[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]The Papal Artifacts’ Collection is primarily dedicated to artifacts connected to the papacy. Individual popes, their biographies and multiple items belonging to them, including first and second class relics, make up the majority of this Collection. But that isn’t all it is.
Father Kunst has a deep devotion to the saints as can be readily seen in viewing the Saints & Blesseds section of this site. We invite you to visit Papal History/Saints & Blesseds to view the many canonized and beatified men and women who make up this section of the Collection.
Another category is also included with this Collection: Notable Individuals. These are people significantly associated with the Catholic Church who have not been canonized but contributed in outstanding ways to the church.
Father Thomas Merton is one of them.[/vc_column_text][minti_spacer][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
An autographed copy of the paperback book Disputed Questions by Thomas Merton, published 1960.
[/vc_column_text][minti_spacer][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][minti_gallery ids=”23909,34346,26792,27795,27794″ columns=”5″ style=”2″][minti_spacer][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
Today is the anniversary of the publication of Father Thomas Merton’s, The Seven Storey Mountain, a monumentally important memoir by one of the greatest monastics of the 20th century. While not a “perfect” work (none are), it obviously directed the vocations of many religious men and women who read it.
Some say it, “denigrates the world,” and idealizes monastic life. It also contains many rude comments about other religious traditions, Christian and otherwise. Many women find it off-putting for many reasons.
But Father Merton himself, towards the end of his life, thought the man who wrote it, “was dead.” He regretted some of what he said as he came to appreciate other religious traditions.
Never the less, his memoir has been read by millions who have found it and him someone who pointed to a way of life in Christ superior to life without him.
We remember in gratitude today Father Thomas Merton.[/vc_column_text][minti_spacer][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Era: 1915-1968
Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France, to artists Ruth and Owen Merton. His early years were spent in the south of France; later, he went to private school in England and then to Cambridge. Both of his parents were deceased by the time Merton was a young teen and he eventually moved to his grandparents’ home in the United States to finish his education at Columbia University in New York City. While a student there, he completed a thesis on William Blake who was to remain a lifelong influence on Merton’s thought and writings.
But Merton’s active social and political conscience was also informed by his conversion to Christianity and Catholicism in his early twenties. He worked for a time at Friendship House under the mentorship of Catherine Doherty and then began to sense a vocation in the priesthood. In December 1941, he resigned his teaching post at Bonaventure College, Olean, NY, and journeyed to the Abbey of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky. There, Merton undertook the life of a scholar and man of letters, in addition to his formation as a Cistercian monk.
The thoroughly secular man was about to undertake a lifelong spiritual journey into monasticism and the pursuit of his own spirituality. The more than 50 books, 2000 poems, and numerous essays, reviews, and lectures that have been recorded and published, now form the canon of Merton’s writings. His importance as a writer in the American literary tradition is becoming clear. His influence as a religious thinker and social critic is taking its place alongside such luminaries as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Flannery O’Connor, and Martin Luther King. His explorations of the religions of the east initiated Merton’s entrance into inter-religious dialogue that puts him in the pioneering forefront of worldwide ecumenical movements. Merton died suddenly, electrocuted by a malfunctioning fan, while he was attending his first international monastic conference near Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968.
Papal Artifacts gratefully thanks the web site of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada for this biographical information.[/vc_column_text][minti_spacer][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
NOTE: “We have recently received conflicting information about facts presented in bio material contained above, and would like to include it here as an “alternative take” on the unsolved details concerning the death of Thomas Merton.”
—-Father Richard Kunst
Hugh Turley
co-author of The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, and Thomas Merton’s Betrayers: The Case Against Abbot James Fox and John Howard Griffin
Hugh Turely, author, read something on a Papal Artifacts Post about Thomas Merton that he believes was incorrect and was nice enough to address. It is about those errors to which he refers that head this information from him.
You have answered my question about who wrote these words about Thomas Merton. “Thomas Merton entered the monastery in Kentucky on this day when he was 27 years old. He was accidentally electrocuted in Bangkok 27 years later on December 10, 1968 at the age of 54.”
There are five errors in that short statement.
I don’t fault you because the facts about Thomas Merton’s death online and in books about Merton have been inaccurate since his death in 1968. These errors are unavoidable because they are repeated over and over. Perhaps you can correct the statement at your website.
Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915. He entered the monastery on December 13, 1941. The source for these dates is from Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Therefore he was 26 years old and not 27 when he entered the monastery.
The popular error that he entered the monastery on December 10 and then died exactly 27 years later originated with Rev. James Fox, who had been Merton’s abbot for 19 years. Fox wrote this error in a letter to Trappist monks on February 1, 1969, and it has been repeated continuously to this day. Merton wrote in his autobiography that he entered the monastery on December 13, the Feast of St. Lucy, in 1941.
Merton did not die in Bangkok. He died in Samut Prakarn, about 20 miles south of Bangkok. The error that Merton died in Bangkok originated in an Associated Press article by John Wheeler.
Merton died in 1968 so he was actually 53 years old and not 54.
The most serious error is that Merton was “accidentally electrocuted.” This error also originated with the AP reporter John Wheeler when Merton died. Merton’s abbey promoted this error even though they had the official death documents and other evidence that Merton was not “accidentally electrocuted.”
Officially Merton’s cause of death was a natural cause, “heart failure.” The official death documents were recently published by The Catholic Historical Review. The police report states that Merton was dead before he came in contact with an electric fan. The police and Thai authorities ignored a bleeding head wound seen by witnesses.
To correct your statement at the website you could say:
“Thomas Merton entered the monastery on December 13, 1941 at the age of 26. He died on December 10, 1968, near Bangkok at the age of 53.”
I think it would be best not to state a cause of death because it is a mystery. Dr. Paul Pearson at The Thomas Merton Center website states, “…that Merton died, near Bangkok, on December 10, 1968.” The Merton Center does not state any cause of death.
I hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Hugh Turley
co-author of The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, and Thomas Merton’s Betrayers: The Case Against Abbot James Fox and John Howard Griffin
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]