Thomas Merton on Peace

By Thomas Merton

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0841500606
• ISBN13: 9780841500600
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: McCall Pub. Co
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Defines as all Father Merton's writings that no Catholic may go to war = Blessed are the peacemakers

This collection of peace and pacifist essays by the Reverend Father Thomas Merton was gathered for publication shortly after his violent assassination forty years ago, as so many powerful and persistent voices for peace and against war that darkening year were silenced by the USG. These 40 strong essays mainly come from such earlier peace collections by Father Merton as Faith And Violence: Theology, Raids on the Unspeakable and Seeds of Destruction as well as Breakthrough to Peace: Twelve Views on the Threat of Thermonuclear Extermination and The Critique of War: Contemporary Philosophical Explorations, many others of these many peace essays bear no such prior adscription. We do very well now to read, for instance, his Tribute to Gandhi as well as his Blessed are the Meek, The Christian Roots of Nonviolence. His long essay The Christian in World Crisis remains essential reading for us today as we see total warmongering performed in the name of Christianity to impose our imperial force upon weaker, peace seeking nations. This essay in particular closely examines the essential Encyclical Letter (Pacem in Terris) of His Holiness John XXIII ... On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty. which every practicing Catholic must live in fulness and truth. In particular and in light of our present occupation of nations condemned by two popes let us consider these passages from Pacem in Terris, "As men in their private enterprises cannot pursue their own interests to the detriment of others, so too states cannot lawfully seek that development of their own resources which brngs harm to other states and unjustly oppresses them. This statement of Saint Augustine seems to be very apt in this regard - What are kingdoms without justice but large bands of robbers (92)?" We cannot have war for oil and call it a just war. There is no just war. Again we here read - "A civil authority that uses as its only or chief means either threats and fear of punishment or promises or rewards cannot effectively move men to promote the common good of all (48)." The Bush-Cheney foreign policies have no ethical, nor just basis, and the Reverend Father Andrew Greeley correctly comes to his conclusions in his collection of columns A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007. "For that reason (both men and nations) are right in not only easily yielding obedience to authority imposed by force or to an authority in whose creation they had no part and to which they themselves did not decide to submit by their own free choice (138)." What does this say to the people of the Palestine, or of Iraq, or of Colombia, or of the Afghan, etc., etc., etc., striving to breathe free under the boot heel of the torturing, killing, genocidal imperial occupation forces of Bush and the ongoing wars of seige? This holy and good book therefore must be found in the hands of all Catohlics for us to learn and to teach and to practice our true Faith. Each page pr