Camus, Catholicism and the Death Penalty

John the Baptist, drawing by Thomas Merton

Last week, Pope Francis declared that the death penalty “is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

In late July of 1967, Merton made a recording for the Sisters of Loretto. He said the following regarding the death penalty, its connection to violence and war, and a need to reform Church teaching and education:

"That the Church should support social order in this particular way, established order – many Catholics would fully agree with this. They would not perhaps go so far as to say the death penalty is a means of salvation, but they would say that this is a practical, reasonable way of looking at things. This kind of thinking, let us face it, underlies so much of the teaching, so much of the indoctrination, so much of the preparation for life that we give in our Catholic schools. This is the sort of thinking that is taken for granted, is inculcated and accepted in Catholic education to a great extent. That is a very shocking thing because it means that we are committed to this sort of inhuman, self-righteous support of society at any cost. This comes out, for example, in Cardinal Spellman’s defense of the Vietnam War. Cardinal Spellman can defend the Vietnam War and can even say 'my country right or wrong' because he thinks in these terms – he has grown up thinking in these terms, has always thought in these terms; [it] is natural for him to think in these terms. For real renewal to take place in the Church, in religious life and in education, this kind of thinking has to be changed." [Follow the link to a longer transcript of this recording.]

http://merton.org/ITMS/Seasonal/38/38-3MertonCamus.pdf

HT: International Merton Society

Merton & Fr. John of the Cross in convertible

 Fr. Louis and Fr. John of the Cross

Photo by Ann Wasserman (John of Cross's sister)

"An entirely beautiful, transfigured moment of love for God and the need for complete confidence in Him in everything, without reserve, even when almost nothing can be understood. A sense of the continuity of grace in my life and an equal sense of the stupidity and baseness of the infidelities which have threatened to break that continuity. How can I be so cheap and foolish as to trifle with anything so precious? The answer is that I grow dull and stupid and turn in false directions, without light, very often without interest and without real desire, out of a kind of boredom and animal folly, caught in some idiot social situation. It is usually a matter of senseless talking, senseless conduct and vain behavior, coming from my shyness and desperation at being in a bind I cannot cope with -- and if there is drink handy I drink it, and talk more foolishly. This of course is rare -- I was thinking of visits of Father John of the Cross [Wasserman]'s people (other side of the field) when I was not true to myself. With him I suppose I rarely was. And now where is he?"

- Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life, p.10 (August 16, 1963)

Note: Fr. John of the Cross was Merton's friend and confessor. Fr. John left the monastery in 1962.  He was perhaps Merton's closest friend at the monastery.

Fr. John of the Cross is mentioned with some frequency in Merton's journals, including a passage later incorporated into Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander in which Merton praises his preaching as the best in the community.

Edmund Wasserman, nicknamed "Cap" or "Cappy" by Merton, was a Gethsemani monk known as Fr. John of the Cross. He entered the monastery in 1948 and studied under Merton. He was a close friend of Merton, but left in late 1962. Merton became close to Wasserman's family, becoming like an adopted son to his parents. Merton wrote extensively to Wasserman's sister, Ann, who joined the Carmelites in Cleveland, taking the name of Sr. Anita of Jesus. (Source: "John of the Cross Wasserman." International Thomas Merton Society Newsletter, Vol. 16, No. 1. [Louisville, KY: International Thomas Merton Society, 2009], p. 3.)

In late 1962, after a period of unrest and tension with Abbot James Fox, which Merton comments on in his journal, Fr. John of the Cross left Gethsemani, never to return. In his poem "Gethsemani (May 19, 1966)," published in Eighteen Poems, Merton refers to Fr. John of the Cross as "A taut, embittered / Young Christ / Pierced by righteous insults." 

Though he remained away from the abbey, Fr. John of the Cross refused to request a dispensation from his vows until persuaded to do so by Abbot Timothy Kelly in 1999; at that time he was not required to seek laicization from the priesthood and so was able to remain a priest in good standing until his death.

After leaving Gethsemani, he moved to Detroit, earned a Masters Degree from the University of Detroit, and taught in inner-city Detroit Public Schools for a quarter century, often celebrating Mass in his apartment and ministering to young people in his neighborhood. He adopted James, a young African American who took Fr. John's surname as his own. Merton was able to stay in indirect contact with Fr. John through his sister Anita, a Carmelite nun in Cleveland, with whom Merton maintained a correspondence (published in part in The School of Charity).

At the request of his family, Fr. John's funeral took place January 5, 2009 in the Guest Chapel at the Abbey of Gethsemani, celebrated by Fr. James Conner, who also delivered the eulogy, and attended by Sr. Anita, Fr. John's brother Robert, his adopted son James with his wife Juanna and two children, and a number of the monks. His ashes were buried in the extern cemetery at Gethsemani.

Fr. Louis-Thomas Merton OCSO and Fr. John of the Cross Wasserman OCSO as young monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani with Fr. John of the Cross’ sister in the center who became a Discalced Carmelite Nun

humility

"Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love ... It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost. In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. . . . But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity."

"Humility, therefore, is absolutely necessary if man is to avoid acting like a baby all his life. To grow up means, in fact, to become humble, to throw away the illusion that I am at the center of everything and that other people only exist to provide me with comfort and pleasure…”

-- Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

a great mystery of poverty and darkness and strength

 Sculpture by Jaime Andrade, Photo by Thomas Merton

Elsewhere on this blog I have a story about this artist and sculpture and very poor scan. -

"all that is most abject, forgotten, despised and put aside"

Yesterday I found this much better photo of the sculpture.

The photo is of a statue of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus which was photographed atop a tree stump with a tree in the background at Gethsemani Abbey. Merton took the photo, which is now at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville.

Jaime Andrade, an artist from Quito, Ecuador created the sculpture in mahogany.

In 1958 Merton commissioned Andrade to do a statue of the Virgin Mary and child Jesus in dark wood for the novitiate library. "A statue," as he explains, "that would tell the truth about God being 'born' Incarnate in the Indians of the Andes. Christ poor and despised among the disinherited of the earth." (Merton, A Search for Solitude, p. 177.)

Merton describes its imagery as "precisely that of Louis M[assignon]" Merton interpreted the mother as an indigenous Andean who reflected "a great mystery of poverty and darkness and strength" and the child as "the Resurrection to be born from the despised peoples of Mexico and the Andes" who holds a "mystical bit of fruit" that represented salvation. She represents "all that is most abject, forgotten, despised, and put aside."

"I want to say how deeply moved I am at this idea of Louis Massignons's that salvation is coming from the most afflicted and despised. This, of course, is the only idea that makes any sense in our time." (from a letter to Jacques Maritain, 17 Aug 1960)

In seeing the Mother and Child statue take place, Merton suggested that the child hold something - a branch, fruit, or root, something indigenous to South America. Definitely not corn "because of its association with bad art". 
 
A Life for Art : The Jaime Andrade Ecuadorian Collection

Merton's correspondence with Jaime Andrade 

when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist

 Bob Cunnane, John Howard Yoder, and Thomas Merton (left to right) discuss technology and other forces related to “spiritual roots of protest” during the Gethsemani Abbey retreat Merton hosted in 1964. (Photo credit: Jim Forest)

"Of course, it is true that religion on a superficial level, religion that is untrue to itself and to God, easily comes to serve as the 'opium of the people.' And this takes place whenever religion and prayer invoke the name of God for reasons and ends that have nothing to do with him. When religion becomes a mere artificial facade to justify a social or economic system - when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular and ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate. It deadens the spirit enough to permit the the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for this truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and of love, and becomes the law that might-makes-right: established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo."

Thomas Merton (Contemplative Prayer, pp. 113)

Tom Stone photogrpahy

 Robert Lax - photo by Tom Stone

Tom Stone (born July 12, 1971) is an American humanitarian photography. His work depicts the discrepancy between the American dream and the American reality, clearly captured through the telling faces of those living on the fringes of society. He is most widely known for his documentary photography of outsider, displaced and homeless populations in California.

• On Poverty

I think there’s a decided middle spectrum of humanity where circumstance, luck, and small choices conspire to vastly differing fates. We’re all imperfect, and most of us are only a shadow of who we’d hoped we’d be.

To my thinking, the original human trauma is our separation. We are too close not to need each other; and too far to trust each other.

I count it as a measure of our ignorance, the depth of poverty in the world. It’s a glaring marker to how far we have not come.

The younger you are the more you are affected by the sight of poverty and homelessness. Pay attention to how children react to folks on the street. I try to be disturbed by the same things that disturb kids.

• On Photography

The photo is a memento of the interaction.

A cloudy reflection is sometimes better than none.

 from Wikipedia 

Tom Stone Gallery

God speaks

God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart, but in the voice of the stranger.
— Thomas Merton, Emblems of a Season of Fury, p 82