The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters on Religious Experience and Social Concerns by Thomas Merton & William Shannon

Author:Thomas Merton & William Shannon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Catholicism, Letters, Christianity
ISBN: 9781429966764
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Published: 2011-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

October 28, 1963

Thanks for your warm and kind letter of last August. Soon after getting it I went into the hospital and am only now catching up with correspondence. I have not been able to do anything on Pacem in Terris, though I share your view that it would be right for me to mimeograph something on it. However I am enclosing a mimeographed copy of a message of acceptance for a “peace medal” that was awarded me by a non-religious peace-movement group in Massachusetts [see The Non-Violent Alternative ]. It is made up mostly of university people and I was very touched and happy that they saw fit to make this gesture, partly because of my few writings on the subject and partly also because they were aware of the fact that I had been silenced on this point. I have not yet heard how the affair went off, as of course I was not able to be present …

The great March on Washington was in many ways triumphant, and it was certainly a magnificent expression of restraint, dignity, good order. The nobility of the thousands of Negro participants was evident in the highest degree, and when they “thanked the white people” who were there, one of my friends broke down in tears. Really, for the whites who participated, it was a very great grace, and something they needed. Indeed they needed this chance to give some sign of repentance, much more than the Negro needed to have them there. In fact, politically, the presence of these white people was perhaps not entirely an advantage to the Negro because it tended to confuse the real situation just a little. Everything that tends to preserve the atmosphere of illusion, the false optimism which supposes that the Negro has a place all ready for him in white America, once more strengthens the inertia of those attached to a status quo in which, in fact, the Negro has no place whatever. He is an outcast. You would be horrified to know to what extent even in the Negro ghettoes the Negro is oppressed and exploited by white men, even to the extent that it is very difficult for a Negro to own a store or run a business of any consequence even in the Negro ghetto, and the white shopkeepers bleed him with usury. This situation is very grave indeed and it is slowly creeping toward revolution of the violent kind, I very much fear. Yet the greatness of people like Martin Luther King is something to hope in and trust in. God can certainly use such men to work miracles, and perhaps He will. Indeed He already has.

Fr. Haring was here and we had a wonderful talk, all too short. He said he would read my peace book and try to intervene with Dom Gabriel. Unfortunately, I am afraid Dom Gabriel is too obsessed with the foreign policies of de Gaulle, and can never admit the possibility of disagreement on this matter of the bomb.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.