Famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton corresponded with an extraordinary range of writers, among them Evelyn Waugh, Henry Miller, Jacques Maritain, Walker Percy and ...

If the influential Catholic writer Thomas Merton were alive today, he would likely have strong words about police brutality and racial profiling. Back in 1963, Merton called the civil rights movement ...

He highlighted the work of two prominent U.S. Catholics. — -- Two people who are likely going to be Google search terms by the end of the day are Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. They were two of ...

When Selected Poems first appeared in 1959, Mark Van Doren wrote that Thomas Merton believed that “poetry at its best is contemplation—of things, and of what they signify.” At a time when poets are ...

In a provocative op-ed this morning in the New York Times, the Dalai Lama speaks of his 1968 encounter with Thomas Merton and the need for religions to highlight “what unites us.” Interestingly, ...

Thomas Merton was born on the morning of Jan. 31, 1915, in the quaint and remote French town of Prades. Newspapers across France were reporting excitedly about this tiny place on the border of the ...

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 others – Dorothy Day and ...

A crowd came out to celebrate what would have been Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday with a jazz concert dedicated to the Trappist monk and author.

The late Thomas Merton's T-shirt and work shirt are just a few of the items that author John Smelcer uncovered this summer. All of Merton's clothing bears the number '127.' During Pope Francis’ visit ...

Merton struggled to reconcile his religious calling with his global stature. His desire to address political topics such as nuclear proliferation and civil rights brought him into conflict with ...

Today marks the start of the 17th biennial conference of the International Thomas Merton Society. This year's conference theme, "Thou Inward Stranger," comes from a line in one of Merton's poems. It ...

A memoir becomes explicitly Christian when it derives its literary power from the power of the gospel. It doesn't preach, it shows. This spring, I didn't find any morels in the woods around my house.