Word: trappists
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...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...
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...
...list of Saints for Now covers a wide literary spectrum. Among them: Novelists Evelyn Waugh, D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Kathleen Norris, Journalists Vincent Sheean, Rebecca West and Whittaker Chambers, Sportswriter Paul Gallico, Poet Alfred Noyes and Moviemaker John Farrow. The majority are Roman Catholics, and all but two-Trappist Thomas (The Seven Storey Mountain) Merton and Sister Madeleva, president of Indiana's St. Mary's College-are laymen...
There were arguments pro & con over who helps the church more-the active priest or the contemplative. Said the Right Rev. M. James Fox, Abbot of the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in Kentucky,* whose monks take a vow never to speak, "Silence does not lock the soul in a prison . . . Silence merely gives you a heart filled with Jesus." Countered Dom Aelred Graham, a Benedictine who writes and teaches, "It is possible to do more good and lose nothing of contemplation by creative and more active work for society...