The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation

[liminalOyster]

Has anyone read this book?

http://www.themartyrdomofthomasmerton.com

Here's a review included for the bolded bit, credulity reserved. But plausible.

The Truth at Last
A review of The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation by Hugh Turley and David Martin
by Matthew Fox

For years I have spoken out about how fishy the official story of Thomas Merton’s sudden death smelled to me. I have also, over the years, met three CIA agents who were present in Southeast Asia at the time and asked them pointedly whether they killed Thomas Merton. One said: “I will neither affirm it nor deny it.” The second (who spoke to a friend of mine, not to me) said: “We were swimming in cash at the time with absolutely no accountability. If there was just one agent who felt Merton was a threat to the country he could have had him done in with no questions asked.” The third I met a month after my book A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey came out and he answered: “Yes. And the last 40 years of my life I have been cleansing my soul from what I did as a young man working for the CIA in Southeast Asia in the 1960s.”

Now, Hugh Turley and David Martin offer The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation - a solid and very convincing investigation that provides what seems to be a thorough inquiry of all the parties involved including the four religious (3 men and one sister who was also a doctor—falsely called a “nurse” in official documents—) who first discovered the body.

The book includes important information about the body and the room, revealing, among other things, that there was blood coming from Merton’s neck and his body was neatly staged. How could this be anything other than 1) a gunshot wound from a silencer gun? or 2) A stab with a pick knife or something similar? The problem is, of course, that no autopsy was performed. Now whose decision was that?



The cover up was immense, involving the Thai police (very much in league with the American military at the time); the American Embassy; the American Army; even key members of Merton’s Gethsamine monastery including the abbot and Merton’s secretary, Brother Hart. The latter two deserve a certain leniency since surely the monastery was threatened and urged to keep silent about the facts. But to make a cover story—that Merton stepped out of a shower soaking wet and plugged in a fan and was electrocuted—is a lie and a cover up.



Turley and Martin provide detail after detail refuting the false information that has been disseminated for five decades. There is even a Judas figure—a Belgian monk, whose room in the retreat center was above Merton’s, and who was the last person seen talking to Merton before he entered his fateful cell. Others report this monk acting peculiarly after the murder. Strange to tell—or perhaps not so strange—he seems to have totally disappeared. Even his monastery claims to have no idea on earth where he could be. It would seem he is either 1) sipping mai-tais on some island some place having been paid far more than 30 pieces of silver or 2) resting not at all in peace six feet under the sod.



So Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk and one of the greatest spiritual writers of the twentieth century, died a martyr. A martyr to peace (because he was a loud voice against the Vietnam War and a mentor to the Berrigan brothers and others committed to nonviolent protest). And he died at the hands of the American government in the very year, 1968, that Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy also suffered a similar fate.



Pope Francis, who praised Thomas Merton’s work in his speech to Congress, might want to canonize three American martyrs together and do it swiftly (since in Catholic theology a martyr goes directly to heaven): Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a prophet for social and racial justice; Thomas Merton, a prophet for peace and deep ecumenism or interfaith; and Sister Dorothy Stang, a prophet for eco-justice gunned down in the Amazon by paid thugs for large land owners and corporate big shots.



History evolves and it is ironic that today’s CIA is less an enemy of the people than yesterday’s - in fact acting in some ways a welcome buffer against today’s enemies of American democracy, whether emanating from Russia or from internal bodies beholden to Russia. But lessons abound. First among them is what a martyr is about: As Jesus put it, “no greater love has a person than this, to lay down one’s life for their friends.”



Thank you, Thomas Merton. Thank you Hugh Turley and David Martin for getting to the truth.

http://www.themartyrdomofthomasmerton.c ... eview.html

[cptmarginal]

Looks really interesting, thanks for the heads-up

[PufPuf93]

I know of Thomas Merton as a theologian and Vietnam era anti-war activist but knew nothing of his death or that some think Merton a CIA assassination.

Did some searching after reading this OP.

In recent years Catholic theologian Mathew Fox and James Douglass have opined that the death of Thomas Merton was a CIA assassination.

[brekin]

I watched a biography of Thomas Merton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton last night and wondered a few times if he wasn't "eliminated" because of his growing influence and radical outspoken views on the cold war, the arms race, interfaith harmony, race relations, etc. Supposedly he died from an electrical shock from a fan after getting out of the shower in 1968 in Thailand after giving a very revolutionary speech (his only one filmed) to church members discussing how monasticism was the only pure communism being practiced quoting early Marx as very "Christian". He also talked about his recent visit with the Dali Lama and the need for religious orders to "stand on their own", which I guess he meant little to none governmental support or influence and spoke of the need for a greater dialogue to be had between Asian religious orders and western ones.

As you can imagine this and other outspoken views weren't going down well. Googleing a bit I found it interesting that he was to meet with Martin Luther King earlier in the year before MLK was assassinated.:

"At the time of his assassination, plans were underway for Martin Luther King, Jr., to make a retreat with Thomas Merton at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey. We shall never know what might have resulted from a dialogue between this Roman Catholic monk and this black Baptist preacher whose lives still fascinate and inspire us twenty years after their deaths. But the act of recalling their common struggle against the evils of racism, materialism, and militarism, may enable us to recover what they would have brought to such an encounter and to imagine the joint "word" they might have left those who strive to live out their legacy"
http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2d ... oteau.html

It seems 1968 was not a good year for people with unpopular views: MLK assassinated in April, RFK in June and Merton has a mishap with fan in December
Others have wondered the same thing and I found this thread with comments:

http://gaymystic.blogspot.com/2009/10/w ... nated.html

WAS THOMAS MERTON ASSASSINATED?

Since 1968, many people have been fascinated by Merton's death. The seemingly unanswerable question is: "Was his death the result of a conspiracy?" In pre-Watergate America, such a question would have been dismissed as absurd. But we are a more sophisticated people today, and conspiracy theories don't sound so much like theater of the absurd. I remember reading Matthew Fox's autobiography Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denonimational Priest and being rather surprised that he believed that Merton might have been assassinated. He writes, "I once asked a CIA agent who was in Southeast Asia at the time whether they killed Merton. 'I will neither affirm it nor deny it,' he said. 'Could you have?' I asked. 'A piece of cake,' he replied." A rather enigmatic exchange, and although it's intriguing, it really doesn't prove a thing.

But proof be damned, for Bill Goodson's lively imagination has concocted a rather wild storyline, laying blame for Merton's death at the hands not of the CIA but of a secret, ultra-conservative Catholic organization called the "Bossuet Society," whose aim is to save the church from the infection of ecumenism. On its hit list are the Pope and Thomas Merton. Yes, it's crazily far-fetched, but a willing suspension of disbelief makes Goodson's novel fun to read.

taken from a review of The Bossuet Conspiracy

Well, here's the opinion of an old Thailand expatriate of twenty five years. Electronic devices in Thailand are notoriously unreliable and I've been shocked on a number of occasions by grasping a fan by the base. Had my feet been in water, well, who knows? But enough of a shock to cause a fatal heart attack? Please! What usually happens is that the fuse blows and the incident is over. Almost no one in the Church in Thailand believes that Merton died accidentally by grasping a fan. The story is just a little too neat. Had it fallen into the shower with him, or the tub, well that would have been another matter. And as my father always loved to say, "I only believe those conspiracy theories that are true?"

3 comments

1.
Terence Says:
October 19, 2009 2:30 PM
2.

I was reading the following just this afternoon. It's an extract from "Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church", the autobiography of Rembert Weakland, former Archbishop of Milwaukee, and previously Abbot Primate of the Benedictine order. In that capacity, in December 1968,he was attending a meeting in Thailand where Merton was also a speaker, on Dec 10:

"At about 3:00 that afternoon, a monk came running to tell me that Merton had been found dead in his room. I ran to his bungalow to find the body on the floor, face up, arms extended, hands free but slightly gnarled. A floor fan had fallen on his body leaving strips of burn marks on his arm where the fan lay. Sister Edeltraud Weist, a medical doctor and prioress of our monastery in Taegu, Korea, said he was internally electrically burned, an accident which had stopped his heart. His body was still warm and I anointed him.

The Thai police and coroners were called. The coroner's certificate stated "death was caused as a result of fainting - due to acute cardiac failure and electric shock due to accidental falling against the electric fan to the floor."

3.
Jayden Cameron Says:
October 19, 2009 3:21 PM
4.

Another example of synchronicity! Yes, this is the official account and no one doubts the veracity of Sister Edeltraud Weist. What is strange, however, is that Merton retired to his room to take a nap, but visitors heard voices coming from his room some 30 minutes before the body was discovered. But as I've said, I've been zapped a number of times by faulty electrical devices in Thailand, and I always felt there was something appropriate about this "Zen Catholic" monk getting zapped into eternity.

5.
Anonymous Says:
October 20, 2009 8:28 AM
6.

Well...if one thinks about it...how about this "conspiracy theory"?

John Coltrane,the jazz musician, died of liver cancer, supposedly the result of his previous alcohol and heroin addiction. But it was rather quick.

Robert Kennedy was assasinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

Merton dies.

All three were Americans who happened to be what might be called teachers/ leaders of the young people coming of age and political power in the U.S.

Bereft of these leaders, the young drfift about, lost in a haze of smoke and music, until the "Howdy Doody" of their childhood, Uncle Ronnie, charms them into the dream og Morning in Amerca.

[Sounder]

Dave Martin has learned thru direct experience the pitfalls and results of trying to mix integrity with journalism. It's a tough road and he gets my respect for taking it. The article is of course, best read at the link.

https://islandcatholicnews.ca/news/2019 ... on-society

......Judge for yourself. ICN has a fresh supply of copies of the Martyrdom of Thomas Merton available to readers upon request. (email: pjjamie@telus.net. (See related editorial, "The Irony of Thomas Merton: Raids on the Unthinkable".)

I still remember vividly my excitement a half century ago when I discovered Henrik Ibsen’s great play, An Enemy of the People, in a collection of Ibsen’s complete works that I had bought the year of my graduation from college. I had never before encountered such a great depiction of one of the major shortcomings of the human race, our tendency to reject the truth when strong vested interests are tied up in falsehood, and there it was, condensed into dramatic form that one could take in in a little more than an hour.

In a nutshell, the principal protagonist, Thomas Stockmann, a medical doctor in a small Norwegian town, through his research has discovered that beyond a shadow of a doubt the cause of a series of mysterious deaths that have chilled the town’s tourist economy is pollution of the water supply by the other pillar of the town’s economy, a tannery.

He really has it down to a scientific certainty, and he can hardly wait to share his findings with everyone. Understandably, he regards himself as a hero for what he has found and thinks that his fellow townsmen will see him that way as well. Like a doctor performing at his best, he has correctly diagnosed the illness, the first necessary step for curing it.

But how wrong he turned out to be! Instead, his experience is captured by the title of the play, with Dr. Stockmann as the title character. He had learned too much for his own good. He was lucky not to have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

........ Nothing that Meade said in his address would have made Merton spin in his grave more than that. Consider the Merton quote with which I begin my essay, “Is the American Press the Enemy of the People?”

"Nine tenths of the news, as printed in the papers, is pseudo-news, manufactured events. Some days ten tenths. The ritual morning trance, in which one scans columns of newsprint, creates a peculiar form of generalized pseudo-attention to a pseudo-reality. This experience is taken seriously. It is one’s daily immersion in “reality.”

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this house cleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think. The purification must begin with the mass media. How?"

My “Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression,” published 20 years ago, is aimed primarily at the national news media, but one can recognize Meade’s use of nos. five, six, and seven is his speech. They are, respectively, “Call the skeptics names,” “Impugn motives,” and “Invoke authority.” Elaborating further on number five, we say, “You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned.”
When it comes down to choosing truth or “personal relationships,” outgoing International Thomas Merton Society president, Mark C. Meade, unfortunately, has demonstrated a clear preference for the latter. In that, from our experience, he has been completely representative of the organization as a whole. It would not have surprised Henrik Ibsen.