Merton – On Nonviolence

The most basic principle of the ethic of nonviolence is that all life is sacred.  Such an ethic holds that each person is a son or daughter of God and that all have been created by God to live in peace and love and in harmony with nature.  The ethic of nonviolence, which is an ethic of love, roots itself in such values as care, cooperation, compassion, equality, and forgiveness.

Jesus, the incarnation of the nonviolent God, spent His life teaching and practicing nonviolence.  Jesus called His followers to embrace God’s nonviolent reign of peace by taking on others’ violence in a non-retaliatory way and accepting suffering in order to right wrongs.  Jesus taught: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to that person the other as well.  If a person takes you to law and would have your tunic, let that person have your cloak as well.” (Matthew 5:38 – 41)  In a final act of nonviolence immediately before He died, Jesus cried out: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

In the 1960s, by becoming a voice of protest against various forms of violence, Trappist monk and priest Thomas Merton continued Jesus’ mission of proclaiming the gospel of nonviolence.  Merton declared:

 [By] being in the monastery I take my true part in all the struggles and sufferings of the world.  To adopt a life that is essentially … nonviolent, a life of humility and peace is itself a statement of one’s position. … It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of and protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny, which threaten to destroy the whole human race and the world with it.[1]

In writing about nonviolence, Merton adopted Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha, soul or love force that always attempts to overcome evil by good, anger by love, and untruth by truth.  Merton agreed with Gandhi that to live nonviolently is to root one’s life in the conviction that love is the deepest human power.

For Merton, nonviolence and contemplation are inherently related. Contemplative awareness of one’s unity with all that exists leads to the realization that one is called to practice nonviolent love for all one’s fellow humans and the rest of creation.  Merton reflects:  “Our deep awareness that we are truly at one with everything and everyone in the Hidden Ground of Love we call God demands of us that we live a nonviolent love.” [2]

As a practitioner of nonviolence, the contemplative person actively resists social evils such as racism, addiction to war, and nuclearism. In his writings on racism, Merton notes that in various periods of American history White Americans conceived of African Americans as subservient and subhuman, i.e., as non-persons.[3] According to Merton, over time the deep-seated sin of racial prejudice ate away at American society like a cancer.[4]  Merton stresses that in Christ there is no racial division; all are equal. For Merton, only by truly becoming brothers and sisters will African and White Americans eliminate racism in America.

As a staunch proponent of the abolition of war,  Merton insisted: “There can be no question that unless war is abolished the world will remain constantly in a state of madness and desperation in which, because of the immense destructive power of modern weapons, the danger of catastrophe will be imminent and probable at every moment everywhere.”[5] With this in mind, Merton advocated the development of a program of multi-national disarmament so that, instead of nations expending annual budgets of billions and billions of dollars to secure more and more armaments, it would become possible to enable the global population to have access to food, medicine, housing, and education needed to live decent human lives.

In the case of nuclear war, Merton maintained that conditions agreed upon for a just war do not apply.  Merton stated: “A war of total annihilation simply cannot be considered a ‘just war’, no matter how good the cause for which it is undertaken.“[6]  Merton believed that nuclear war would lead to the decimation of nations and the wholesale disappearance of culture.  It would be a moral evil second only to the crucifixion.[7]

For Thomas Merton, sowing seeds of nonviolence in our world is the moral imperative of our time. This entails treating each person with reverence and not allowing anger, hatred, or resentment to linger in one’s heart. Commitment to nonviolent living involves a person’s embracing love as the power that refuses to retaliate in the face of provocation and violence.  In doing so, as a follower of Jesus’ nonviolent way of being, one contributes to the development of a world freed of racism, war, and nuclearism so that sisters and brothers in the global community are enabled to join hands in abiding peace.

Sr. Marilyn Sunderman, RSM, Ph.D., is professor of theology and chair of the on-campus undergraduate theology program at Saint Joseph’s College.

[1]  Thomas Merton, “Preface” to the Japanese Edition of The Seven Storey Mountain, trans. Tadishi Kudo (Tokyo: Chou Shuppanasha, 1966.

[2] Quoted in William H. Shannon, Silence on Fire: Prayer of Awareness  (New York: the Crossroad Publishing Co., 2000) 67.

[3] See Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence  (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) 16.

[4] See Thomas Merton, Passion for Peace, Ed. William H. Shannon (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1997) 175.

[5] Thomas Merton, The Catholic Worker, October 1961, 1.

[6] Thomas Merton, Peace in a Post-Christian Era, Ed. Patricia A. Burton (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2004) 66.

[7] See Merton, Passion for Peace, 46.

A Second Chance

We continue our series on the Mystery of Death reflecting on the physical and spiritual care of persons as they near the end of life.

 

Thanks, God, for letting me do it right…this time.

In August, 1973, my family returned from Puerto Rico to my home in Wisconsin.  My parents took high school students there during that summer to learn about the culture and language.  I was thirteen then; my sister was almost sixteen.  My parents and sister were linguists and absorbed themselves in the culture and Spanish.  All I wanted to do, though, was play basketball…

Life in Wisconsin returned to normal with school fast approaching, except for one anomaly—my father’s skin and eyes turned yellow.  He was diagnosed with hepatitis. Later, his health care providers correctly diagnosed him with pancreatic cancer and he underwent chemotherapy in the fall.  He lost his hair and quite a bit of weight. He would get bruised and cut from falling, and lose control of his bowels.  As an eighth grader concerned—to a fault—with image among my peers, I resented my father’s appearance and frailty.  I treated him unkindly during his time of greatest need.  Instead of being compassionate after he got “cut up” following a fall, I was mean-spirited.

My father was in and out of the hospital.  Even though I was a scrawny little runt in eighth grade, I still played football.  Once, visiting my father in the hospital, he asked me if he could see my next game.  I said, “sure!”  He asked me where to go and where exactly to sit.  I told him where the game was being held and exactly where to sit—far away from where anyone would identify him as my dad!

I do not think my image problem could be reduced simply to diminished or nullified culpability because of the early adolescent “stage” through which I was developing along with its accompanying insecurities.  Sure, maybe that was a part of it, but my pride and unkindness were tangibly real.

The last time my father was in the hospital, he was seemingly unconscious.  In tears, I apologized to him for my shameful, despicable behavior.  Did he hear me?  Sometimes hearing is the last sense to go.  I will never know, at least in this life.  Shortly after, he died.  I failed.

Fast forward: in August of 2008, I moved my mother, residing in Beaver Dam, WI, into an assisted living center in the same city because of her immobility and rapidly declining health.  As a widow, she lived in the same home in which she and my father reared me starting when I was a five-year-old.  My mother was a professional pianist and instructor whose social and professional connections extended well beyond Wisconsin.  Though my wife, children, and I resided in La Crosse, Wisconsin—almost a three-hour drive from my mother—Beaver Dam was her home.

The moving transition was strange, difficult, and necessary.  Her little assisted living apartment—with piano—was actually quite elegant.  My mother’s time there was limited, though.  Her heart was weak, and she suffered from circulatory problems.  She was, in general, weaker than she should have been. (My wife and I think this could have been due in part to an undiagnosed chronic Vitamin D deficiency.)

Then, in late October, she was taken to emergency care to treat pneumonia.  She stayed in the hospital, and was taken to a nursing home to recover.  She had a series of setbacks, and never returned to assisted living.  Her circulatory and respiratory systems further deteriorated, though she remained lucid.  Her health care team asked her if she wanted to be designated “full code”—to resuscitate her if she had a respiratory or cardiac arrest—or “DNR,” meaning “do not resuscitate.”  She could not decide, and left it to me. (My only sibling, Julianne, died in 2002.)  I became her power of attorney.

To discern correctly, I consulted the Church’s teaching on the matter and prayed…and prayed.  I knew that a full code procedure in my mother’s case would be very invasive, painful, and even crushing, literally, i.e., chest compressions could break her ribs.  In consequence of a full code, she would be sedated, unconscious, and dysfunctional with no prospect of improving a seriously declining condition.  Conversely, my mother would soon die in consequence of an arrest accompanied by a DNR designation.  Among other sources, I consulted the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment.  Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (2278).

I discerned that the DNR designation was the correct (though very difficult) choice.  With double pneumonia and accelerating weakness with difficulty breathing, she was taken out of the hospital two more times during Christmas week and placed in a nursing home where my family could visit her more easily. Then, a few days into the new year, she slipped into a dying phase.  The staff noninvasively applied an oxygen mask to support my mother’s breathing.  Their action throughout impressed me and corresponded to Church teaching, e.g., the Catechism, 2279, states “Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted.”

Because of my wife’s support and care for our children, I was able to spend significant time with my mother during the last month of her life.  This included the last few days and nights on a cot at her side, watching and helping my mother die with courage and grace.  These were among the most profound and memorable moments of my life.  I also am grateful my family could play music at her funeral, and I could give the eulogy.  I thank God for this amazing, grace-filled, moving opportunity to show my gratitude and love as a son…and for giving me a second chance.  “I thank you, Lord, with all my heart…Your love endures forever!” (Psalm 138:1, 8)

Mark Koehne teaches moral theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online Theology. Programs.