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Teaching Merton to Undergraduates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Thomas P. Rausch S.J.
Thomas P. Rausch S.J.*
Affiliation:
Loyola Marymount University
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Abstract

Thomas Merton is one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Catholicism. His books are still to be found in almost any bookstore with a section devoted to religion. Yet today, just over twenty-five years after his death, both Merton himself and the monastic life he represented are virtually unknown to most Roman Catholic undergraduates. This article describes a seminar on Merton offered for undergraduates. It outlines the books and articles used, the way the seminar was structured, and the reactions of the students, to Merton himself and to the issues he raises in his works.

Type
Creative Teaching
Information
Horizons , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Fall 1995 , pp. 260 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1995

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References

1 Mott, Michael, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984).Google Scholar

2 Shannon, William H., Silent Lamp: The Thomas Merton Story (New York: Crossroad, 1992).Google Scholar

3 See Lawrence, C. H., Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (New York: Longmans, 1989);Google Scholar also Rausch, Thomas P., Radical Christian Communities (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990);Google Scholar and Frank, Karl Suso, A Short History of Monastic and Religious Life (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1993).Google Scholar

4 Cunningham, Lawrence S., ed., Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings (New York: Paulist, 1992).Google Scholar

5 Credence Cassettes, 1984.

6 The Commonweal 75 (02 9, 1962): 509–13.Google Scholar

7 Burden, Shirley and Merton, Thomas, God Is My Life: The Story of Our Lady of Gethsemani (New York: Reynal, 1960).Google Scholar

8 Merton, Thomas, Silence in Heaven: A Book of the Monastic Life (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1956).Google Scholar

9 See Merton, , “Day of a Stranger” in Cunningham, , ed., Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master, 220.Google Scholar

10 Griffin, John Howard, A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977).Google Scholar

11 “The Identity Crisis” in Merton, Thomas, Contemplation in a World of Action (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 56–82;Google Scholar unfortunately the book is no longer being published.

12 Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 71.Google Scholar