Discerning Danger
How serious is my need to be shot by the John Birch Society?—Thomas Merton Confused about his motivations for publishing Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander in a journal entry for January 25, 1962, from...
View ArticleA Docile Soul
A docile soul is like a vase into which God pours inspirations, making use of many people. When we are open to receive, the Lord speaks through any person he chooses.—John XXIII
View ArticleMerton is Skeptical
This Church is stuffy, dusty, narrow…the hierarchy has been immobile, stupid, passive, repressive, etc. etc. The closed mind of the Churchmen today! What I fear is that [the Council] will only engender...
View ArticleCondemnations
Seven inches of condemnations and one of praise: is that the way to talk to the modern world?—John XXIII After taking a ruler to a page of one of the haughty and pompous schemata, drafts prepared by...
View ArticleEnough is Enough
The time has come to put an end to this nonsense. Either the Biblical Commission will bestir itself, do some proper work and by its suggestions to the Holy Father make a useful contribution to the...
View ArticleDread in the Curia
I pray to God that I may die before the Council—in that way I can die a Catholic.—Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani From John XXIII: Pope of the Century by Peter Hebblethwaite (p.213).
View ArticleAn Institution Under Siege?
Several schemata consider the Church too much as an institution under siege which the Council must defend; they do not see in it enough the radiant depositary of the salvation to be shared. In them the...
View ArticleThomas Merton Mourns John XXIII
Pope John died yesterday. A holy and good man, and he was both because he was first of all a man — that is to say, human. This is the great meaning of his papacy, of the Council, of Pacem in Terris....
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