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8 unusual facts about Thomas Merton


International Thomas Merton Society

The International Thomas Merton Society, founded in 1987, is a learned society which studies the works of Thomas Merton.

Monastery of Christ in the Desert

The chapel is renowned for its beauty and was praised by Thomas Merton as the most perfect monastic chapel he had ever visited.

Robert Faricy

The subjects of Faricy’s teaching and writing include theology, philosophy, general spirituality, comparative spirituality, ecotheology, contemplative prayer, spiritual discernment, and the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Merton, and Flannery O'Connor.

Ron Dart

He has authored over twenty books that deal with the interface between literature, spirituality and politics, including Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades.

San Antonio, Florida

Dom Frederic Dunne was the first American Trappist abbot and is regarded as the man most responsible for encouraging Thomas Merton to write what would eventually become The Seven Storey Mountain among numerous other titles, while at The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

Southern Star Abbey

He approached Gethsemene Abbey, Kentucky (thinking that they might be interested because Thomas Merton, a monk of that abbey, was the son of a New Zealander, Owen Merton).

St. Joseph's Intermediate and Commercial School

The school was later renamed to Thomas Merton Academy (Thomas Merton, TMA, or Merton) in 1985 after the Anglo-American monk Thomas Merton.

West Park Secondary School

It was reopened as Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School in September 1988, which they were once called Bishop Francis Marrocco Catholic High School (opened in 1986) and St. Joseph Commercial School (founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1880 and was renamed to Thomas Merton Academy in 1985).


Catholic spirituality

Major 20th century writers who sought to draw together the active and contemplative poles of Christian spirituality have been Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr.

Dim Gray Bar Press

Founded by Barry Magid in 1989, its first title was "Dialogue About A Hidden God," a translation of a work of Nicholas of Cusa by Thomas Merton.

Ends and Means

The book contains illuminating tracts on war, religion, nationalism and ethics, and was cited as a major influence on Thomas Merton in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain.

José María Valverde

Of importance are his German translations (Hölderlin, Rilke, Goethe, Novalis, Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Hans Urs von Balthasar) and English (theater: complete Shakespeare prose, likewise those of Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Saul Bellow, Thomas Merton, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, or Joyce's Ulysses (novel), for which he received the Translation Prize Fray Luis de León, 1977).

Peter Grippe

While primarily known as a sculptor working in bronze and clay, he created a portfolio of etchings by 21 artists (examples include Willem de Kooning, Jacques Lipchitz, and Peter Grippe himself) and 21 poets (including Frank O'Hara, Dylan Thomas, and Thomas Merton) in a work entitled 21 Etchings and Poems.

Thomas Merton bibliography

Below is a bibliography of published works written by Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk of The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani.


see also

The Seven Storey Mountain

Thomas Merton died in 1968 of accidental electrocution while attending an international monasticism conference in Bangkok, Thailand.