| Author Quoted | Michael Serafian |
| Title Quoted | Pilgrim: Pope Paul VI, & the Church in Time of Decision / pseudonym of Malachi Martin |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1964/07/02 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : Michael Joseph. 1964 |
| Quotation | I am very much tempted to write a parallel between The Deputy and the new Serafian book, The Pilgrim. Starting with the titles, there is soon seen to be a deeper analogy. Only in one chapter does the Serafian come out as a real hatchet job on Paul VI, the rest balances it off and makes nicer noises and gestures, and it is not as blatantly prejudiced as the Hochhuth. Yet at the same time it reinforces the justice in Hochhuth's accusation, and does so by dimming the focus that is too crudely and too insistently fixed on Pius. Actually, the great question is the Papacy itself in its post-Tridentine and post-medieval, indeed post-Constantinian shape. The thing that really hits me hardest of all is that at this very moment the same issue of the Jews is right in front of our noses, just as much as it ever was before any German under Hitler, perhaps more so. And of course the Jewish schema [Note: Preparatory document: part of what became Vatican II's Declaration on Relationships with Non-Christian Religions], or part of that schema, is central in The Pilgrim. Once again, when John brought up the obligation to make some kind of amends, the same old machinery that Hochhuth tries to show at work in the one man and mind of Pius is in full operation in the whole "Papacy," i.e. Curia and all. |
| 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. 652 |
| Letter to | Gordon Zahn |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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