A marker commemorating Thomas Merton in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Demonstrations took place in Louisville surrounding the police killing of Breonna Taylor March 13. (Wikimedia Commons/W.marsh, CC by SA 3.0)
He was a white guy, who spent most of his life alone in the woods in a then-Jim Crow region. But the words Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, wrote on racial justice resonate as strongly today as they did when they were published more than a half-century ago. He was ahead of his time, Gregory K. Hillis, a professor of theology at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, told NCR. As a white Catholic, he got it, at a time when people didn t get it. . It is remarkable how insightful he was.