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The Brave Journey of the Everyman: Quaker Influences on the Catholic Monk and Peace Activist Thomas Merton
A talk by James G. R. Cronin (School of History, UCC) as part of international events marking the centenary of Thomas Merton (1915-68)
Sunday, 13 December in the Quaker Meeting House in Summerhill South, 12.30pm.
In May 1962, Hal Stallings, a Quaker pacifist, wrote to Thomas Merton, an author and monk in rural Kentucky, on the eve of sailing into the Pacific to protest against resumption of nuclear testing by the United States. Stallings told Merton that it was a matter of conscience that was leading him and his fellow pacifists to embark on a perilous voyage into treacherous waters aboard a sailboat named "Everyman" to place a man under the bomb in the nuclear testing zone. Who was Thomas Merton and how can understanding his dialogue with Quakerism help to inform approaches to environmental consciousness and peacemaking?