| Date | Author | Title | Source | Quotation by Merton |
| 1941/08/31 | Leon Bloy | Dans les Tenèbres |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 389
| "Entre l'homme, revêtu involontairement de sa liberte, et Dieu depouille volon-tairement de sa puissance, l'antagonisme est normal, l'attaque et la reistance s'equilibrent raisonnablement et ce perpetuel combat de la nature humaine contre Dieu est la fontaine jaillissante de l'inepuisable Douleur." L. Bloy. Dans les Tenèbres. 104. ["Between man, taking on his freedom against his will, and God, freely doffing his own power, the conflict is expected, the attack and the resistance are a match for each other, and this continual conflict of human nature against God is the abundant source of inexhaustible sorrow."] |
| 1941/09/05 | Leon Bloy | Dans les Tenèbres |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 402
| I just finished reading Bloy's Dans le Tenebres. One of the things I liked best about it was his wife's preface. His ideas about the last war: that it wasn't really a war but something infinitely more revolting than a war. His ideas about [Henri] Barbusse's Feu are smart in a way we are just beginning to find out. He says Barbusse's emphasis on the horribleness of war, just isolated from everything else, is crazy. "War is totally horrible, so let's not fight," and his solution that "The principle of equality will kill war forever" is terribly dangerous. |
| 1941/11/27 | Aldous Huxley | Ends and Means |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 454-55
| I spent maybe the whole afternoon writing a letter to Aldous Huxley and when I was finished I thought "who am I to be telling this guy about mysticism" and now I remember that until I read his Ends and Means just about four years ago, I hadn't known a thing about mysticism, not even the word. The part he played in my conversion, by that book, was quite great. Just how great a part a book can play in a conversion is questionable: several books figured in mine. Gilson's Spirit of Medieval Philosophy was the first and from it more than any other book I learned a healthy respect for Catholicism. Then Ends and Means from which I learned to respect mysticism. Maritain's Art and Scholasticism was another-and Blake's poems; maybe Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism although I read precious little of it. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist got me fascinated in Catholic sermons (!) What horrified him began to appeal to me! It seemed quite sane. Finally, G. F. Lahey's life of G. M. Hopkins. |
| 1958/08/03 | Pie Raymond Regamey O.P. | Non-Violence et conscience chretienne |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 210
| Doing violence to myself to read Regamey's book on non-violence because I need it. A lot of it is arid and plodding but here and there one comes across good stuff. Gives the impression that he is saying more than is necessary in order to make it all "acceptabl" and ends by being diffuse and trite. He would have done it all much more effectively in 50 pages of aphorisms - but who ever heard of a Dominican doing that? |
| 1959/01/11 | Richard Bewe Gregg | Power of Non-violence |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 246
| I really think that in almost everything I read I find new food for the spiritual life, new thoughts, new discoveries (for instance the deep spiritual content of Jan Van Eyck's portrait of the Arnolfinis)-a whole new light on my concept of the hieratic (in the good sense) in art. Or the Gregg book on non-violence - some LaFontaine "fables" (The Rêve d'un habitant du Mogra struck me deeply the last time I was in Louisville and I saw it in Gide's anthology). Three or four pieces on "religion" (decadent) in Edmund Wilson's collection of articles about the '30s (American Earthquake)-some things on Mayan civilization-Kierkegaard's "Works of Lov"-Guardini on Dostoevsky. etc. etc. |
| 1959/10/25 | Claude Tresmontant | Doctrine morale des prophètes d'Israel |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 337
| Fr. Tresmontant says "C'est au niveau politique que se posent les problèmes moraux les plus graves." ["The gravest moral problems are found at the political level."] Never was this more true than in our time. Hence the importance of political decisions-and of taking sides in crucial and "prophetic" affairs which are moral touchstones-and in which Xstians are often in large numbers on the side of the unjust and the tyrant. |
| 1960/09/15 | Mahatma Gandhi | Non-violence in Peace and War |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 115
| To Carolyn: many thanks for the Gandhi [Note 96: Mahatma Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, from which mrton was getting texts for Gandhi on Non-Violence (New York: New Directions, 1965]. I am very interested in it and will try to make good use of it. I think it is very important. |
| 1960/10/12 | Mahatma Gandhi | Non-violence in Peace and War |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 57
| "A person who realizes a particular evil of his time and finds that it overwhelms him dives deep in his own breast for inspiration and when he gets it he presents it to others." Gandhi, Non-V[iolence], p 191 |
| 1961/06/21 | Romain Rolland | Inde: journal 1915-1943 |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 130
| Romain Rolland's Inde is detailed and interesting - besides being very important - in the objectivity with which he treats Tagore. The conflict in Tagore between the poet and the prophet. He is too seldom able to rise to the "prophetic" (or shall we simply say political) level. Analysis of his struggles over Fascism-how easily he was duped and used and how much trouble his friends had to go to [to] wake him up. We are travelling toward an age in which consciences are no longer troubled over such things! Que penser d'une epoque où les fêtes du centenaire de St-François d'Assise sont patronees par un Mussolini! Et l'Eglise Romaine, bien loin de protester, y trouve son profit! [What can be thought of an age when festivals celebrating the anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi are presided over by a Mussolini! And the Roman Church, instead of mounting a protest, profits from the occasion!] Inde, p 167 Same page. That the basic conflict is between Conscience = Christ in us, and the state. |
| 1961/06/21 | William L. Shirer | Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 140
| I do not have any book on Nicholas of Cusa or about his work. Carolyn never brought or sent any. Perhaps though something was sent and got lost in the office here before being given to me. I can inquire. Is Carolyn sure she gave it to me, or any such books? I have only the Shirer on Nazis from the library at Present. |
| 1961/07/09 | Romain Rolland | Inde: journal 1915-1943 |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 141
| Points from Gandhi on non-cooperation (R. Rolland, Inde, p. 327) 1. To refuse military service when the time has come for it is to act after the time to combat. The evil has run out. Mil[itary] service is only a symptom of a deeper evil. All who support the state in other ways besides this are equally guilty. (I mean support a state organizing for war.) 2. All cooperation must be withdrawn from a state organizing for war. The precise way of going about it varies. Means refusal of privileges and advantages as well as of service. |
| 1961/10/15 | Henry Miller | Remember to remember |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 170
| I have been reading Henry Miller's Remember to Remember [Norfolk, 1947] especially for the part about war, written twenty years ago. Some of it is very much like what I myself wrote at the same time. And it is exactly what one could write now. No peace now-Roosevelt was the headline in the evening paper. One night he will say No Peace Now-Kennedy. For Kennedy is not letting anyone get any illusions about the Berlin crisis "dying down." In Miller's words, of twenty years ago, "The vast majority of people know deep down that the day is drawing near"¦. They are dumb and silent, more or less reconciled to their lot because it seems inevitable." This time there is more confusion about it. Last time-Pearl Harbor made everything very simple. The Berlin issue is still, whether you like it or not, relatively technical. Most people are not easily convinced that it is worth a world war of the proportions war might now assume. |
| 1961/12/02 | Walter Stein (ed.) | Nuclear Weapons: a Catholic Response |
Ltrs: HGL p. 405
| The English book on Nuclear Weapons [Walter Stein, ed.] is without any doubt the best thing I have read for a long time. I am anxious to get the whole thing and use it in the paperback I told you about, if I possibly can. I may also write an article about it [Merton reviewed it in the Catholic Worker, November 1962], which you can use, but I am at present discussing the possibility with The Nation. It is really a splendid book, well thought out and well written "¦ |
| 1961/12/04 | Charles Wright Mills | Causes of World War Three |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 184
| Reading Clement still, and the Scala Claustralium (for the novices) and began today The Causes of World War III by C. Wright Mills. Clear and forthright, one of the best of the good books on peace that are being written, for this country truly has a conscience and I am inspired by the fact. Life of Fr. Joseph Metzger, executed by the Nazis for his peace efforts. It is deeply moving, and suggests many reflections, as I myself may end up that way, and I can think of worse ways of dying. I do not account myself worthy of such a death. |
| 1961/12/22 | Thomas E. Roberts | Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience |
Ltrs: HGL p. 349
| I do think you ought to read something about it. A book put out by the Merlin Press in London, and edited by Walter Stein, a professor at Leeds, is very solid. There is a really good essay by a professor or whatever you call a lady don at Somerville, G. E. M. Anscombe. Do you know her? I think her contribution to this book makes a world of sense. The book is Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience. I hope to use all the material in a collection I am editing here. There will be a lot of other things too, by people like Lewis Mumford whom you must have read at one time or other. |
| 1962/01/00 | Erich Fromm | May Man Prevail |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 28
| Erich Fromm is a psychiatrist whom you may or may not know. He is a leftist and is outspoken, appearing in all sorts of places, and operating from Mexico. He has a good book out called May Man Prevail. I'll send you a copy because I think I can dig up an extra one somewhere. |
| 1962/01/00 | F.H. Drinkwater | Morals and Missiles |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 27-28
| As I said in the letter to the people of the Merlin Press, I found the book edited by you [Nuclear Weapons and the Christian Conscience, 1961] very impressive. What struck me most was the fact that the level was high, the thinking was energetic and uncompromising, and I was stimulated by the absence of the familiar cliches, or by worn-out mannerisms which have served us all in the evasion of real issues. For example (without applying these criticisms to any other book in particular), I was very struck by the superiority of your book over Morals and Missiles, which nevertheless had some good things in it. But Morals and Missiles had that chatty informality which the Englishman of Chesterton's generation thought he had to adopt as a protection whenever he tried to speak his mind on anything serious. Thank God you have thrown that off, because it emasculates a lot of very good thought. |
| 1962/01/00 | Walter Stein (ed.) | Nuclear Weapons: a Catholic Response |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 27-28
| As I said in the letter to the people of the Merlin Press, I found the book edited by you [Nuclear Weapons and the Christian Conscience, 1961] very impressive. What struck me most was the fact that the level was high, the thinking was energetic and uncompromising, and I was stimulated by the absence of the familiar cliches, or by worn-out mannerisms which have served us all in the evasion of real issues. For example (without applying these criticisms to any other book in particular), I was very struck by the superiority of your book over Morals and Missiles, which nevertheless had some good things in it. But Morals and Missiles had that chatty informality which the Englishman of Chesterton's generation thought he had to adopt as a protection whenever he tried to speak his mind on anything serious. Thank God you have thrown that off, because it emasculates a lot of very good thought. |
| 1962/01/18 | W.H. [Ping] Ferry | Disarm and Parley, a Case for Unilateral Disarmament |
Ltrs: HGL p. 204
| I had not seen before the thing of yours which we are printing, the one on Disarm and Parley. This is very fine indeed. |
| 1962/02/00 | James Roy Newman | Rule of Folly |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 35
| By the way, I got two copies of The Rule of Folly. I will pass the extra one along to someone who can profit by it, and am grateful for both. |
| 1962/02/00 | Walter Stein (ed.) | Nuclear Weapons and the Christian Conscience |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 34
| I was very happy to hear you had written something about peace. If possible, please send me a copy at once, as I might be able to include it in an anthology of such essays which we are putting out, my publisher and I. We have got a lot of very fine things, and I would like very much to have something of yours. There is a first-class little book that has just come out in England, Nuclear Weapons and the Christian Conscience, edited by Walter Stein, which you may know. |
| 1962/03/00 | Gordon C. Zahn | German Catholics and Hitler's War: A Study in Social Control |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 45
| I have been reading Gordon Zahn's book [German Catholics and Hitler's War] which you published. It is a most important and very welldone job of work. It deserves far more than the obvious platitudes which spring to mind about any good new book. To say that it raises a vitally important issue is so far short of doing it justice that it is ridiculous. It raises an issue that most of us are frankly incapable of understanding or even thinking about intelligently. It goes terribly deep, and much too deep for the average Catholic, the average priest, the average bishop. Zahn is objective with scientific innocence. There is no guile in his approach. He just says what he says, and overstates nothing. Where the impact comes is in the delayed action after one has read a chapter or so. Then all of a sudden one comes to with a jolt and says to himself: "This really means that something very dreadful is happening and has been happening, and that the bottom is dropping out of what we have been accustomed to regard as a fully satisfactory and complete picture of Christianity, or Christian civilization. Perhaps it has already dropped "¦" That is a mixed metaphor no doubt. The bottom drops out of a bucket, not out of a picture. But perhaps one tends to feel that the picture itself has just dropped out of a frame. |
| 1962/03/02 | Charles Wright Mills | Power Elite |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 206
| Reading Wright Mills on the Power Elite. How can we avoid war? The Pentagon is moving the country and forming everybody's mind for war. The picture that has meaning to most people is basically military. He contends, I believe rightly, that since WWII the military have really taken over from the politicians (or taken the politicians over). The country is on a permanent military basis. This I had not realized so clearly, still thinking in terms of 1940 when I entered. |
| 1962/03/17 | Walter Stein (ed.) | Nuclear Weapons: a Catholic Response |
Ltrs: HGL p. 572
| "¦ I wanted to assure you that I knew the book edited by Walter Stein. At first I planned to use all of it in the anthology of essays I have been editing [Breakthrough to Peace], then we had to cut down "¦ so that in the end I have only one of Stein's essays left. But this book will contain much very interesting material, some of the best that has been done in this country "¦ If you have seen Fellowship, you will see that they did some rather intelligent cutting of "Red or Dead" and I will be happy if you do the same. I am glad you like it. Not everyone will. Yet it is only common sense. |
| 1962/04/12 | Edward Teller | Legacy of Hiroshima |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 49
| I have had the good fortune to receive and read a copy of the talk you gave in Washington last November. It was particularly welcome, since I am at the same time undergoing the disheartening experience of reading the book of Edward Teller [The Legacy of Hiroshima]. It was encouraging to hear the contrasting notes struck by a civilized voice, yours. Dr. Teller's book seems to me to be a systematic piece of amorality which will probably have serious and far-reaching effects. Hence my conviction that your proposals about a peace lobby are of the greatest importance. I wish to assure you of my desire to cooperate in any way possible with your plan. |
| 1962/05/10 | Edward Teller | Legacy of Hiroshima |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 218
| Finishing at the same time the [Edward] Teller book. Legacy of Hiroshima. His convincing myth of the tactical nuclear weapon. And there may be something to this. As opposed to the awful and deadly myth of the megatomic weapon. Missiles: note the war between the God of heaven and the God of the hurricane - the storm god, who hurls thunderbolts. |
| 1962/06/05 | Joseph Jean Lanza del Vasto | Pelerinage aux Sources |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 224
| Lanza del Vasto has seen a deep connection between play and war. Our society totally devoted to one (everything is a game) necessarily ends in the other. Play -is aimless, and multiplies obstacles so that the "aim," which does not exist, may not be obtained by the other player. Getting a ball in a hole. "La guerre c'est le grand vice public qui insiste à jouer avec le sang des hommes." ["War is the great public vice that insists on playing with the blood of men."] War is not caused by hunger or by need. It is the powerful and the rich who make war. The beauty of the grave: it demands a suppression of conscience, and this is done as a matter of "sacrific" and "duty." To sacrifice conscience, and then "let go" and kill, for the exaltation of one's nation, mad with the need for systematic irresponsibility. Reproach them for this, refuse them their outlet, and they will slaughter you. |
| 1962/09/11 | Gordon C. Zahn | German Catholics and Hitler's War: A Study in Social Control |
Ltrs: HGL p. 579
| Fortunately there are laymen speaking up, and I think you continue to be among them. In Canada, Leslie Dewart has been writing good things (a professor at St. Michael's in Toronto). Do you know Gordon Zahn's book [German Catholics and Hitler's Wars]? "¦ Then there is also the anthology I put out, which got by (my articles got by, and I did not bother to explain that I had edited a whole anthology to go with them). I am waiting to get some more copies, and will send you one. It is called Breakthrough to Peace. Walter Stein is one of those represented, and also there is what I thought a very solid essay by Herbert Butterfield, at Cambridge. Others were Americans, and some of the best minds we have, I believe. You ought to be fairly pleased with the book. |
| 1962/11/07 | P.-R. (Pie-Raymond) Regamey | Face à la violence : pour un statut des objecteurs de conscience / par P.-R. Regamey et J.-Y. Jolif. |
Ltrs: HGL p. 271
| I have just received a fine new book, just a small one, in French, by Père Regamey and another Dominican on the CO stand. It is very well done, clear and ordered to the practical purpose of moving the legislators into action in France. Certainly for my part I believe this is a most essential issue, one of the cardinal moral issues of our time, one on which the witness of the Church will depend. The fact is that the ambiguity of so many Catholics on the war question, or worse still the frank belligerency of the majority of them, is a very serious symptom of spiritual sickness in our society. It is a mark of the failure of Catholics to meet the spiritual challenge of the times. They have failed to meet it not because the Church as such has failed, because the clear statements of the Popes are there. But these statements have not been effectively interpreted or put in practice. On the contrary they have been left as a pure dead letter except for clauses that give a loophole for militarists. One of these of course is the statement by Pius XII that a Catholic could be obliged in certain circumstances to fight for his country. Obviously this brings in the old question of the just war, for the Catholic certainly cannot be obliged to fight in a war that is not obviously just. |
| 1962/11/30 | Ralph E. Lapp | Kill and Overkill |
Ltrs: HGL p. 328
| This is a rather hasty note to bring to your attention a most important book. It is by a nuclear scientist, and is factual, but with a deep moral concern. It is called Kill and Overkill, by Ralph E. Lapp. I will ask John to send you a copy of this most important book. The reason for its importance is not of course that it makes any kind of theological statement, but on the contrary, that it reveals crucially important facts about the whole status of the question. As you know, the real issue about nuclear weapons is not so much the matter of moral principle, which after all does not change with the megatonnage of weapons, the principles are clear. But in applying these principles, there are enormously important problems and questions of fact. These facts totally alter the circumstances and even essentially change the very rationality involved in the use of these destructive weapons. |
| 1962/12/09 | Harrison Evans Salesbury | A New Russia? |
Ltrs: HGL p. 411
| This is chiefly to thank you for the books. The Wright Millses were both terrific, as usual. The one on the Latin American problem was clear and persuasive, though he himself admits it is oversimplified. But one must see the other side of the case always. That is the trouble, people do not want to be objective. The Salisbury book on Russia is most valuable. Again, one has to be always adjusting one's views and taking into account the rapid movement of events and current developments. I was impressed to note the depth of the division between Russia and Red China at the present time. Of course it makes sense. |
| 1962/12/09 | Ralph E. Lapp | Kill and Overkill |
Ltrs: HGL p. 411
| I have recently read the Lapp book, Kill and Overkill, and I think it is very important for this book to get to some of the people who will be discussing the question of nuclear weapons in the Council, when it resumes. Do you think you could possibly get copies to Jean and Hildegard Goss-Mayr, and also to Archbishop Roberts? I have mentioned it to the former and will tell the Archbishop about it soon. If they do not get the proper perspective, they will be talking about a problem that does not exist. Of course, I know the Goss-Mayrs know what the issue is, and so does Archbishop Roberts. But I think what is most important first of all is a clear recognition on the part of the Church that this is an essentially different kind of war and that therefore the question of defense in nuclear war takes on an entirely different character so that the categories of traditional warfare are irrelevant to the real moral issue in total nuclear war. In many cases these are stood completely on their heads. So much so that to proceed with the traditional moral approach to other war, and apply it as if there were no essential difference, would lead to solutions that would precisely favor the most immoral and most dangerous policies, rather than the ones which, if any, might promote less catastrophe. |
| 1962/12/11 | Ralph E. Lapp | Kill and Overkill |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 96
| I got a letter from Jim Douglass this morning. It was a good one, too. I think I will send "Peace in the PC" [Post-Christian Era] to Bishop [John J.] Wright. I think, too, that the new Lapp book, Kill and Overkill, is a very important one to clarify the issues, and to bring home the fact that this is not a war with bows and arrows, or even with blockbusters anymore, but that the whole concept of war has been stood on its own head, which it has always wanted to do anyway. And that if we persist in thinking it is a matter of easy syllogisms based on familiar premises, we will end up in the worst tragedy and justify the worst crimes. I am more and more convinced that the issue is one that involves a necessary cataclysm, overturning some of the most familiar axioms of our thought. If we cannot give up these apparent first principles (which are rooted in Constantine and Augustine), we are lost. Of course others have given them up long ago, and are operating without any principles at all. It sounds like Zen. I wish it were, because Zen is sane. But not the Pentagon |
| 1963/02/25 | Joseph Jean Lanza del Vasto | Pelerinage aux Sources |
Ltrs: CforT p. 138
| Yes, I know Lanza Del Vasto. There was a Jewish student of mysticism here who had visited the Community of L del V and spoke highly of it. I have also read what I think is his most interesting book, Le Pelerinage aux sources (i.e. to the sources of the Ganges). He is great friends with Victoria Ocampo. I have read parts of the "4 Plagues" and it is terrific. I have also read fine articles of his in peace publications. Talking of Victoria Ocampo: her friends got up a volume of Testimonios for her, and I was included: they put my name as "Thomas Merton S.J." "¦ |
| 1963/05/10 | Gordon C. Zahn | German Catholics and Hitler's War: A Study in Social Control |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 286
| Your manuscript has arrived and I am about halfway through it. The book is terrific. You are very clear, convincing, and as far as I can see quite fair. I think it is a very important study of the Cuba affair, and in many ways it is more important even than Zahn's study of Germany [German Catholics and Hitler's War, Sheed and Ward, 1962]. |
| 1963/05/10 | Leslie Dewart | Christianity and Revolution |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 286
| Your manuscript has arrived and I am about halfway through it. The book is terrific. You are very clear, convincing, and as far as I can see quite fair. I think it is a very important study of the Cuba affair, and in many ways it is more important even than Zahn's study of Germany [German Catholics and Hitler's War, Sheed and Ward, 1962]. |
| 1963/06/00 | Leslie Dewart | Christianity and Revolution |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 288
| Your manuscript on the Cuban revolution and on the ambivalence, hesitations, and withdrawal of the Cuban Church is a very perceptive and exciting political meditation and there is good reason for us to meditate politically when the moral and spiritual crisis of man at the end of an era of his history comes out in political conflict. I believe that the great religious temptation of our time, the apocalyptic temptation, will be (and already is) in the realm of politics. What do I mean by apocalyptic? I mean quite simply "final" and decisive as a manifestation of the secret of God in history and of the Christian capacity"”or failur"”to act according to His love. We are in the time of "the end""”not that everything necessarily has to blow up tomorrow. But we have certainly passed a point of no return and we live now in a world of fantastic perspectives, most of them, as I say, apocalyptic. To none of them are we yet adjusted. Your text is a good beginning. It shows the way we must attempt to seek some kind of clarity and understanding in the events of our time which ought to be supremely relevant to the Church insofar as these events all have Christian or "post-Christian" implications, either for us or against us. In these events we, and the Christian centuries, are now, at this very moment, being judged. |
| 1963/12/03 | Jose Maria Gironella | One Million Dead |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 42-43
| Am well on the way to finishing Gironella's great book (One Million Dead). Great in size, and a very competent work. A picture of the Spanish war that is complete and objective, not pretentious, compassionate, detached, often very humorous, but real. It is really quite an extraordinary book, rich in material, full of small touches, details, telling lines, full of people-characters all lightly drawn, the central one Ignacio in Spain, an impartial Spain-he has been on both sides, passed from one to the other through a kind of dynamiter's tunnel in Madrid-an aorta. |
| 1963/12/15 | Tom Stonier | Nuclear Disaster |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 45
| Reading Tom Stonier's Nuclear Disaster. A frightful book. Descriptions of the destruction, death and suffering at Hiroshima and Hamburg are already far more genuine than Dante's Hell. It is benign and humane by comparison. And what would the big bombs do? The thing is that this is not the aspect of the problem one should get obsessed with. If he does he runs the risk of seeing no positive hope-and really things are still not bright. But one must concentrate on every positive step towards controlling this thing and getting rid of it, however impossible that may sound. Merely contemplating the possible horror is no use at all. |
| 1964/03/03 | Rolf Hochhuth | Deputy / Translation from the German Der Stellvertreter |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 142-43
| A letter from the new Abbot General [Dom Ignace Gillet] came in concerning the articles on peace in Seeds of Destruction. [These articles were part of a manuscript Merton wrote in 1962 called Peace in a Post-Christian Era.] I was sure, since these had been cleared before by the previous Abbot General, with difficulties, but yet cleared and published, that I had the right to go ahead with them. However, the new Abbot General dug out all the correspondence, had a meeting with the definitors, and said that these articles are not to be "republished" in book form and implicitly in any other form... Naomi, frankly I must say that this whole thing leaves me a bit dizzy. And sick. I can't say exactly that it constitutes a temptation against my "vocation," but it certainly raises some pretty profound questions indeed. I know, one must just take it on the chin and shut up, etc., etc. But with all the attention that has been drawn to the obedience of an Eichmann and now even the question of Pius XII [the reference is to Hochhuth's play The Deputy], the props given by the conventional arguments don't offer much support. One is faced with the very harrowing idea that in obeying one is really doing wrong and offending God. I know of course that my conscience tells me that this is by no means certain and that the only thing is to trust Him and hope for the best. But it certainly wrings all the last drops of alacrity out of one's obedience and one's zest for the religious life. |
| 1964/04/17 | Piotr Rawicz | Blood from the Sky |
Ltrs: CforT p. 105
| That [Piotr] Rawicz [Blood from the Sky]. It is magnificently horrible, and I am terribly impressed by it. There is a sort of limitlessness and lawlessness, a total madness about it which makes it a strangely sober statement in the end, so that one takes everything very seriously. It is neither honest nor possible to complain of a single line. He has the right to say anything he likes and be heard, because even the most extravagant thing he can say is far short of the truth, and what he is talking about has awful religious implications. So thanks for both these books "¦ |
| 1964/05/17 | Plato | Gorgias |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 104-05
| Yesterday, on the Vigil, a group of the Hibakusha [Note 29: Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] on the World Peace Mission Pilgrimage came out here... People signed and marked by the cruelty of the age, signs on their flesh because of the thoughts in the minds of other men. They are an important indication of what certain "civilized" thinking really means. When we speak of "freedom" we are also saying that others like these good, charming, sweet, innocent people will be burned, annihilated, if and when we think we are menaced. Does this make sense? Is it not an indication that our thinking is absurdly flawed? True, our thinking is logical and makes war seem right and necessary when it is fitted into a certain context, starting from certain supposed "axioms." The trouble is with the context and the axioms, and the root trouble is the whole concept of man and indeed of reality itself with which man operates. The thinking has not changed because the "axioms" have not changed. They are the axioms of sophistry and sophistry as Plato knew spells tyranny and moral anarchy. An illuminating experience, to read the last pages of Gorgias and to meet the Hibakusha on the same day. I spoke to them briefly, was not expecting an interpreter and was a bit put out-he translated and explained enthusiastically and I think we were in good rapport but there was not much discussion. |
| 1964/11/10 | Gordon Zahn | In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 164
| And it was certainly profitable to read Balthasar and Gordon Zahn's little book on the objector [Franz] Jägerstätter, which is surprisingly good [In Solitary Witness, 1964]. |
| 1964/11/12 | Gordon Zahn | In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 165
| Reading proofs of Zahn's book on the Austrian peasant Jägerstätter, executed by Hitler for conscientious objection. It is an excellent job. Moving above all are the notes of Jägerstätter himself, his "commentaries" on the war. Their lucidity and accuracy are astounding, and so much greater than that of so many bishops and scholars, and commentators at the time. Here was a simple, barely educated man who saw things clearly and stated them as he saw them! One thing strikes me above all. The Catholic Church in Germany and Austria, having condemned Nazism before it came to power, and having afterwards collaborated with it when in power, was surely aware that Nazism was irreconcilably opposed to the Church-just as much as Communism. Why did the Church support Nazism and never compromise with Communism? Perhaps because the Nazis were more pragmatic in offering a means to compromise. But also, basically, because of property. |
| 1964/11/20 | Gordon Zahn | In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 107
| Thanks for your letters, etc., and for the copies of Peace News. I certainly understand your difficulties about editing the long article I sent and have no objections to the fact that it came back. I am glad you were able to use a little of it anyway. Here is the review of Gordon Zahn's book, which I reviewed in proof. I hope it will be satisfactory. I thought the book was really firstrate. I hope it will be read and understood especially by those who need to read and understand it, and not only by those of us who already agree with it anyway. I have especially liked Tom McGrath's things in PN and also the article by John Wilkinson in the last issue, which is very much to the point. I have also been reading [Jacques] Ellul. |
| 1964/12/05 | Felix Greene | Curtain of Ignorance |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 175
| So many good books around and in the woodshed after dinner. Pasternak once. Lately Ellul, and Felix Green's Curtain of Ignorance (good information on the bad reporting about China), Stevie Smith, Françoise Henri on Irish art, Auden "The Enchafed Flood," and last summer Kenneth Jackson's Early Celtic Nature Poetry. Also Nora Chadwick, etc., etc. (I got a charming letter from the Carmelites of Waterbeach, her friends). And of course recently Ionesco-Rhinoceros, The Future Is in Eggs, etc. I am still busy with his Notes et contre-notes. |
| 1964/12/17 | Gordon Zahn | In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter |
Ltrs: HGL p. 654
| Peace News asked me to review your book on Jagerstaetter [In Solitary Witness], and I did. Here is a copy of the review. I thought the book was extremely well done. It made very good reading, and any reader with average sense can surely get to it. Yet it is also scientific. I think it is really a fine contribution to the cause of peace, and will certainly make it hard for the disgruntled and pious supporters of the bomb to accuse you of being nasty, because the book does not really imply any special attack on anyone. It just says what the man did. |
| 1964/12/27 | Camille Drevet | Par les routes humaines |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 98
| I must thank you for your new book, Par les routes humaines, which reached me some time ago. I have not yet finished reading it, but it is really a most absorbing and fascinating book, full of all kinds of good things. You have had a rich and fruitful experience and have indeed traveled the ways of men and found Christ in them. I compliment you on the book, which is very fine and I am delighted to have it. I will continue to enjoy it and profit by it at leisure. |
| 1965/01/17 | Philip Berrigan | No More Strangers |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 193
| Last week I wrote the preface for Phil Berrigan's book [No More Strangers, 1965] in which there are many fine ideas and some bad writing. |
| 1965/02/17 | William Du Bay | Human Church |
Ltrs: HGL p. 168
| The book idea sounds fine. I am glad you are writing on war and peace. With the present mess in Vietnam the subject needs treatment, and it is very ambiguous indeed. It seems to me that what needs treatment is something more than nuclear weapons or total warfare, but above all the fact that now Catholic moralists are to a great extent accepting a completely pragmatic and unprincipled moral code in international affairs. There could be no clearer and more obvious example of immoral and aggressive action than the bombing of North Vietnam recently in reprisal for raids carried out by South Vietnamese rebels. The trouble is that the truth of the situation is consistently distorted, and it is to the interest of the Pentagon and the arms manufacturers to see that it is distorted because a bigger war is to their advantage. They are obviously not getting anywhere with the guerrilla kind "¦ "¦ You have to be careful that you don't handle the issue in such a way that it can be easily discredited by right-wing types. From that point of view, you have to be especially careful since they have got you typed. You are already a stereotype of the rebel priest, and that puts any cause you defend at a disadvantage since it will be prejudged every time. I would say be as objective and as straight as you can, and don't be unnecessarily provocative, in the interests of truth and peace "¦ |
| 1965/07/17 | John Maccquarrie | Extentialist Theology: a Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 271
| "An important part of the witness of the Church, or in other words an important way of proclaiming the Word must be simply a manifestation within the Christian community of a spirit of fellowship and love which cannot be found outside it," writes McQuarrie in his critique of Bultmann (Existential Theology, p. 221). He recognizes organization as a "problem." Love is least in evidence when the Church is most organized, perhaps most in evidence when Christians were driven into deserts or catacombs. (This is a concession he makes.) He also admits the Church can usurp what rightly belongs to the person and make all his decisions for him (or try to). (Why the question of the bomb is an "exposed nerv" in the whole problem of renewal.) Here is where the Bishops (especially American) want to decide the whole question of war, etc. beforehand, instead of letting the faithful come to their own conclusions as the situation develops. |
| 1965/12/24 | Gordon Zahn | In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 111
| The Council says explicitly that it is good that there be legal provision made for those who object to modern war and that these should consider themselves obliged to serve their society in some peaceful capacity. This being the case, no one should regard a Catholic objector as an oddity anymore. You are right, of course, that crazy and irresponsible protests on the part of pacifists do more harm than good and I have been in some arguments with them recently on this score. They are antagonizing good, honest people who really want to find out what the score is. You might also read Gordon Zahn's book In Silent [Solitary] Witness, on the Austrian Catholic objector [Franz Jägerstätter] executed under Hitler. The boys might enjoy it also. I don't say you ought to give them a forceful indoctrination, but they should have an opportunity to learn the other side of the question. The problem of social pressures is, of course, always going to be difficult, and it will perhaps be much worse in the future. |
| 1966/12/30 | Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez (ed.) | Letters from Mississippi |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 175
| Reading Letters from Mississippi - the SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] book [edited by Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez, 1965] about the 1964 Freedom project. Very good, very moving, it leaves you a little hopeless - sense of a transitional style in the Civil Rights movement - realization that it ccomplished so little - yet was a great thing, especially for the white students and intellectuals who were in it. They profited most (and three were killed, of course). |
| 1967/03/24 | James W. Douglas | Non-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace |
Ltrs: HGL p. 164
| Ping Ferry sent me what is evidently a chapter of a new book of yours and I just want to say how much I have been stimulated by reading it [Chapter 3 of The Non-Violent Cross, "From Gandhi to Christ"]. Certainly you are now getting into your full stride and this is far and away the best and most important thing you have ever written, or that I have seen of yours. I am glad to see someone make the right qualifications about technology while fully accepting secularity as it must be accepted. The trouble with the "secular" Christianity more or less in fashion now, at least among Catholics, as far as I can judge, is that it is simply bustling to catch up with the status quo: affluence, gimmickry, the Muzak-supermarket complex and all that. The net result of all this is merely that Los Angeles is the New Jerusalem. There has to be an element of furtherlooking protest if the absent God is somehow to be realized as present in the supermarket. You bring this out very well. |
| 1967/05/03 | Franz Fanon | Wretched of the Earth |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 226
| Reading [Frantz] Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth [New York, 1963]), Malcolm X and beginning Soul [on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver (New York, 1967)], all in view of an essay on war for a symposium edited by someone at Drexel. |
| 1967/05/04 | Franz Fanon | Wretched of the Earth |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 227
| Reading Fanon - and in contrast - stuff about Hippies in S.F. and an illuminating critique of Salinger by Mary McCarthy (in Dommergues). Hate stuff, Love stuff, all marketable, all advertised, all publicized, all disturbing to the consumer who lives in his suburb, and all of it - I wonder if it means anything? (Except Fanon who talks out of another world not of surfeit and drugs but of hunger and desperation.) Now synthetic visions which are supposed to be real. Not orthodoxies and anti-orthodoxies and visions of life which one is supposed to purchase this morning. |
| 1967/06/30 | James W. Douglas | Non-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace |
Ltrs: HGL p. 166
| I am returning the two chapters with thanks. The one on the Council is really first-rate, one of the best things in the book full of valuable information and perspectives. And it is really sobering to read! For the first time I have clearly felt to what an extent the Constitution on the Church in the World is an admission that the Church cannot pretend to talk to the world in that way: that she just can't claim to have answers the world really needs to listen to. The efforts of those people to tell everybody what God's mind about the bomb is are just a little shocking, though so many of them did try hard. They were honest and so on. It is getting clearer and clearer that the institutional Church does not measure up to the tasks that she believes and proclaims to be hers, and it is a wonder more people are not fully aware of that. I guess a lot are "¦ |
| 1967/08/02 | Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo | Homo Militans |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 271
| Reading [Joost] Meerloo's remarkable manuscript Homo Militans [Militant Man] (not yet published in English - he wants me to collaborate with him on it). It is very interesting for the idea that I am working on - ambiguity and "communication" through the language - doubletalk and doublethink - surrounding peace and war. He makes so clear the fact that on another level than that of explicit statements, we convey fears, hostilities etc. which are the "real" communication. |
| 1967/09/18 | John Paddock (ed.) | Ancient Oaxaca: Discoveries in Mexican Archeology and History |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 292
| This time, finished Two Leggings - a rather sad, futile sort of book. With all his striving for powerful visions and strong medicine he never got to be chief. Fought the Sioux on the side of the whites - and the whites took away the Crows' land anyway. In the end a white officer gave him a five-dollar gold piece. Sunday was great. Discovery of the Zapotecan city of Monte Alban in new book edited by J. Paddock. Rereading Mosley on the Mayas. Sacred cities in center of sparsely populated rural areas. Cult centers without army and without King. An ideal, peaceful civilization. No one knows why it finally folded up. Same all through Mexico in the "Classic" period. Zapotecs, Mayas, Toltecs. Violence came with decadence. Aztecs were the last end of it. The final corruption. |
| 1967/10/3 | James W. Douglas | Non-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace |
Ltrs: HGL p. 166
| I am doubly sorry for having delayed about your chapter"”the last one ["Christians and the Stat"] ... This last chapter is one of the best and makes some splendid points. You have stated better than anyone recently the whole point of the "render under Caesar" business and I think your final sentence caps it perfectly. It is a very good chapter, but I do have one complaint about it. It seems to me that there is one very thin patch, around p. 21, when you slide over the Constantinian transition with the greatest of ease. A thousand and two thousand years of history are it seems to me dismissed with little hint of their enormous complexity. I don't say "dismissed" fairly, of course, because you cannot be expected to go into all that. Yet it is central to your argument. At the same time, do we really yet know what really went on, what kind of a shift really took place in the thinking of the Church, when "Christendom" went into business? I think it yet remains to be studied. And then too there are so many subtleties about the Dark Ages, about the "truce of God" in the tenth century, about the First Crusade as a means of peace, by uniting warring Westerners not in an attack on Jerusalem but in defense of Byzantium (thus helping reunite the two Churches then breaking apart). And all that. I think your treatment needs to at least hint at all these complexities which make the thing more mysterious and more real at the same time. |
| 1968/01/10 | Dietrich Bonhoeffer | Letters and Papers from Prison |
Jnl 7 ('67-'68) p. 37
| Bonhoeffer says, "It is only when one sees the anger and wrath of God hanging like grim realities over the heads of one's enemies that one can know something of what it means to love and forgive them." This is the key to the dishonesty of Styron's treatment of Nat Turner. Styron "enjoys" wrath as an indulgence which is not seen as having anything serious to do with religion whatever. Religion suddenly appears on the last page as a suggested preposterous reconciliation (in purely sentimental terms). To treat a prophet of wrath while having no idea of the meaning of wrath, and reduce that wrath to the same level as masturbation fantasies! The whole thing is an affront to the Negro"”though it is well-meant, even "sympathetic." It reduced me finally to desperation! How can white people do anything but cheat and delude the Negro, when that is only part of their own crass self-delusion and bad faith! |
| 1968/01/10 | William Clark Styron | Confessions of Nat Turner |
Jnl 7 ('67-'68) p. 37
| Bonhoeffer says, "It is only when one sees the anger and wrath of God hanging like grim realities over the heads of one's enemies that one can know something of what it means to love and forgive them." This is the key to the dishonesty of Styron's treatment of Nat Turner. Styron "enjoys" wrath as an indulgence which is not seen as having anything serious to do with religion whatever. Religion suddenly appears on the last page as a suggested preposterous reconciliation (in purely sentimental terms). To treat a prophet of wrath while having no idea of the meaning of wrath, and reduce that wrath to the same level as masturbation fantasies! The whole thing is an affront to the Negro"”though it is well-meant, even "sympathetic." It reduced me finally to desperation! How can white people do anything but cheat and delude the Negro, when that is only part of their own crass self-delusion and bad faith! |