You’re sadly mistaken.

I’ve logged my time with Merton. The entire journals. The vast majority of the published works. I’m going to say you are mistaken, but I suspect you are purposefully misrepresenting Merton.

In the 1950s, Merton was as solid a Pre Vatican II Catholic as you could find on planet earth. What does “actively and intensely interacting” mean? Met a Buddhist and liked him?

You have yet to quote a Merton work, and if the man studied Buddhism, who cares? Does an interest in comparative spirituality make a person a non-Christian? You’re just picking on Merton because I like him. Too bad he has zero to do with a prosperity gospel motivational speaker.

I was going to just label you a troll, but I think we’re done here. No more. Take it to your blog.

Not saying much. Vatican II was bringing in the whole idea that perhaps those in other religions could make it to heaven apart from the gospel.

“Those wanting to portray Merton as apostate and New Age ignore 3 decades of writing and obsess on the raw data of one year.”

Uh, Michael – As early as the 1950’s, Merton was actively and intensely interacting with Zen Buddhism.

“What Merton would have done with $73 million in one year is also a mystery.”

Well, I don’t know. What Joel Osteen would do with the Buddhist nirvana is a mystery as well.

I will not publish another one. Link it off-site.

Your attempt to characterize Merton as apostate based on his last journals, one overseas trip and last speeches is pathetic. Merton scholars of every level and commitment would tell you the same thing: Merton’s life work is overwhelmingly squarely in the Roman Catholicism of his time. His explorations and speculations concerning monastic prayer and other religions are footnotes that will never be fully integrated into Merton’s life because he himself never was able to reflect on them. Those wanting to portray Merton as apostate and New Age ignore 3 decades of writing and obsess on the raw data of one year. Freshman error.

If Merton left Roman Catholic orthodoxy when he left the monastery, I’ll be the first to say that is wrong and was serious error. I’ve never advocated him or any catholic as authorities on the Gospel as I understand it.

What Merton would have done with $73 million in one year is also a mystery.

You stated…

“We need to warn those who think that Mr. Olsteen is teaching Christianity that he isn’t, lest they meet the true Christ, and find out that He doesn’t know them.”

Let me ask you, then, whether you think the following quotations are “teaching Christianity.”

“Rice says: “Merton saw other religions and other denominations as travellers on the same road. He was a student for years of Judaism and non-Christian religions. He went deeply into Hinduism and Buddhism. The monastery (Gethsemani) did not appreciate that he wrote so much about non-Christian religions. Christians, then and today, see non-Christians as potential targets for conversion, souls to be captured and turned into good Christians. Merton didn’t see it like that. His writings on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and later, Islam, are significant because of his belief that all of them are searching, as he was, for the ultimate truth.” ”

http://www.therealmerton.com/tommie5.html

“”…the question of Asian monasticism for Christians should not be interpreted in terms of just playing an Asian part or an Asian role. It is not that we want to look like Asians; it is not sufficient simply to present an Asian image…I think we have to go much deeper than this.

“…And I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism, and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own traditions, because they (the Asians) have gone, from the natural point of view, so much deeper into this than we have. The combination of the natural techniques and the graces and the other things that have been manifested in Asia, and the Christian liberty of the gospel should bring us all at last to that full and transcendent liberty which is beyond mere cultural difference and mere externals — and mere this and that.”
I will conclude on that note, Merton said. That note seems to have been a clear proposal for a blending of the religions, and for the mutual advantages such a blending should bring. ”

http://www.therealmerton.com/tommie5.html

“During a conference on contemplative prayer, Thomas Merton was asked the question: “How can we best help people to attain union with God?” His answer was very clear: “We must tell them that they are already united with God.” Contemplative prayer is nothing other than coming into consciousness of what is already there (emphasis mine, A Time of Departing by Ray Yungen, p. 80).”

http://www.letusreason.org/current74.htm

“Thomas Merton understood the rain. He realized it nurtured rich and poor indiscriminately. Some of his greatest encounters with enlightenment were intertwined with the rain. Rain is universal. Merton knew further that salvation was universal. Salvation was a gift of grace and it fell on all just as the rain.

He saw the duty and destiny of man to be one of abandoning oneself to enlightenment. Man needed not to possess anything, he needed only to allow nothing to possess him. For Thomas Merton life was a dance in the rain. It was joy. It was an unrestrained search and it was a calm day listening to the soft sound of rain in the pines. No peaceful and sincere spiritual expression was exempt from its place at the dance or in the rain. Buddhism, Judaism, Islam & Sufism, Hinduism…all spiritual paths, fit within the peaceful and loving world sanctified by Thomas Merton’s dance in the rain.”

http://4dw.net/milford63/TheRainAndThomasMerton.html

“All religions, Merton had said, end up “with the simplest and most baffling thing of all: direct confrontation with Absolute Being, Absolute Love, Absolute Mercy or Absolute Void.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3664/is_199904/ai_n8847211/pg_6

“Merton’s discovery of the divinity of created things should not have surprised him. As with Louisville in 1958, so here in 1968, intuition preceded experience. In the conferences he led just before his Asian journey, he had said, “you have to . . . see God in His creation and creation in God … everything manifests God … He is in everything.”62 At Polonnaruwa, he met the divinity, and felt its welcoming touch as, in Louisville, he had felt the hand of Sophia. In Louisville, he had seen glory in all people; now he sensed divinity in ordinary matter. In his final illumination, he sees all matter containing divine energy; the rocks are transfigured.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3664/is_199904/ai_n8847211/pg_7

“Merton had used the term dharmakaya only once before in his journal, when he visited the Tibetan spiritual master Chatral Rimpoche. Their conversation spiraled around one topic: “the ultimate emptiness, the unity of sunyata and karuna, going `beyond the dharmakaya’ and `beyond God’ to the ultimate perfect emptiness.” The two hermits confessed that neither had attained “perfect emptiness,” yet they recognized each other as people “who were somehow on the edge of great realization.”"

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3664/is_199904/ai_n8847211/pg_8

“; he was a mystic searching for God, but a God that crossed the boundaries of all religions; his was not a purely Christian soul. He developed closer spiritual ties than Church authorities will ever admit to the Eastern religions, Hinduism as well as Buddhism. In fact just before his appalling accidental death in December 1968, he was saying openly that Christianity could be greatly improved by a strong dose of Buddhism and Hinduism into its faith.”

http://www.contemplative.us/archives/2006/08/on_thomas_merton.php

“A new abbot allowed him the freedom to undertake a tour of Asia at the end of 1968, during which he met the Dalai Lama in India. He also made a visit to Polonnaruwa (in what was then Ceylon), where he had a religious experience while viewing enormous statues of the Buddha. There is speculation that Merton wished to remain in Asia as a hermit.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

I’ll let “childish” pass, but in general I’m not paying my ISP to give folks space to call me names.

http://pillowfreechristianity.blogspot.com/

Don’t miss it readers. Be sure and visit. Enjoy yourself. Start up a comment thread. ”

What is that supposed to mean? If you are plugging my blog, well thanks. But what relevance has this comment to anything? You are being childish, aren’t you?

I’ve read some Merton, and hope to read more when I get a chance. I do think that some of his later stuff was tending in the wrong direction, and would have liked his abbot to have done a better job of stopping it.

But, no Catholic would go to him for doctrine instruction. Perhaps insight into prayer but not doctrine.

Also, he doesn’t have the influence that Joel Olsteen has, nor is he thought of as a Christian leader. Mr. Olsteen is, and as a leader should be held to a higher standard of teaching orthodox Christianity. So, if he isn’t then, he should be critized for it. (I suspect that none of us are close enough to him to do it privately at first. )

We need to warn those who think that Mr. Olsteen is teaching Christianity that he isn’t, lest they meet the true Christ, and find out that He doesn’t know them.

Ok, now I remember where the “me” attitude comes from.

Well, now let me listen to the rest of this podcast on Joel Olsteen, I hadn’t heard what all the hub-bub was about from earlier this week – but me thinks I’m shortly to find out.

And we all know what that is…..which is….what?

http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/07/internet_monk_m.html

Ahh….of course. There it is.

In the meantime, everyone go to:

http://pillowfreechristianity.blogspot.com/

Don’t miss it readers. Be sure and visit. Enjoy yourself. Start up a comment thread.