeds of Devotion, was dedicated to Thomas Merton. He has organized two centering prayer groups, one focused on Merton's writings, and led the Colorado Springs chapter of ITMS for many years. His ministry involves bringing in authors and filmmakers grappling with faith and the common good. His second book, Praying the Poets, is forthcoming.
Raymond Carr is a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School and a Research Associate at the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project at Harvard. He was Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics at Pepperdine University and has taught in Germany, Switzerland and China. A Merton Society member since 2013, he currently serves on the ITMS Board and has published and presented papers at ITMS conferences; he uses Merton in classes as well as in the ENGAGE program, an initiative to interest high school students in religious topics.
Aaron Kerr, former Philosophy Chair at Gannon University, is director of Groundwork Erie, a conservation organization focused on youth and green work-force development. He is author of Encounters in Thought (2019), in which Thomas Merton serves as an exemplar of openness in learning and life, and of Mediations Between Nature and Culture (2022), which promotes a global bio-ethic rooted in contemplative engagement. In summer 2022 he and his wife Gretchen made a pilgrimage to Gethsemani on the twelfth anniversary of their conversion to Catholicism.
Alan Kolp is Faculty in Residence at Baldwin Wallace University in Cleveland, where he is the former holder of the Chair in Faith & Life. He is a lifelong member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and a Benedictine Oblate. He currently serves on the ITMS Board of Directors. He teaches, speaks and writes about Merton, publishing in The Merton Seasonal, and has an interest in the work of Ilia Delio. He is author of a new book, Better Humans, Better Performance, which uses the classical virtues to boost human performance.
Dominiek Lootens, an International Advisor to the ITMS, is author of Open to the Full Dimension: Thomas Merton, Practical Theology, and Pastoral Practice (2022). He is head of the Center for Dialogue at the Riedberg Campus in Frankfurt, Germany. A member of the Merton Society since 2015, he has published and presented papers at ITMS conferences. He received his Ph.D. in Catholic theology from Vincent Palloti University. He teaches Merton in courses for pastoral supervisors, hospital chaplains and theology students in Belgium and Germany.
Thomas Malewitz is Assistant Professor of Education and Director of the Ed.D. Leadership Program at Spalding University. He is a frequent presenter at ITMS conferences. His essays have appeared in The Journal of Catholic Education and The Merton Annual. He is the author of Authenticity, Passion, and Advocacy: Approaching Adolescent Spirituality from the Life and Wisdom of Thomas Merton (2020), which received a first place award in the "Pastoral Ministry - Youth and Young Adult" category from the Catholic Media Association in 2021.
Gray Matthews , Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Memphis, is a current member of the ITMS Board of Directors. He has served as coordinator of the Memphis ITMS Chapter since 2001 and was site coordinator of the 2007 ITMS General Meeting in Memphis. He has also served as co-editor of The Merton Annual. He has been a frequent presenter at ITMS conferences and has published numerous essays on Merton in The Merton Seasonal, The Merton Annual and elsewhere.
Marcela Raggio lives in Mendoza in western Argentina and teaches American literature and specializes in translation studies at Cuyo National University (UNCuyo). In 2018, she organized the First Argentine Thomas Merton Conference at UNCuyo, and in 2021, the Second Argentine Merton Conference was held, with speakers from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, the USA, the UK and Spain. She is editing a volume with the conference papers presented on the occasion. She currently serves as an International Advisor to the ITMS.
Sophfronia Scott is a novelist, essayist and contemplative thinker whose book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton received ITMS 2021 "Louie" Award. Her presentations on Merton include "Uncovering a Hidden Wholeness: The Essence of Unity & Merton's Hope for the Human Race," the 2022 Merton Black History Month Lecture at Bellarmine University. She holds a BA from Harvard and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her latest book Wild, Beautiful, and Free, is a historical novel set during the Civil War.
Kathleen Witkowska Tarr is founder of the Alaska Chapter of the ITMS and author of We Are All Poets Here: Thomas Merton's Journey to Alaska. Her essays have appeared in We Are Already One: Thomas Merton's Message of Hope (2015) and Merton & Indigenous Wisdom (2019) and in The Merton Seasonal. She has presented at the Eighteenth General Meeting of the ITMS (2021) and on the Tuesdays with Merton podcast. She is former Mullin Scholar at USC's Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and is a current member of the ITMS Board.
Peter Vale is a Boston-Florida hybrid who completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard University and subsequently earned B.Phil. and M.Div. degrees during the six years he spent in seminary formation. While priesthood is still on the table, Peter is currently in his third year of a doctoral program in biblical studies at Boston College. Thomas Merton has been a trusted spiritual companion of his for the past ten years. His review of Merton's Monastic Introduction to Sacred Scripture appeared in the 2021 volume of The Merton Annual.