From “Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality” by Cassidy Hall
I shared with the group how I had found “homosexuality” written in the index of that book and had become curious. Homosexuality, I thought, but Merton never really wrote about that. Sure enough, I met with familiar and painfully disappointing words like those that continue to deeply wound and haunt LGBTQIA+ folks daily. In a note titled “Letter to an Unknown Friend,” Merton wrote:
In other words, the pitch is this. Homosexuality is not a more “unforgivable” sin than any other and the rules are the same. You do the best you can, you honestly try to fight it, be sorry, try to avoid occasions, all the usual things….Maybe psychiatric help would be of use.
Sharing this story with the group, I felt my body tense up with the agony, pain, and harm these kinds of words cause. It was the old feeling of despair tethered to the lies I’d been told by church leaders of my past; that there was something innately wrong with me or something sinful about my personhood.
I used to be among those quick to give Merton leeway, saying things like, “He was a man of his time,” or “He was a product of the Catholic church,” or “He would probably think and write differently today.” But that’s an avoidance of the issue at hand. Simply put, Merton was wrong here. And that doesn’t need to be hard to say.
Why is it so difficult to name the fact that sometimes our teachers hold problematic and even harmful stances? Not all roots developed in contemplative life connect with and reach out for the betterment of all life. My hope for my own thoughts and work is that they will be corrected as I age and after I die. And that my roots will continue to be redirected and strengthened to love and protect those around me. With Merton, I’ve found that when I fail to express the problems with his words, I justify and perpetuate the harm of those words. And when I fail to name that harm, I exacerbate the violence those words cause.