| Author Quoted | P.-R. (Pie-Raymond) Regamey |
| Title Quoted | Face à la violence : pour un statut des objecteurs de conscience / par P.-R. Regamey et J.-Y. Jolif. |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1962/11/07 |
| Imprint | Paris : Editions du Cerf. 1962 |
| Quotation | I have just received a fine new book, just a small one, in French, by Père Regamey and another Dominican on the CO stand. It is very well done, clear and ordered to the practical purpose of moving the legislators into action in France. Certainly for my part I believe this is a most essential issue, one of the cardinal moral issues of our time, one on which the witness of the Church will depend. The fact is that the ambiguity of so many Catholics on the war question, or worse still the frank belligerency of the majority of them, is a very serious symptom of spiritual sickness in our society. It is a mark of the failure of Catholics to meet the spiritual challenge of the times. They have failed to meet it not because the Church as such has failed, because the clear statements of the Popes are there. But these statements have not been effectively interpreted or put in practice. On the contrary they have been left as a pure dead letter except for clauses that give a loophole for militarists. One of these of course is the statement by Pius XII that a Catholic could be obliged in certain circumstances to fight for his country. Obviously this brings in the old question of the just war, for the Catholic certainly cannot be obliged to fight in a war that is not obviously just. |
| Quotation Source | The 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. 271 |
| Letter to | Jim Forest |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
52340
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