| Author Quoted | Dietrich Hildebrand, von |
| Title Quoted | In Defense of Purity |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1963/11/21 |
| Imprint | |
| Quotation | By the way, there is a book ostensibly for nuns, etc., but which besides virginity also treats married love quite sensibly: it is Dietrich von Hildebrand's In Defense of Purity. As you would not have picked that in a thousand years, I might as well mention it, as married people would not realize it also concerned them. The great thing in marriage is not an impossible ideal of fulfillment and exaltation but a mature rational Christian acceptance of the responsibilities and risks of human love. There is no harm in discussing all this frankly with your children, with the idea that you might learn on both sides from a frank exchange. Easy for me to suggest this, I suppose. It might be worth trying |
| Quotation Source | Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1994, p. 309 |
| Letter to | Mrs. Lytton |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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