Word: trappists
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...advice. "Kneel and confess!" thundered the abbé. To his own surprise, Foucauld did. "As soon as I believed that there was a God," he wrote to a friend, "I realized that I could not do otherwise than live for Him." At the age of 31, he entered the Trappist order...
...your Feb. 2 article "Benedictine v. Trappist" I was very much impressed by the criticism of Thomas Merton by Dom Aelred Graham. I do not imagine that Father Graham has read Ascent to Truth by Merton; if he has, let him notice Chapter 14. Here are some excerpts: "He pours out His joy upon the whole world through the chosen," and "they all recognize in practice that infused contemplation is a gift of God and the best way for a man to dispose himself for this gift is renunciation and humility." This hardly seems to mean advocating ascetic monasticism...
Thomas Merton's language is that of paradox; his readers are trusted to look beyond the symbols to that which has been symbolized. It would seem that Dom Aelred Graham fails to read more than the letter which represents the Word . . . Trappists separate themselves from the world, but their days are filled with fervent prayers for it. Graham seems to mistake this act of love for a sign of suicidal despair; he seems to understand only one side of the Trappist paradox of suffering and joy. If Graham interprets Merton's advice as Cistercian propaganda for a Marxist...
Ever since the publication four years ago of his bestselling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, Trappist Thomas Merton (Father Louis) has been testifying to the virtues of the strict monastic life.* At least one of his fellow monks thinks that Merton makes too broad a case. Dom Aelred Graham, 46, a British theologian and an author himself (his latest book: Catholicism and the World Today), is now prior of St. Gregory's Priory in Portsmouth, R.I. He belongs to the Benedictines, an order older than the Trappists and far less stern in its practices. Writing for the Atlantic Monthly...
...dangerous oversimplification. He disapprovingly quotes some of Merton's advice to his readers-"Do everything you can to avoid the amusements and the noise and the business of men ... do not read their newspapers ... do not bother with their unearthly songs." In short-Graham summarizes-"become a Trappist-Cistercian monk while living in the world...