Why Evelyn Waugh Wanted Thomas Merton to Shut Up

Worth reading and the same goes for some of the comments.  Here is an overly harsh comment that yet makes an important point:

A. I. Reeves Sonya Roberts • a year ago

According to Sonya Roberts on Merton, "we can readily identify with his journey of faith."

Oh can we just? Well, I, for one, most certainly do not identify with anyone displaying Merton's level of mental confusion and sheer erotomania.

This is a bozo who, at the age of 51 and sworn to monastic vows, got the blathering hots for a nurse half his age (with whom he almost certainly had full sexual relations: why else did he destroy the correspondence that passed between him and her?). He'd already fathered an illegitimate child. And perhaps worst of all: by the time he had his Close Encounter of The Electric Fan Kind, he seems to have had only the vaguest awareness that Catholicism might differ from Buddhism.

There'll probably always be a market for Merton, just as there's notoriously always a market for Che Guevara T-shirts. But Holy Church in 2015 needs Merton (and Che) about as much as She needs the proverbial hole in the head.

As nasty and uncharitable as this comment is, Reeves is right that Merton often in his writings displays very little understanding of Catholic doctrine and how it differs from that of Buddhism and other religions.

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