| Author Quoted | Cuthbert Butler o.s.b. |
| Title Quoted | Benedictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life and Rule |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1954/11/04 |
| Imprint | London : Longmans Green and Co.. 1919 |
| Quotation | A few weeks ago, by some miracle, we actually started reading Dom Cuthbert Butler's Benedictine Monachism in the refectory. That has never been done before, and it was not done this time either. We got as far as the third chapter. It would have been interesting to go right through such a book in a Trappist refectory. There might have been riots, etc. Most interesting. Whatever may be the shortcomings of the book, I think he is still one of the best and surest interpreters of the mind of St. Benedict"”yet in the end there is a tremendous difference between his interpretation and St. Benedict. As for me, I have got to the point where I stop interpreting. It is all I can do to wedge in a little solitude here and there, and that is what occupies me more fruitfully, I think, than haggling about the "ideal." For the rest, the students and St. Paul keep me busy, with my various projects "¦ |
| Quotation Source | The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction.; Selected and edited by Brother Patrick Hart. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1990, p. 80 |
| Letter to | Dom Hubert Van Zeller |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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