The Seven Storey Mountain: Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition by Thomas Merton Page A
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of them took their hands out of their pockets. John Paul just looked at them, turning his head on one side, then on the other. And he walked right through the middle of them, and nobody even touched him.
And so he came to the house where we were. We did not chase him away.
VI
MY GRANDPARENTS WERE LIKE MOST OTHER AMERICANS. They were Protestants, but you could never find out precisely what kind of Protestants they were. 1, their own grandson, was never able to ascertain. They put money in the little envelopes that came to them from Zion church, but they never went near the place itself And they also contributed to the Salvation Army and a lot of other things: so you could not tell what they were by the places which they helped to support. Of course, they had sent my uncle in his boyhood to the choir school of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on the rock above Harlem, which was then a peaceful bourgeois neighborhood. And they sent John Paul there too, in due course. Indeed, there was even some talk of sending me there. Yet that did not make them Episcopalians. It was not the religion that they patronised, but the school and the atmosphere. In practice, Bonnemaman used to read the little black books of Mary Baker Eddy, and I suppose that was the closest she got to religion.
On the whole, the general attitude around that house was the more or less inarticulate assumption that all religions were more or less praiseworthy on purely natural or social grounds. In any decent suburb of a big city you would expect to run across some kind of a church, once in a while. It was part of the scenery, like the High School and the Y.M.C.A. and the big whale-back roof and water-tank of the movie theater.
The only exceptions to this general acceptability of religions were the Jews and Catholics. Who would want to be a Jew? But then, that was a matter of race more than of religion. The Jews were Jews, but they could not very well help it. But as for the Catholics—it seemed, in Pop’s mind, that there was a certain sinister note of malice connected with the profession of anything like the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church was the only one against which I ever heard him speak with any definite bitterness or animosity.
The chief reason was that he himself belonged to some kind of a Masonic organization, called, oddly enough, the Knights Templars. Where they picked up that name, I do not know: but the original Knights Templars were a military religious Order in the Catholic Church, who had an intimate connection with the Cistercians, of which the Trappists are a reform.
Being Knights, the Knights Templars had a sword. Pop kept his sword first in the closet in his den, and then, for a while, it was in the coat closet by the front door, mixed up with the canes and umbrellas, and with the huge policeman’s club which Pop evidently believed would be useful if a burglar came around.
I suppose that at the meetings of the Knights Templars to which Pop went less and less frequently, he heard how wicked the Catholic Church was. He had probably heard that from his childhood up. It is what all Protestant children hear. It is part of their religious training.
If there was another reason why he feared the Church of Rome, it was because of the accident that some of the most corrupt politicians that ever passed a bribe in a New York election were known to be Catholics. To Pop, the word “Catholic” and “Tammany” meant just about the same thing. And since this fitted in very well with what every Protestant child is told about the duplicity and hypocrisy of Catholics, Catholicism had become associated, in his mind, with everything dishonest and crooked and immoral.
This was an impression that probably remained with him to the end of his days, but it ceased to be explicit when a Catholic lady came to live with us as a sort of companion to Bonnemaman, and a general nurse and housekeeper to the whole family. This was no temporary addition to the
And so he came to the house where we were. We did not chase him away.
VI
MY GRANDPARENTS WERE LIKE MOST OTHER AMERICANS. They were Protestants, but you could never find out precisely what kind of Protestants they were. 1, their own grandson, was never able to ascertain. They put money in the little envelopes that came to them from Zion church, but they never went near the place itself And they also contributed to the Salvation Army and a lot of other things: so you could not tell what they were by the places which they helped to support. Of course, they had sent my uncle in his boyhood to the choir school of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on the rock above Harlem, which was then a peaceful bourgeois neighborhood. And they sent John Paul there too, in due course. Indeed, there was even some talk of sending me there. Yet that did not make them Episcopalians. It was not the religion that they patronised, but the school and the atmosphere. In practice, Bonnemaman used to read the little black books of Mary Baker Eddy, and I suppose that was the closest she got to religion.
On the whole, the general attitude around that house was the more or less inarticulate assumption that all religions were more or less praiseworthy on purely natural or social grounds. In any decent suburb of a big city you would expect to run across some kind of a church, once in a while. It was part of the scenery, like the High School and the Y.M.C.A. and the big whale-back roof and water-tank of the movie theater.
The only exceptions to this general acceptability of religions were the Jews and Catholics. Who would want to be a Jew? But then, that was a matter of race more than of religion. The Jews were Jews, but they could not very well help it. But as for the Catholics—it seemed, in Pop’s mind, that there was a certain sinister note of malice connected with the profession of anything like the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church was the only one against which I ever heard him speak with any definite bitterness or animosity.
The chief reason was that he himself belonged to some kind of a Masonic organization, called, oddly enough, the Knights Templars. Where they picked up that name, I do not know: but the original Knights Templars were a military religious Order in the Catholic Church, who had an intimate connection with the Cistercians, of which the Trappists are a reform.
Being Knights, the Knights Templars had a sword. Pop kept his sword first in the closet in his den, and then, for a while, it was in the coat closet by the front door, mixed up with the canes and umbrellas, and with the huge policeman’s club which Pop evidently believed would be useful if a burglar came around.
I suppose that at the meetings of the Knights Templars to which Pop went less and less frequently, he heard how wicked the Catholic Church was. He had probably heard that from his childhood up. It is what all Protestant children hear. It is part of their religious training.
If there was another reason why he feared the Church of Rome, it was because of the accident that some of the most corrupt politicians that ever passed a bribe in a New York election were known to be Catholics. To Pop, the word “Catholic” and “Tammany” meant just about the same thing. And since this fitted in very well with what every Protestant child is told about the duplicity and hypocrisy of Catholics, Catholicism had become associated, in his mind, with everything dishonest and crooked and immoral.
This was an impression that probably remained with him to the end of his days, but it ceased to be explicit when a Catholic lady came to live with us as a sort of companion to Bonnemaman, and a general nurse and housekeeper to the whole family. This was no temporary addition to the
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