During his historic address to a joint session of Congress in 2015, Pope Francis raised up four virtuous Americans as models of citizenship: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. That last name was certainly familiar to Catholics who came of age after Vatican II, but do young Catholics know much about this mid-century Trappist monk and author?

Thomas Merton is best known for his spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. But he was also a prolific letter writer and, though living in a monastery, engaged with the most pressing social and political issues of the 1950s and ’60s: the civil rights movement, nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War. In his new book, Man of Dialogue: Thomas Merton's Catholic Vision, Greg Hillis introduces Merton to the next generation of Catholics. We ask Greg why some question Merton’s Catholicity, what we should make of the monk’s brief affair with a nurse and why his writing is still relevant today.

In Signs of the Times, we discuss Pope Francis’ major overhaul of the Roman Curia and what it means for the mission of the church.

Links from the show:

Join Jesuitical in Italy!

Pope Francis is drawing on Vatican II to radically change how the Catholic Church is governed

Man of Dialogue: Thomas Merton's Catholic Vision

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Father and Son: Episode 10

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Introduction

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