"I am truly spry and full of fun, but am pursued by the vilifications of progressed Catholics. Mark my word man there is no uglier species on the face of the earth than progressed Catholics, mean, frivol, ungainly, inarticulate, venomous, and bursting at the seams with progress into the secular cities and Teilhardian subways. The Ottavianis was bad but these are infinitely worse. You wait and see."
-letter to Robert Lax, poet and friend of Merton, 1967
Who'd'a thunk? He knew his progressives, didn't he?
ReplyDeleteI'm delighted that my wife Patricia has introduced me to this blog.I'm reminded of the nuns who were executed in El Salvador back around the early '80s. They were supposedly shot by "right wing death squads" and the mass media made a big splash about it. I'd often thought those pathetically modernist sisters wouldn't be caught dead in their habits. As horrific as the slaughter was it pales in comparison to the thousands of religious (many of them nuns of course) martyred in the Spanish Civil War. That butchery was not unlike the Mexican Cristero rebellion of the l920s and the French Revolution is always strictly censored by the same hypocrites who profess to condemn "censorship." I'm rather sensitive to this issue of religious persecution because my late mother knew 2 Carmelite priests and one brother in Tucson, who were sent back to Spain and died for the faith before Franco "El Caudillo" put a stop to the bloodshed in l939. THAT'S the real reason his name is ALWAYS maligned in the mass media, not because he was some "dictator". If that were the case, then press, TV and radio would also condemn Fidel Castro of Cuba. As they say, "only the good die young."
ReplyDeleteI had an aunt who belonged to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart (CMF) living in Cuba when the reds took over. She was lucky to make it alive to Miami with literally nothing left but her habit after Castro's communists confiscated her convent. On a side note I was surprised to see that there was no caption under the picture of that circus tent type of a basilica which now enshrines the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I last lived in Mexico City in l976 when I paid a visit to "La Virgen Morena" and fortunately never had to see her image housed in the new monstrosity that was still under construction.
Viva Cristo Rey!
I've read A LOT of Fr. Merton and he is FAR from the man popularly depicted. Buried in his journals are all sorts of treats, especially about the beauty of the holy Mass and his love the Blessed Mother.
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