The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedJacques Maritain
Title Quotedmimeographed conference in December 1964
Date (Year/Month/Day)1966/09/20
Imprint 
QuotationIn the pile of things I have lying around waiting to be read, I picked out today the mimeographed conference of Jacques Maritain (in December 1964) to the Little Brothers of Jesus on their vocation. The best thing I have seen on the "apostolate of contemplatives.".... He speaks of the Little Brother "present" in a Moslem city being a good enough reason why a Moslem lives and dies in Christ without ceasing to be a Moslem. But would it ever be the other way around too? A strange question: but a very real one to me!) So important: this presence is not a "pre-apostolat" simply "softening up" the unbelievers for the coming of the missionary! "La mouise confessionnelle des vocations religieuses - la mouise rêvee aux manies et aux particularites du monde catholique." ["The confessional poverty of religious vocations - the dreamed of misery with the obsessions and peculiarities of the Catholic world."] Freely Catholic = without Catholic provincialism (which is of course un-Catholic. The official and forced universalism and centralism of Post Trent Catholicism has made the Church provincial). etc..
Quotation SourceLearning to love: exploring solitude and freedom. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 6, 1966-1967.; Edited by Christine M. Bochen. / [San Francisco] : HarperCollins. 1997, p. 137
Letter to 
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy  

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