Thomas Merton on Latin and Gregorian Chant (1964)

 [234] To Dom Ignace Gillet

September 11, 1964

[236] Much is said here about Latin and Gregorian chant: things to be "suppressed" because we do not "understand" them. Well, this is a very serious point. I believe that, as you say, many young people more easily admit that they are dissatisfied with the Gregorian chant and the Latin, because they are made to believe this. I know very well that in our monasteries in America there is a real movement, an agitation, for this and for still other things. People are pushed into thinking that they are dissatisfied with the Latin, the Gregorian chant, the status of laybrother, the liturgy as we have it, when in reality that is not the case at all. For a long time it was said here that "the brothers" in general wanted to change habit, come to choir, change their status, etc. But it was only a few brothers who, moreover, were not always the best ones but who got more agitated and had more to say, and who tried to persuade the others to go with them, etc. You know these stories quite well by now.

But this is what I think about the Latin and the chant: They are masterpieces, which offer us an irreplaceable monastic and Christian experience. They have a force, an energy, a depth without equal. All the proposed English offices are very much impoverished in comparison—besides, it is not at all impossible to make such things understood and appreciated. Generally I succeeded quite well in this, in the novitiate, with some exceptions, naturally, who did not understand well. But I must add something more serious. As you know, I have many friends in the world who are artists, poets, authors, editors, etc. Now they are well able to appreciate our chant and even our Latin. But they are all, without exception, scandalized and grieved when I tell them that probably this Office, this Mass will no longer be here in ten years. And that is the worst. The monks cannot understand this treasure they possess, and they throw it out to look for something else, when seculars, who for the most part are not even Christians, are able to love this incomparable art.

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Source: Thomas Merton, The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction, ed. Patrick Hart (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), 234, 236.