| Author Quoted | Jacques Maritain |
| Title Quoted | Moral Philosophy |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1964/05/24 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1964 |
| Quotation | It was very good of you to ask Scribner's to send me your great newly translated book on Moral Philosophy. Actually it is just what I have been wanting and I am reading it with avidity. It fills an immense gap and the mere appearance of such a book draws attention to the awful poverty of most moral theology, as well as the need for totally new perspectives. I am convinced for example that it has been the lack of such thought as this that has permitted Catholic thought and law to take such absurdly legalistic and anti-human positions about things like war (though of course Pope John and some of the bishops have said what needed to be said, or have begun to). Much moral theology is simply bad moral philosophy. So your clarification is providential. If we have a good moral philosophy, who knows, perhaps someday we may get a moral theologian. (I do not want to sweep them all aside: I do like Fr. Bernard Haring.) Also I think this book is a wonderful companion volume to Raïssa's journal! How is the second volume coming? |
| Quotation Source | The Courage for Truth: Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers.; Selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1993, p. 44-45 |
| Letter to | Jacques Maritain |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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