Pope Francis invoked four Americans in his historic speech to Congress on Thursday. Two are instantly recognizable: Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The other two — Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton — were Roman Catholic activists and ardent pacifists but lesser known, until the papal mentions sent many listeners on a Google search.
Merton, a French-born Trappist monk and arguably the most influential Catholic writer of the last century, converted to Catholicism after a stormy start in life. His parents were artists, and both died before Merton grew to adulthood.
In his most famous book, the autobiographical “The Seven Storey Mountain,” Merton describes a wild and indulgent youth that involved excessive drinking and womanizing. He even fathered an illegitimate child. “I labored to enslave myself in the bonds of my own intolerable disgust,” he wrote.
In December 1941, Merton boarded a train from New York to the Trappist abbey in Gethsemani, Kentucky, where he immersed himself in the Catholic Church.
Later his disillusionment with the church led him to explore Eastern religions, especially Zen Buddhism. He spent time in India, met with the Dalai Lama and studied similarities between Buddhism and Christianity.
In the last years of his life, Merton was hailed as the conscience of the peace movement. He was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement, which he called “certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States.”
Merton’s beliefs stirred controversy among Catholics, certainly, but also among Christians at large who saw his social activism as ill-fitting for a monk.
Merton died in Bangkok in 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution. Thursday marked a redemption of sorts when the Pope called him a “thinker who challenged certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the church.”
Dororthy Day
Before Dorothy Day became a devout Catholic — the sort who’s being considered for canonization and was given a shout-out by the Pope — she was, in some people’s views, far from saintly.
She was a radical journalist, an activist who was branded a communist and socialist — and who had compassion for anarchists. She was a free-wheeling woman who had affairs. She drank, she smoked and, get this, she had an abortion. Later, she gave birth to a child out of wedlock.
But Day, who converted to Catholicism in the late 1920s and died in 1980 at age 83, left behind much more.
She was the co-founder of the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement, which works on behalf of the poor and homeless. And it’s who she became that this pope chooses to honor.
“Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of saints,” he said.