Mennonites or Mertonites?
Menno or Merton…
Mennonites are being brought into the Cathollic church by the writings of a dead Catholic monk named Thomas Merton.
The ROM (Menno Roll Over) Index is strong in these ones:
Example #1
An article in the Mennonite Weekly Review last year told about a Mennonite named Gerald Schlabach who was raised in a Mennonite family but is now a member of the Roman Catholic Church. You can find it here:
‘Mennonite Catholic’ theologian bridges two faith traditions
-Mennonite Weekly Review
http://www.mennoweekly.org/JULY/07-24-06/SCHLABACH07-24.html
Here is an excerpt from the article that shows how the journey ‘home to Rome’ all started…
“Meanwhile, Schlabach’s interest in Catholicism had begun to incubate, inspired in part by the writings of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and Catholic convert who died in 1968.”
-mennoweekly.org
Today, Schlabach is a Benedictine oblate:
“Benedictine oblates are people who are not monks but who dedicate themselves, in communion with a particular monastic community, to the service of God and neighbor according to the Rule of St. Benedict, insofar as their state in life permits.1 Specific commitments include the practice of lectio divina, praying the Psalms through some portion of the daily liturgy of hours, and working in the world as unto God. Benedictine values are ones my own Mennonite community has shared since its beginnings in the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement: simplicity, hospitality, and peace”
And to think it all started with Thomas Merton.
Example #2:
Isn’t this just peachy…
Pastor Byron Peachy is a campus pastor who was recently licensed to continue his role at Eastern Mennonite University. Here is an excerpt from the dedication service:
“God has a special twinkle in His eye today as we celebrate Byron’s readiness to do God’s work,” said Haushalter in opening the service.
Items that symbolize Peachey’s life and special interests appeared on the platform - books by Catholic writer Thomas Merton (meditation as spiritual discipline), a cross from El Salvador (peace and justice concerns) and an old wooden pitchfork (his farming background and adherence to a theology of the land).
-Peachey Licensed for EMU Campus Ministry Role
http://www.emu.edu/news/index.php/802/campusministries
But does God have a twinkle in his eye for Thomas Merton?
Example #3
Thomas Merton has even been showing up at seminary programs.
On the MBBS (Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary) website you will find a Thomas Merton quote on this document (letter) regarding Ministry Quest (a spiritual formation youth mentoring program) and spiritual direction:
Mentoring Matters
October 2005 (Ministry Quest)
www.mbseminary.edu/files/ministryquest/Volume_2_No2.doc
(HTML version here)“The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.” Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation (Collegeville, Minn.: Order of St. Benedict Press, 1960), p. 16
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The average Mennonite might say, so what? But the average Mennonite doesn’t have a clue who Thomas Merton was.
So who was Thomas Merton?
“What Martin Luther King was to the civil rights movement and what Henry Ford was to the automobile, Thomas Merton is to contemplative prayer. Although this prayer movement existed centuries before he came along, Merton took it out of its monastic setting and made it available to and popular with the masses. It is interesting to me that many people still think celebrity star Shirley MacLaine was the greatest influence in the New Age. But for me, hands down, Thomas Merton has influenced New Age thinking more than any person of recent decades. Merton penned one of the most classic descriptions of New Age spirituality I have ever come across. He explained:
“It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, … now I realize what we all are …. If only they [people] could all see themselves as they really are …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other … At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth … This little point …is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody.”
FROM A TIME OF DEPARTING BY RAY YUNGEN (quoting Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1989 edition, 157-15
Here is a quote from Wayne Teasdale about Thomas Merton:
“Catholic lay monk Wayne Teasdale says this of Merton: “Thomas Merton was perhaps the greatest popularizer of interspirituality. He opened the door for Christians to explore other traditions, notably Taoism (Chinese witchcraft), Hinduism and Buddhism.” [Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions - Wayne Teasdale]”
http://www.contemplative.us/archives/2006/08/on_thomas_merton.php
You can learn more about Thomas Merton at the above link.
There will be more about this coming up in the next post…
