Thomas Merton on Roots of War

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Thomas Merton was one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton is acclaimed as one of the most influential Catholic and American spiritual writers of the twentieth century. The Catholic theologian, poet, author and social activist, Merton wrote over sixty books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.1 He also became well known for his dialogue with other faiths and his stand on non-violence during the race riots and Vietnam War of the 1960s2. Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915, in Prades, France. Till early of his twenties he did not have any interest in religion, but after one of his trips to Rome where he found himself interested in churches and visited a Trappist monastery. In his Seven Story Mountain he remarks: “I should like to become a Trappist monk.”3 And that he did – on December, 10, 1941 Thomas Merton entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, a community of monks belonging to the most ascetic Roman Catholic monastic order, where he spent twenty-seven years. In May, 1961, 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel were sent to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers following a visit to the country by Vice-President Johnson, and in October same year, Merton’s The Root of War is Fear was published, marking the entry of Thomas Merton into the struggle against war. He starts the article with the words: “The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves.” He says that having actually no any logical reason for war, the whole world was falling “into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace.” The idea of peace transformed into only another form of war. Merton is asking

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