xt718911rr4d https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt718911rr4d/data/mets.xml  Thomas Merton 1967 This letter is from collection 75m28 Thomas Merton papers. archival material 75m28 English  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Thomas Merton correspondence Pentecost Letter from Thomas Merton, 1967 text Pentecost Letter from Thomas Merton, 1967 1967 1967 2023 true xt718911rr4d section xt718911rr4d Trappist, P.O. ,1 ~Ky
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PENTECOS T 1967

Dear Friends 2

The main piece of news at this season is the ordination to the priesthood of my
old friend Dan Walsh, formerly my professor of scholastic philosophyat Columbia. It
was he who first told me that such a place as Gethsemani existed. For the past seven
years he has been living here and teaching at the Abbey and at Bellarmine College
(Louisville). The retiring Archbishop of Louisville, John A. Floersch, decided that
Dan would make a good priest and got all the dispensations necessary to ordain him
without further delay. Dan is in his sixties. The ordination took place in Louisville
on Pentecost Surday and was very moving. Dan has so many friends and students, and
his ordination became for all of us a kind of providential happening that reminded us
that unpredictable changes can occur. I think everyone is looking for a less systematic
and less rigid kind of Church structure, something that leaves room for a more charis-
matic kind of. religion, and this gave some of us a small glimmer of hope. I had the
joy of concelebrating with Fr Walsh at the Louisville Carmel (wherehe has also given
some talks) and that too was a real happening. The contemplative nuns entered into it
with a great deal of very authentic joy that did one good. ‘ '

There is everywhere a kind of hunger for the grace and light of the Spirit in
forms that can be actually efirienced. One hears a great deal of movements that can
be called in a broad sort of sense "Pentecostal" even though they do not restrict them-
selves simply to far out Protestant groups by any means. I am often asked what I think
about all this. I cannot really judge from hearsay, but at any rate the phenomenon
represents a real spiritual hunger, just as the craze for LSD represents a real hunger
for experience - I hasten to add that I don't think an LSD trip is the answer for most
of us! Personally, my own life and vocation have their own peculiar dimension which
is a little different from all this. I have always tended more toward a deepening of
faith in solitude, a "desert" and "wilderness" existence in which one does not seek
special experiences. But I concur with these others in being unable to remain satisfied
with a formal and exterior kind of religion. Nor do I think that a more lively liturgy
is enough. Worship and belief have become ossified and rigid, and so has the religious
life in many cases. The idea that "the Church" does all your thinking, feeling, willing,
and experiencing for you is, to my mind, carried too far. It leads to alienation. After
all, the Church is made up of living and loving human beings: if they all act and feel
like robots, the Church can't experience and love in their behalf. The whole thing be-
comes an abstraction. Certainly it is fine that now the liturgy is becoming more spon-
taneous, more alive, and people are putting their hearts into it more. (I am not saying
it was not possible to enter into the old Latin liturgy, but it was hard for many).

But we need a real deepening of life in every area, and that is why it is proper that
laypeople and others who have been kept in subordinate positions are mw claiming the
right to rake decisions in what concerns their own lives. This is also true in religious
orders. As long as everything is decided at the top, and received passively by those at
the bottom, the vocatiOn crisis will continue. There is no longer any place in our life
for a passive and inert religiosity in which one simply takes orders and lets someone
else do all the thinking. Those who fail to accept such a situation are not rebels,
most of the time, they are just sensitive arrl intelligent human beings who protest
against a real disorder and who have a right to be heard.

That brings us to the question of monastic renewal. It is a question that I do not
feel competent to talk about at the moment. There is at present a General Chapter being
held. Our Fr Abbot left the other day for Rome. Most of us in the conmnmity here seem
to be doubtful whether anything special will come of it: there is a sense of "wait and
see". A big questionnaire was sent out to everyone in the Order -- a complicated but
routine affair -- and most people apparently wrote in their answers. But most seem to
have felt that this Gallup Poll approach was not too promising. At any event, a lot of
"wishes" will have been tabulated. Unfortunately the tabulation of wishes is not enough
to constitute renewal.

 

 If I were to leave it at that, this letter would perhaps be a bit dis couraging.
It need not necessarily be that. The institutional machinery for renewal is perhaps
not adequate, but that does not mean that renewal depends on the machine1y alone. It
will came not from the machine or the establishment but from persons. Fortunately
the establishment is much more willing to relax and give special permissions to try
out new ways, provided the establishment itself is absolved from responsibility for ,.
them. This is a very good thing. It provides opportunity for growth. One such ex-
periment is under way in France now, a return to a more primitive and solitary monasti-
cism in a wild mountain area, under the direction of one of the best men in the Order.
The experiemtn is taking place outside the Order, hence it will have leeway to flmction
and to grow. I think it has very good possibilities. I also think that the directory
for hermits written by Dom Jacques Winandy (who has a group of hermits on Vancouver
Island) is one of the best, monastic documnts to have appeared in the modem era. It
is not in print, however, and hoes not need to be. It will reach those for whom it
is intended. .

As for me, the job of renewal,boils down to the conversion of my own life. That
is quite a job in itself. Please pray that I may finally get down to it seriously and
do something about it. I am grateful to be in a situation in which I should be able
to achieve all that I believe I am called to do.

My best wishes always. Have a good summer.

With my love, in Christ,

MW