Tom and Dorothy

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous."

 

Thomas Merton

 

"Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily."

 

Dorothy Day

 

To the best of my knowledge, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day never met. There is no mention of their meeting in Michael Mott's seven-hundred page biography of Merton, nor does Day mention anything about their paths crossing in her memoirs. This is not terribly surprising; With very few exceptions, Merton rarely ventured outside the gates of Our Lady of Gethsemami monastery between the years 1941 and 1968, and only twice during that period of years did he leave the state of Kentucky. Although they did exchange letters, their correspondence apparently was not voluminous.

 

But it is kind of strange to think that these two extraordinary people - who more than anyone else personified progressive Catholicism in the twentieth century - were virtual strangers to each other.

 

Pope Francis

While watching Pope Francis address a joint session of Congress on Thursday, I almost fell out of my chair when he mentioned Merton and Day as two of the four Americans he admired most (the other two being Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King). I've been an admirer of Merton and Day for decades and have written separate pieces about them on this site. So little has been written about Dorothy Day in recent years that, after the pope mentioned her and thousands of people across America commenced to google her name, the piece I wrote on July 10, 2006 was one of the first things that they saw. I got a lot of hits on that day thanks to his holiness. I would have much preferred if he had mentioned The Rant by name, but we must be satisfied with what we get.

Dorothy back in the day

Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day - and Pope Francis - are radical reminders that progressive policies and Christianity are not, by any means, mutually exclusive. If you want a clearer understanding of what I'm talking about, do a google search of Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount. There is not a word in there that has a thing to do with the platform of the modern-day conservative movement - Nada. Blessed are the meek? In case you've failed to take notice, under right wing governance the meek haven't done very well at all. Although the middle class has done a bit better under Obama, it is still in danger of extinction in this country. It is in the so-called "red states" of this nation where they struggle the hardest. The most progressive country on this planet is arguably Norway. The happiest people on this planet are the Norwegians. Countless studies have proven this. Someday maybe America will put two-and-two together - but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Merton in the fifties

As my friend Annette Fedor Lemma remarked the other day on her Facebook page, "I've always thought converts make the best Catholics." She was referring to Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day, both of whom were baptized on the other side of the faith. Both of their conversions were earth-shattering in their personal lives. Although the two of them experienced brief flirtations with Communism in their youths, the similarities end there:

She went out into the world as an activist; he withdrew into the walls of a monastery; she founded the Catholic Worker Newspaper, a publication dedicated to economic justice for the poor and the homeless (the meek) which, eighty-two years after its founding, still sells for a penny per copy; he wrote Seven Story Mountain, a 1948 autobiography which was a tonic for many in the post war era who had become spiritually jaded in the aftermath of the most barbaric war in the history of the human race; she smoked cigarettes; he loved beer. What they had in common - whether they realized it or not - was that they were two of the last century's great spiritual guides. Both of them hungered and thirsted for righteousness.

FUN FACT: Both Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day had files in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. I love it!. To be perfectly blunt with you, I'm suspicious of anyone of note who lived in that era that wasn't on Hoover's shit list. Think about it: Martin Luther King, Charlie Chaplin, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Lennon - Tom and Dorothy are in pretty good company!

January 31 of this year marked the centennial of Merton's birth. He died on December 10, 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was attending an interfaith conference of Christian and non-Christian monks. He was electrocuted when he touched an electric fan with faulty wiring. He was fifty-three years old.

Dorothy Day died peacefully in her old age on November 29, 1980, at the age of eighty-three. The world press barely took notice of either of them when they passed into eternity.

On September 24, 2015, Pope Francis gently forced America and the world to take notice.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED READING:

The Long Loneliness
by Dorothy Day

Seven Storey Mountain
by Thomas Merton

Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker

http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/2006/07/dorothy-day-and-catholic-w_115254184393075116.html

Thomas Merton 1915-1968

http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/2007/02/thomas-merton-1915-1968.html

The last two are by yours truly. Not to toot my own horn but....