The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

MERTON'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH:
Commonweal, to the editors of the

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Descriptive Summary

Record Group: Section A - Correspondence

Dates of materials: 1962, 1965; 1967

Volume: 6 item(s); 12 pg(s)

Scope and Content

Included is a reply to Joseph G. Hill's criticism of his Commonweal article of February 9, 1962, two letters of 1965 in response to the Vietnam War, and one letter (not sent) regarding an article by Daniel Callahan and Church renewal dated March 1, 1967.

Biography

Usage Guidelines and Restrictions

Related Information and Links

See also: Cold War Letters #49, published in Witness to Freedom, pp. 39-41.

Other Finding Aids

If the person in correspondence with Merton has full text records in the Merton Center Digital Collections, there will be a numeric link to them below.
   

Series List

This Record Sub-Group is not divided into Series and is arranged chronologically.

Container List

SeriesDateTypeTo/FromFirst LinesPubFull TextNotes
 1962/03/no? (#01)transcriptfrom MertonI admit that living in a monastery, as I have done for many years now, I am not in an ideal positionYes [Cold War Letters #49, published in <u>Commonweal</u> 1962/04/20] defends freedom to speak against the threat of nuclear war - reasonable to believe that a preemptive first strike could become US strategy / statements by popes and bishops against such means - "Meditations on a dangerous book, the Bible"
 1962/03/no? (#02)transcriptfrom Hill, Joseph G.Father Merton's "Nuclear War and Christian Responsibility" [Feb. 9] leave me with one inescapable  [copy of <u>Commonweal</u> 76 (April 20, 1962), pp. 84; and Merton's reply pp. 84-85, same as Item #01 of this date]
 1965/03/02 TAL[x]from MertonReading the excellent article of James Douglass on "The Council and the Bomb" this Shrove Tuesday,  [as "Modern War" <u>Commonweal</u> 82: 62-63] questions rationale of bombing campaigns killing an extraordinary amount of civilians which may be political tools rather than tactical necessities - the bombing with conventional weapons of Dresden in the Second World War, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
 1965/04/no (#01)TL[x]from MertonI must apologize for aiming another salvo in the direction of your editorial correspondence column,  Vietnam War / difference between active resistance to the war in Vietnam and the "pacifism of the weak", as others call it - moral problems with the war - possibility of World War III
 1965/04/no (#02)TAL[x]from MertonI must apologize for aiming another salvo in the direction of your editorial correspondence column,  Vietnam War / difference between active resistance to the war in Vietnam and the "pacifism of the weak", as others call it - moral problems with the war - possibility of World War III
 1967/03/01 TAL[x]from MertonMy usual reaction to articles by Daniel Callahan is that I seldom quite know what he is talking  [see Section E.1, Manuscript Essays, for the original draft of this letter, which was not sent - regarding Daniel Callahan's article "Renewal Mess" and the predicament of the majority of Catholics, caught between very conservative and very radical Catholics, and who identify with neither]
        

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