The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedRonald Knox
Title QuotedEnthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion with Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries
Date (Year/Month/Day)1952/02/25
Imprint[S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1950
QuotationMany thanks for your very kind letter and for [Ronald Knox's] Enthusiasm . I entirely agree with your comment on the patchy character of the Ascent [to Truth]... Enthusiasm is fine. I value it highly above all as a reference book, but it is also very good reading. I promise myself to make it an arsenal if I return to writing about quietists. The Procurator General of the Carthusians [Dom Jean-Baptiste Porion] says I am too sharp on quietists and that there really are no quietists anyway. But it is to me a guarantee that the Jesuits will not be too angry with anything I say about contemplation if I drub the quietists for a few pages in every book. Besides, I have the same baleful interest in quietism that a doctor might have in chiropractors or an MFH in people who shoot foxes.
Quotation SourceThe Courage for Truth: Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers.; Selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1993, p. 18-19
Letter toEvelyn Waugh
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy  

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