January 31, 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Thomas Merton's birth, a fact my Episcopal priest informed me of this past Sunday. He knows that no one, other than Jesus, I have never met has had a more profoundly positive influence upon me.
It hurts to read about him in a "bad" light, but is learning the truth "bad"?
Let's start our "rock star" list with Merton, still promoted as one of the most famous Catholic monks in history due to his having written more than 70 books and advocating what he calls the "contemplative life." Despite a sordid pre-monastic past filled with sinful deeds including fathering an illegitimate child and adultery, and illicit behavior during his monastic years that included womanizing and finally a forbidden love affair with a nurse half his age, the Catholic Church and the Merton Legacy Trust continue to insist he is something akin to a plastic saint. His autobiography, promoted as true, isn't, yet the enablers don't care. Insist that the book be recalled? You have to be kidding.
And, now that he is mentioning it, why do we give anyone, including rock stars, rock star status, including everyone from that friendly local parish priest to that presidential candidate, etc. Please, no more rock stars.
In true honor of Merton's contribution to humanity it is time to recognize the humanity of him and others like him, which is to say, all of us. I certainly suspect that he, and we, would have been better off if he had been able to openly profess his love of and sexual attraction to "M." That assumes, of course, that she shared the enthusiasms and that no power relations led to the naked champagne party in Dr. Wygal's office, assumptions which I am not entirely comfortable making.
I have been to the Abbey of Gethsemani twice. It was Merton's home. It is my favorite place on earth. When I wrote my bungling poetic ode to the constricted humanitarian potential of Pope Francis as evidenced in Evangelii Gaudium, I placed it at the Abbey. But it must not be idolized. Nor should the generally silent people who live there, whom, to the extent I know them, I love, but not in that way.
When I was, this evening, preparing to write a little personal birthday tribute to "Fr. Louis," I happened upon the disturbing news from last May, of which I had somehow been unaware, that there had been a sex scandal at my favorite place on earth. Although the accuser was a crooked accountant, I must assume there was a lot of sad truth in the accusations, motivations aside. Could the scandal had been avoided had Merton and his spiritual descendants not been expected to deny their sexuality?
I grew up in, and with great relief at the age of 27 walked away from, Christian fundamentalism. That walking away was a far better profession of faith than the fear of hell that drove me to "come forward" and make my "public profession of faith" at the age of 6. Merton's meditative walk allowed me to find Jesus in the stars and wind again. I will never stop mystically thanking him for planting these seeds of contemplation.
And then, when I found my inner democratic socialist demanding to get out and insistent that I do my part to demand true liberty and justice for all, Merton's seeds of destruction were there to lend strength. For, "The contemplative life is not, and cannot be, a mere withdrawal, a pure negation, a turning of one's back on the world with its sufferings, its crises, its confusions and its errors. First of all, the attempt itself would be illusory."
Yet, I wonder, is the "attempt itself" of celibacy not the most commonly illusory proposition of all the expectations imposed upon the priest, nun, and monk in many religious traditions. Assuming Paul was not unhappy with his supposed asexuality ("I wish that all were as I myself am."), he recognized that "each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind."
There are enough awful temptations for the devout on the mountaintops of life and in the valleys of the shadow of death without expecting them to repress who they really are as human beings. They may choose silence, but sexuality will not be silenced. No one should try to cage their sexuality like a dangerous beast except for those manifold situations where it is in fact dangerous or otherwise improper to share that sexuality, as with unwelcome, power, and other exploitative relationships. But, in general, to want to love and engage in sex with another truly consenting adult who is not in any way in a position of inequality and exploitation is not bestial but part of the everyday sainthood of humanity.
Everyone from kind strangers to manipulative jerks or worse, saints none, sinners all, can drive buses, repair doors, plant corn, teach school, drive cop cars, and yes, write wonderful books that change our lives forever. Idolize no thing--and no one, including you and me, pope and football star, and even "my hero" Eric Arthur Blair. Why must Mary be immaculately conceived? Why couldn't Jesus have been married?
Good grief.
We are all equals down here, although you would not know it looking at our world.