Abstract
An important personality of the Catholic space of the 20th century and, at the same time, of the ecumenical and the inter-religious, Thomas Merton (1915–1968) is one of the most important authors of spiritual autobiographies in the Christian space. Knowing this and the fact that from other points of view, his work has been investigated by different researchers from all around the world, we will try to present the aspects of the political theology which can be found in works such as: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), The Sign of Jonas (1953), among others, which he wrote and which contain passages of spiritual autobiographies. These works emphasise aspects such as his attitude towards racism (a problem which he encountered in the America of the 1960s), war or Communism (because of the fact that before he studied at Columbia University, but also during this period, he also sympathised with the Communists). The author will therefore try to present some practical aspects of his works, and show how they can be used to create bridges between society and church; the answer he gives to the challenges of his time.Contribution: The article presents the main aspects of political theology which can be found in Merton’s work and shows how keywords such as war, racism or Communism have been seen by him and the views he has of a potential attitude of the Church towards them.
Highlights
It is difficult to write about Thomas Merton
As discovered over the past years, through his notes, Merton was close to political theology and to the presence of this aspect in his spiritual autobiographies
We will try in this research to present the way in which this topic interferes with his spiritual autobiography
Summary
It is difficult to write about Thomas Merton. His writings have been printed and re-printed over the years, and even the exotic aspects such as his ecological conviction (Jensen 2020:7–8), racism (Feurherd 2021:5–6; Horan 2020:7–18), his openness towards Buddhism (Di Valerio 2020:474–475) or his humour (Pearson 2020:221–242), have all been investigated. From The Seven Storey Mountain for example, we will extract and analyse his ideas about Communism, while in others we will try to emphasise his conception of topics such as war ( the Second World War and the Vietnam war), racism or the way in which the Church should regard and work with these aspects.
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