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Month: March 2019

Roman Catholicism and Zionism Are Irreconcilable

David Martin

Guest column on DC Dave’s page by a Catholic seminarian In 1904, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was granted an audience with Pope St. Pius X. His purpose in meeting with the Pope was to gain support for the founding of a Jewish state in what was then known as Palestine. As Herzl recorded in his diary, the Pope gave an unfavorable response, saying: “We are unable to favor this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem – but we could never sanction it. The ground of Jerusalem, if it were not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church, I cannot answer you otherwise. The…

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Professor Secretly Trashes Merton Book

David Martin

Thomas Merton, the great Roman Catholic writer, spent his entire religious career, from his acceptance into the Cistercian Order in December of 1941 until his tragic death in Thailand at the age of 53 in December of 1968, as a monk at the Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey near Bardstown, Kentucky.  If for Merton’s legions of admirers, the Gethsemani Abbey is “Mecca,” then the independent Catholic university, Bellarmine, some 40 miles to the north in Louisville is “Medina.”  In 1967, Merton bequeathed his voluminous papers to Bellarmine, which had been founded by the local diocese as Bellarmine College in 1950.  Since his death it has become the home of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University and the headquarters of the International Thomas Merton Society.  There are a number of other Thomas Merton Centers,…

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