The Thomas Merton interfaith series began with a conference which became the basis for the first book in the series, Merton and Sufism: The Untold Story. The congress had standing room only and the book went into a second printing in its first year. In October 2001, Merton and Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart took place and the book was printed. Merton and Judaism: Holiness in Words event was ground-breaking and the attendant book was finalized in 2005. The Merton Annual VOL 17  was also published by Fons Vitae in 2005 and is a continuing annual series, recently The Merton Annual VOL 18 and The Merton Annual VOL 19 have been published by Fons Vitae. The series continued with Merton and Buddhism - Realizing The Self  which was published in 2007.

The general editor of the series Jonathan Montaldo is co-editor of this important series, former Director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, Past-President of the International Thomas Merton Society, and editor of The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals and Dialogues with Silence: Thomas Merton’s Prayers & Drawings:

THOMAS MERTON VIDEO SERIES 

Time in the Garden Life at the Abbey of Gethsemani

Merton: A Film Biography-Video Tape

Gethsemani  

How do we enter the Heart and what do we find after entering it

The (Almost) Final Days of Thomas Merton: A Conversation with Harold Talbott

The Fons Vitae Project for the study of world religions through the lens of Thomas Merton’s life and writing is a significant publishing event in inter-religious dialogue and exposure of the contemplative practices of the world’s major religions.  The first volume in the multi-volumed series, Merton & Sufism: The Untold Story included essays by world-renowned scholars and practitioners of Islam’s contemplative traditions, among them the distinguished Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Merton’s own writing about Sufism over various genres—essays, poetry and transcriptions of his conferences heretofore unpublished—were collected to indicate the depth and range of Merton’s intellectual and affective encounter with Islam. This first volume received critical acclaim in major periodicals and, more importantly to the aims of the publisher, has become a catalyst for the study of Islam’s contemplative religious experience among a broad spectrum of readers.  

The second volume in the series published in 2002, Merton & Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart, similarly attracted world-class scholarship in the persons of Bishop Kallistos Ware, Donald Allchin, Dom John Eudes Bamburger, and Dom M. Basil Pennington. Merton’s collected writing on the Christian East will provide access for studying the centrality and importance of his encounter with the Christian East for his own contemplative practice.  To those who believe that deep meditation practices and theories are confined to Buddhism and Hinduism, this volume will expose the riches of Christian contemplative methods and experience dating back to the original Christian sources.

Future volumes in this important series are Merton & Taoism, Merton & Buddhism, Merton & The Vedanta, Merton & Native American Religions, and Merton & Art will insure that the Fons Vitae Thomas Merton & Contemplative Practice Project will be a guiding reference for the study and practice of contemplative traditions for decades to come. 

Professional theologians and lay readers, scholars and spiritual seekers in a broad spectrum of religious practice, regard Thomas Merton (1915-1968) as one of the most important and most widely read spiritual writers of the twentieth century. His writing and the testament of his life in personal journals are universally recognized as a seminal and continuing catalyst for inter-religious dialogue in the twenty-first century.

Ewert Cousins, distinguished editor of the World Spirituality Series published by Paulist Press, has called Merton an “axial figure,” one who bridges within his own experience and creative theological work an age of estrangement between religions and an age that we enter now of dialogue and seeking common ground between beliefs and practices of religious persons. The life and writing of Thomas Merton, especially as it focuses attention on the contemplative practices common to the world’s major religions, have themselves become a forum through which those engaged in inter-religious dialogue can meet and engage one another.

The personal practice of Merton’s “contemplative dialogues” with other religious traditions in the person of their major living and dead representatives invites the adoption of a similar inclusivity of mind in those who immerse themselves in Merton’s program for inner work to benefit the common life of all persons.  In his personal journals for April 28, 1957 [The Intimate Merton, p. 116] Merton witnessed to his zeal for a unity of learning, communication and respect among religious persons.

“If I can unite in myself, in my own spiritual life, the thought of the East and the West, of the Greek and Latin Fathers, I will create in myself a reunion of the divided Church, and from that unity in myself can come the exterior and visible unity of the Church. For, if we want to bring together East and West, we cannot do it by imposing one upon the other. We must contain both in ourselves and transcend them both in Christ.”

[Return to Catalog] - [Fons Vitae titles] - [World Religions / Interfaith Dialogue] - [Order books] - [Fons Vitae Printable Catalog]