{"id":19540,"date":"2020-11-27T09:37:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T14:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19540"},"modified":"2020-11-27T10:31:03","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T15:31:03","slug":"mertons-call-for-racial-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19540","title":{"rendered":"Merton&#8217;s Call for Racial Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Thomas Merton:<br>\nContemplation and Action<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Merton\u2019s\nCall for Racial Justice<\/strong><br>\nFriday, \u202fNovember 27,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t-29WLQ3trA\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>In\nthe midst of the intense struggle for civil rights, Thomas Merton insisted that\nChristians had a moral duty to address racism\u2014on a personal and systemic level.\nHis words were prophetic at the time and continue to be relevant to this day.\nIn <\/em>Seeds of\nDestruction<em>, he writes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nrace question cannot be settled without a profound change of heart, a real\nshake-up and deep reaching <em>metanoia<\/em>&nbsp;[Greek for repentance or change of mind] on\nthe part of White America. It is not just [a] question of a little more good\nwill and generosity: it is a question of waking up to crying injustices and\ndeep-seated problems which are ingrained in the present setup and which,\ninstead of getting better, are going to get worse. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\npurpose of non-violent protest, in its deepest and most spiritual dimensions is\nthen to awaken the conscience of the white people to the awful reality of their\ninjustice and of their sin, so that they will be able to see that the Negro\nproblem is really a <em>White<\/em>&nbsp;problem: that the cancer of injustice and hate\nwhich is eating white society and is only partly manifested in racial\nsegregation with all its consequences, <em>is rooted in the heart of the white people themselves.<\/em>&nbsp;[2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In later\nwritings, Merton elaborates on the pernicious evil of systems of oppression and\nhow we must combat them through the use of faith, hope, and love.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When\na system can, without resort to overt force, <em>compel<\/em>&nbsp;people to live in\nconditions of abjection, helplessness, wretchedness . . . it is plainly\nviolent. To make people live on a subhuman level against their will, to\nconstrain them in such a way that they have no hope of escaping their\ncondition, is an unjust exercise of force. Those who in some way or other\nconcur in the oppression\u2014and perhaps profit by it\u2014are exercising violence even\nthough they may be preaching pacifism. And their supposedly peaceful laws,\nwhich maintain this spurious kind of order, are in fact instruments of violence\nand oppression. [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Growth, survival and even salvation may depend on the ability to sacrifice what is fictitious and unauthentic in the construction of one\u2019s moral, religious or national identity. One must then enter upon a different creative task of reconstruction and renewal. This task can be carried out only in the climate of faith, of hope and of love: these three must be present in some form, even if they amount only to a natural belief in the validity and significance of human choice, a decision to invest human life with some shadow of meaning, a willingness to treat other people as other selves. [4]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Screen-Shot-2020-11-27-at-10.30.32-AM-500x319.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19543\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Screen-Shot-2020-11-27-at-10.30.32-AM-500x319.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Screen-Shot-2020-11-27-at-10.30.32-AM-300x192.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Screen-Shot-2020-11-27-at-10.30.32-AM-768x490.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Screen-Shot-2020-11-27-at-10.30.32-AM.png 1980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Merton: Contemplation and Action Merton\u2019s Call for Racial Justice Friday, \u202fNovember 27, 2020 In the midst of the intense struggle for civil rights, Thomas Merton insisted that Christians had a moral duty to address racism\u2014on a personal and systemic level. His words were prophetic at the time and continue to be relevant to this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19544,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19540\/revisions\/19544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}