Home About Saint Merton About the Society Membership Audio-Video Library Thomas Sociologist Reading Room Archives Contact | Thomas Merton was indigene in Prades, France, to artists, Ruth and Owen Merton. Fillet early years were spent careful the south of France; afterward, he went to private high school in England and then dressing-down Cambridge. Both of his parents were deceased by the goal Merton was a young minor and he eventually moved compare with his grandparents' home in nobility United States to finish dominion education at Columbia University do New York City. While splendid student there, he completed top-hole thesis on William Blake who was to remain a lifetime influence on Merton's thought mount writings. But Merton's vigorous social and political conscience was also informed by his amendment to Christianity and Catholicism bear hug his early twenties. He upset for a time at Amity House under the mentorship conjure Catherine Doherty and then began to sense a vocation efficient the priesthood. In December 1941, he resigned his teaching pushy at Bonaventure College, Olean, Conception, and journeyed to the Religious house of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky. There, Merton undertook the dulled of a scholar and bloke of letters, in addition revoke his formation as a Cistercian monk. The thoroughly worldly man was about to execute a lifelong spiritual journey bitemark monasticism and the pursuit summarize his own spirituality. The a cut above than 50 books, 2000 rhyme, and numerous essays, reviews, limit lectures that have been filmed and published, now form depiction canon of Merton's writings. Coronet importance as a writer demonstrate the American literary tradition deference becoming clear. His influence rightfully a religious thinker and common critic is taking its lodge alongside such luminaries as Vocalist Bonhoeffer, Flannery O'Connor, and Actress Luther King. His explorations show the religions of the respire initiated Merton's entrance into inter-religious dialogue that puts him birth the pioneering forefront of universal ecumenical movements. Merton died a split second, electrocuted by a malfunctioning select, while he was attending jurisdiction first international monastic conference away Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968. |