Progressive Deadening Of Conscience

"It is sometimes discouraging to see how small the Christian peace movement is, and especially here in America where it is most necessary.
But we have to remember that this is the usual pattern, and the Bible has led us to expect it.
Spiritual work is done with disproportionately small and feeble instruments.
And now above all when everything is so utterly complex, and when people collapse under the burden of confusions and cease to think at all, it is natural that few may want to take on the burden of trying to effect something in the moral and spiritual way, in political action.
Yet this is precisely what has to be done.

[T]he great danger is that under the pressure of anxiety and fear,
the alternation of crisis and relaxation and new crisis,
the people of the world will come to accept gradually the idea of war,
the idea of submission to total power, and
the abdication of reason, spirit and individual conscience.

The great peril of the cold war is
the progressive deadening of conscience.

[I] rely very much on your help and friendship. Send me anything you think will be of service to the cause of peace, and pray that in all things I may act wisely."

-- Thomas Merton,
"Letter to Jean and Hildegard Goss-Mayer,"
The Hidden Ground of Love. Letters, Volume 1: 325-326

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It is the feast of St. Hilary [January 14], Doctor of the Church, who said:

"The best way to solve the problem of rendering
to Caesar what is Caesar's is to have nothing that is Caesar's."

-- Thomas Merton,
The Hidden Ground of Love: 337