A reluctant pacifist: Thomas Merton and the Cold War Letters, October 1961 – April 1962
No Thumbnail Available
Files
Full Text E-thesis
Date
2021
Authors
Cronin, James G. R.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
Thomas Merton believed nuclear war was the single greatest threat facing humanity, whereas
American Catholic commentators considered that nuclear war was winnable or at least
survivable. What made him a reluctant pacifist was the tensions he faced between speaking
frankly without being partisan. Merton had an intellectual duty to his readers to both fairly
and accurately set out his position on nuclear pacifism. In order to evaluate whether he did
this with integrity as a writer it is necessary to set his declared motivations against his actions
and to evaluate what the tensions between his views and his actions reveal about him as a
writer. Merton’s pacifism is evaluated through archive research at the Thomas Merton Center,
Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, and supported by a substantial secondary
literature. Research for this dissertation highlights previously unacknowledged associations
between Merton’s Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky and radical pacifism of the
Catholic Worker movement. Merton’s pacifism is evaluated in five chapters through
examination of his character, cloistered life, and correspondences within the institutional
context of Merton’s tussles with his superiors and censors in reaction to the resumption of
atmospheric nuclear testing by the Soviet Union in September 1961 and the U.S. in April
1962. He represented himself through correspondence as being a writer who was committed
to a central American Catholic ideal that America was good for Catholicism and Catholicism
could save America. He was committed to a consistent ethics of life. The few mainstream
readers who engaged with Merton’s ideas were shocked and confused that he reduced
political reality to symbols of moralism that rejected all war, not just nuclear war. The broader
significance of Merton’s pacifist writing was as a bellwether of a broader cultural shift in
American Catholic life from American Catholic triumphalism to prudential judgement in the
responsible exercise of the democratic life.
Description
Keywords
Cold War culture , Thomas Merton , President John F. Kennedy , Berlin crisis , Nuclear pacifism , Deterrence , American Catholicism
Citation
Cronin, J. G. R. 2021. A reluctant pacifist: Thomas Merton and the Cold War Letters, October 1961 – April 1962. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.