The Root of War is Fear
by Jim Forest, Orbis, £17.99
As a Trappist, Thomas Merton “belonged to a religious order with a tradition of silent withdrawal and near disappearance from the world”. But this, as Jim Forest reminds us, hardly prevented Merton from engaging in some of his era’s most divisive social and political debates.
In his writings on peace, the nuclear menace and the conflict in Vietnam, Merton was “far outside the mainstream of Catholic opinion” and his superiors placed many obstacles in his path. Every so often, this caused frustration to bubble to the surface. Forest comments that “one could fry a breakfast of bacon and eggs” on an anguished letter he received from Merton in 1962.
