NEWS & VIEWS
NEWS& VIEWS Merton Revisited After almost 30 years, British readers at last have an unexpurgated edition of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, and its availability was enough of an event...
...As British editor of the book, Waugh not only fixed up Merton's syntax and punctuation, but lopped off many passages, some quite long, because he felt they were too diffuse or obscure for British readers, or, alas, might give offense-such as Merton's account of "the dark, sinister and corrupt atmosphere of Cambridge," and his "attack" on Anglicanism...
...And "if the book manifests some of the weaknesses of Tridentine Catholicism," says the review, "it also manifests the strength, the beauty, the strong sense of tradition and of the company of the saints which were the glory of the Tridentine church...
...He winds up with a prayer of his own -to America: So, please, America...
...Reuters recently disclosed the banning of a magazine containing a photograph of a New York black man and a white woman walking arm in arm...
...The Archdiocese of Philadelphia's "canned sermon" for priests on Charities Sunday included the following under the heading "Technology Needs a Perspective": "Twenty years ago, the saintly Cardinal O'Hara prophetically foretold what is happening today...
...In South Africa, it's sex and, of course, race...
...The heroic religious and lay people who care for the aged, the orphan, the retarded and the disabled don't have much time to worry about the larger issue of social change Aaaaaamen Dept...
...The new edition-which also restores the original American title-corrects that problem, though it still leaves, of course, the problem of the earlier bowdlerizing done by Gethsemani's abbot before he cleared the ms...
...However, notes Variety, nearly two-thirds of the 315 feature films submitted to him last year were scissored or rejected, and of the 154 passed with cuts, all but nine were given minimum age certificates...
...And you did not create your civil society 200 years ago to reduce political choice to one between "Amazing Grace" and Zen Karate...
...Variety reports that Irish film censor Dermot Breen is considered "more liberal" than any of his predecessors and is regarded by renters and exhibitors in Dublin as "being balanced...
...But don't write him into your politics...
...Irish censorship is focused primarily on sex and violence, says Variety...
...The quotes belong to TLS's reviewer, Aldhelm Cameron-Brown, a Benedictine monk at Prinknash Abbey...
...This is now happening...
...We do not know what he would like us to do...
...And, in fact, these research institutions are now collapsing for lack of impact on people's lives...
...He urged the Church in South America to extend the work of evangelization even with little hope of success, not to wait for the data of social research...
...No word where Bailey was...
...Now the same garb is blessed in the name of the Bicentennial...
...Eyes and Minds Dept...
...Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is not hung up on technology...
...Today's people in their 40s and 50s may not have enough support in 20 years from young workers because of the declining birth rate...
...The point is that Britons had been short-changed by Waugh, and those anxious to read Merton-the-monk and Merton-the-writer in more pure early form had to seek out an American edition...
...We cannot interview him...
...The widespread practice of birth control would make it impossible to fund the social security system...
...Odds and Ends -When the British and French Concordes arrived at Dulles International Airport on May 24, Under Secretary of Transportation Barnum was on hand to greet European visitors...
...In all, more than 17,000 books, magazines and films are under ban in South Africa, according to Reuters...
...Included is a film script of a South Africa rugby player who tries to pass as a white in order to play on the South African national team...
...No Comment Dept...
...NEWS& VIEWS Merton Revisited After almost 30 years, British readers at last have an unexpurgated edition of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, and its availability was enough of an event for the book to rate a review in the Times Literary Supplement...
...You have put the name of God on your dollar bills, and that is very democratic of you: Every American with a dollar carries round his own personal psalter with him...
...British journalist Henry Fairlie writes in the Washington Post on Election '76, God, political prayers, and the perils thereof...
...The irony of it all...
...But the British edition had been bowdlerized by Evelyn Waugh, and with the passing of time the bowdlerization had become an increasing irritant...
...Censorship remains a fact of life in Ireland and South Africa...
...JOHN DEEDY...
...In the 1960s, anti-war demonstrators were being hauled in, or getting skulls cracked, or both, for wearing clothes featuring flag motifs...
...TLS's reviewer, incidentally, finds The Seven Storey Mountain "a remarkable account" still of one man's spiritual development, "in spite of weak passages...
...The earlier edition, which appeared in Britain under the title Elected Silence, was the success there that The Seven Storey Mountain was in the United States...
Vol. 103 • June 1976 • No. 13
