The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

Citation of Books Detail

Click here to return to the main list

Author QuotedJames W. Douglas
Title QuotedNon-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace
Date (Year/Month/Day)1967/03/24
ImprintEugene Origon : Wipf & Stock. 1968
QuotationPing Ferry sent me what is evidently a chapter of a new book of yours and I just want to say how much I have been stimulated by reading it [Chapter 3 of The Non-Violent Cross, "From Gandhi to Christ"]. Certainly you are now getting into your full stride and this is far and away the best and most important thing you have ever written, or that I have seen of yours. I am glad to see someone make the right qualifications about technology while fully accepting secularity as it must be accepted. The trouble with the "secular" Christianity more or less in fashion now, at least among Catholics, as far as I can judge, is that it is simply bustling to catch up with the status quo: affluence, gimmickry, the Muzak-supermarket complex and all that. The net result of all this is merely that Los Angeles is the New Jerusalem. There has to be an element of furtherlooking protest if the absent God is somehow to be realized as present in the supermarket. You bring this out very well.
Quotation SourceThe Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 164
Letter toJames Douglas
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy  

(If there is a link above showing up as a number, click it to open another window with a full text version.)