Dear God,

“But then the natural law can always find a way of being dishonest in honor of the Gospel. To save the Church. Yes, that’s what the dear old Church needs: the protection of natural law, or even, who knows, of gang law? At any rate, protection. She simply can’t get along anymore with this Christian stuff about charity, it’s plain ruinous and utterly against the moral theology manuals. So let’s wipe out the reds with a first strike. This will really put the Gospel message of peace across to the backward savages in those uncultivated and uncivilized countries where they still kill with spears. (Haven’t caught up with the more sophisticated angels of double effect.)” Merton

This comes from a letter written to the Jesuit priest, radical peace activist, and draft card burner, Daniel J. Berrigan, in 1961. It’s always fun to read Merton talk to a fellow man or woman of the cloth. It’s here where we see his more acerbic, jesting, and cynical side towards Christian religion come out. What a wonder, I like that.

Of course, for Merton it’s never destruction for destruction’s sake. It’s always out of love and concern for the oppressed, alongside love for the oppressors, since they loose their humanity in oppressing others. He’s a much better man than I.

Yesterday, my partner and I went to help harvest olives at a friend’s mother’s grove. Not my ideal way to spend a Sunday, but the grove was beautiful and, I must admit, it was nice, surely in some touristic sense, to be so close to the earth. A woman was there who I met at the 2008 (2009?) National Prayer Breakfast. She’s a short, beautiful, gracious, and determined woman who runs a non-profit in San Francisco that hires convicted and at risk youth to work in a restaurant, pays them well, teaches them job and life skills, etc. We started talking about the Prayer Breakfast and The Family/Fellowship. I told her she should read Jeff Sharlet to get more insight. She asked me if I was going back. From my facial expression, she deduced that I had no desire. I asked her if she was. She said it was likely she would. She told me about a conversation she had with a man of power who is connected to the Family and how he preached to her the whole time. She listened for some time, waiting for an opportune moment to cut in. She found her moment and was able to share with him some videos she had on her phone of the kids she employs talking about their lives and what they’ve learned. Her goal was to show the man that she learns from these children just as much, if not more, as she teaches, that they’re a gift to her as she is to them. She didn’t know if the videos were able to drive a wedge into the barricade of his paternalistic assumptions, but at least she tried. I’m glad she’s able to navigate this space. I couldn’t do it. The Family is to the Illuminati like the Q Conference is to Ted — a sad spectacle using the name of Jesus to grasp for power and influence in a world that allows bad imitations to exist, because of “the great problem,” that according to Merton, “is the blindness and passivity of Christians, and the way they let themselves be used by crypto-fascist elements who get stronger and stronger everyday.”