By RAY CAVANAUGH
The most famous Trappist monk of the 20th century was not originally a Catholic. Thomas Merton, born 100 years ago this January 31, was baptized first in the Church of England. Both of his parents were artists: His father was from New Zealand and his mother was from the U.S. Merton was born in the French Pyrenees, but as the dark and poisonous cloud of World War I swept over Europe, his family headed across the Atlantic to New York City.
When Merton was age six, his mother died of cancer. In the biography, Thomas Merton: The Man and His Work, author Dennis Q. McInerny tells how the mother, upon being hospitalized as a terminal patient, did not allow her children to see her in a declining predicament. Instead, she wrote a letter which informed young Thomas that he would not see her again.
Subsequent to his mother’s passing, he lived with his father in Bermuda, before returning to his maternal grandparents on Long Island, as his father went to Europe. At the age of ten, he rejoined his father and attended school in France for a few years, before heading to England.
Merton enrolled at Cambridge University in 1933, shortly after his father died of a brain tumor. While attending Cambridge, he lived a debauched existence, drinking copiously, spending recklessly, and womanizing. In fact, he even fathered a child, the identity of whom remained secret.
With the matter of the child’s paternity resolved discreetly in court, Merton headed back “home” to the New York area. Feeling inspired by the writings of Karl Marx, he became a card-carrying member of the Communist Party for some time. He strongly considered enrolling at the New School of Social Research but instead opted to enroll at Columbia University.
There, he was a renaissance man of sorts. He was in a fraternity; he joined the track team; he became involved with social activism; he contributed to basically every campus publication.
He took his bachelor’s degree in 1938. That same year, he converted to Catholicism. His biographer McInerny contends that: “In Catholicism [Merton] found a home where both his vibrant intellectual curiosity and wide-ranging mystical tendencies could live at peace and be assuaged.” Not long after converting, he desired to become a priest. He nearly became part of the Franciscan order but that phased out after he expressed his feelings of unworthiness, largely owing to past debauchery.
Though he wasn’t meant to be a Franciscan, Merton was to have success with the Trappists, joining the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky just a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Though he gave much to the monastic life, he also pursued a literary vocation. Of the several-dozen books he ultimately would write, the best-known was his spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, which inspired droves of young men to try the monastic life, many of them arriving with a copy of the book in their possession.
Having worked at the abbey as the master of scholastics, Merton became the master of novices, deciding who should stay and who should go among the arrivals to Gethsemani. Though Merton, like many monks, went years at a time without venturing far from his monastery, the year 1968 saw him embark on a grand voyage to the Far East.
His presence was sought not just by the Dalai Lama but also by several Trappist monasteries in the Orient. He also was asked to speak at a Bangkok conference on monasticism.
On the morning of December 10, 1968, he delivered a talk at the Bangkok conference. Several hours later, he was discovered dead in his room. Evidently, he had been electrocuted by a defective electronic device. And so without warning ended the life of one who was both a monk and a celebrity. He was just 53.
Though some have portrayed Merton as having remained forever in love with his Trappist existence, there are indications that say otherwise. In more recent time, correspondence has surfaced from the Gethsemani archives in which Merton writes how he has grown to “resent” Gethsemani, and that he “fight[s] against the place constantly.”
The website, catholic.com, includes an article by Anthony E. Clark, which says that: “Merton became increasingly attracted to Eastern religion as his attachments to his own monastery grew more tenuous.”
Though Merton the man was complicated and evidently conflicted, his writing style was simple and direct, intended to get the message across in the most effective manner, regardless of the complexities of his subject matter. Through his work, this largely secluded monk let strangers into his life on a far deeper level than the most camera-hungry public figure.
The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky., provides a wealth of information, including centennial events, at the website: merton.org.
Additionally, there is a Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh which will hold a series of events in April to commemorate his centennial. Further information can be obtained at: thomasmertoncenter.org.
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