xt7stq5rc854 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7stq5rc854/data/mets.xml  Thomas Merton 1955-09-12 This letter is from collection 75m28 Thomas Merton papers. archival material 75m28 English  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Thomas Merton correspondence Letter from Thomas Merton to Dr. Erich Fromm, September 12, 1955 text Letter from Thomas Merton to Dr. Erich Fromm, September 12, 1955 1955 1955-09-12 2023 true xt7stq5rc854 section xt7stq5rc854 Gethsemani
Trappist, Ky.

Dear Dr From:

I am about half way through the Sane Socie which I received some time
ago. I am reading it with the greatest in eres ani profit, am taking my
time, for I believe it to be your very best book. I thank you for having
mitten it and for having been so kind as to send me an inscribed copy.

Once again I would like to tell'you how closely I agree with your main
conclusions, that I have read so far, and especially with your admirable
analysis of man in our present society. The long passage about the Chicago
suburb, in the section on anaonymous authority, made my blood run cold.

In a way that sort of thing is more terrible than Nazism, because it is so
much more imidious. It is certainly What we are up against-- everywhere.
I an glad too that you are showing up the danger, so great now in America,
of the psychiatrist becoming Just another expert who helps industry to
manipuiate its employees.

I certainly agree with you that we ought to scrap the notion that
mental health is merely a matter of adjustment to the existing society--
to be adjusted to a society that is insane is not to be healthy. The trouble
is that those who are not adjusted to it, even for the right reasons, have
a rather hard time too. The statement you make at the bottoh of page 176
has my full agreement. As a. priest and a man decidated to God in a monastery,
I am bound to say that I am deeply worried by the falsity, the superficiality
and the fundamental irreverence of what is so often hailed, nowadays as a
"return to God". People have resurrected a lot oi‘"words about" God and a
lot of concepts of religious things, but it soneti .63 seems to no that
they- we- are not too motions to find the Living God. At the foot of the
momtein, we prefer our golden calf but we do not even have the honesty to
invite 3. Moses to ascend for us into the smoke and communicate with God and
receive His messages. I think, incidentally, that your page on idolatry (121)
m is a most acute observation, along the lines that you have already
indicated in your other books.

I also like very mmh your pages on work. In giving some lactures on
art to my students last year I went into Eric Gill‘s thoughts on work, which
are very similar to yours. I am sending you the nuneographed notes of which
I have plenty, in the event that you might feel like glancing through them.

I think you will find things to interest you here and there, and a fwther con
fimation of the fact that we are trying to say mach the some thing in our own
different ways.

There are one or two points on which I disagree with you. It seems to me
that your statements about the history of various religions are often rather
sweeping and arbitrary. For instance it is by no means certain just what origi
nal Buddhism is» m atheistic or theistic. Then in your note on page 55 you
are certainly wrong in saying the original idea of Christ was the adoptianist
one. After all, how about the Gospel of St John "In the beginning was the
Word... and the Word was made flesh". You could easily find plenty of Chris-
tian thought that would substantiate your idea of the dignity of man. Most
of the Fathers of the Church looked at the incarnation in that light, ami
Duns Scotus, for instance, is always spesldng of the Humanity of Christ as
the"assumptus how", the man who was taken up by God. This m far stronger
than adoptianism, for it says that the Man Christ was not only "adopted"
but the true Son of God -- "true God and true man." All our ideas on the .
dignity of man, all our "hmarfism" really flows from the right understand
of the mystery of the Incarnation and of the reacpitufiation of all in Chri

 

 ' 2
If you are interested in a. good exposition of this idea, De Lubac's
"Catholicism" brings it out very well in the first couple of chapters.

I have jwt finished giving some lectures on Ecclesiastes, comparing
it in the end with Leo Tee. I was a fascinating study for me. The Pope,
you may know, has come out rather strongly in favor of Mpsychiatxy
and even (mplicitly) of psychoanalysis, and in passing he recommended the
L'a.tholic psychiatrist to reread the sapicntial books of the Bible for the
light they throw on men's psychology. To my mind, Ecclesiastes is the best
from this point of View, with its rejection of artitraxy, a priori and
Wishful rationalizations about life and its insistence upon a. real adaptation
to reality, much of which comes to us as unknown and unpredictable—- hence
also the acceptance of risk and the avoidance of dognmtism and of extremes,
the humility of faith, the recognition of our own limitations, the ability
to ecoperate with others in a common endeavour, etc.

Your book the For otten LEEKEEE which I read last May or June also
interested me very mucfi.

m Did you, by the way, receive No Man is an Island’fl: hope you
did. Probably you would not be interested in EU: 01’ it. L-‘or my part I
think the last few chapters are the more important ones, together with the
Prologue and the principles given in the first chapter. I should be interes-
ted in your reaction, in any case.

Once again, if you will permit a personal observation, if seems to me
that your muting shows you to be one who has a very real sense of the
God of Ilraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Living God The is dei‘iled by the
mass and concepts which we so easily allow to become idols and projections.
Your book would not be comprehensible without an implicitly religious foun-
dation, without an mplicitly monotheistic foundation.

My Superiors am considerian letting me stop writing and go into a '
kind of retirement -- perhaps even in the woods, I don‘t know. If they do,
they will probably desire me to sever the contacts I made as a writer, but
nothing has beenmid about it so far and I trust I till be able to hear from
you mltil smoothing definite is said on the subject. But I would like to
repeat that I have profited very much by reading your books and by our
lotters and want to express my ‘gratittxie. NO matter what the future may bring,
I would like to assure you that I will remain in Spiritual contact with you
by a continued syx'vlpatm‘ and by my prayers. God bless you.

Very sincerely in Christ