Thomas Merton’s Troubling Questions On Violence: From Auschwitz to Vietnam

Abstract

This paper presents some of the major “questions” and points of inquiry concerning war and peace, ethics and conscience, language and duplicity directed at secular governments and religious institutions by the Catholic monk and writer Thomas Merton (1915-1968). In a series of essays penned during the 1960s this popular spiritual writer shook his more conservative readers with his strongly worded attacks on the passivity of religious institutions in the face of extremely violent wars, genocidal campaigns and nuclear terrorism sponsored by the governments with which they were aligned. Merton draws lessons for his own era from the trials of Auschwitz personnel to the ruthless conventional and atomic bombings by the Allies, and uses them to raise troubling questions about attempts to justify the insanity of nuclear escalation and the vicious quagmire that was Vietnam. And in the midst of raising moral questions, Merton examines the language used to distort the reality of Auschwitz, Dresden and Hiroshima, of first strike capabilities and the “free fire zones” of Vietnam. This paper also attempts to demonstrate something of the prophetic fire and philosophical coolness of Merton’s thought as well as its literary power. The final section suggests that Merton’s questions are as troubling and germane today as they were when initially raised.