“Without wanting to be in conflict with the truth and with the will of God, we are actually going against God’s will and His teaching. We are actually refusing Him what He asks of us as Christians, while at the same time proclaiming to heaven and earth that we are the best of Christians.
We are, however, without knowing it, adhering to a Christianity that is scarcely Christian. It is infected with worldly values, and it is corrupted by love of wealth and power. In fact, the Christianity which we have subtly substituted for the will of God and for true Christian tradition is really the Christianity of the rich, the powerful and the selfish. It is a Christianity of individualism, of greed, of cruelty, of injustice, which hides behind specious maxims and encourages a kind of spiritual quietism.
It is a Christianity of formulas, which are to be accepted blindly and repeated without understanding, a Christianity of passive conformity, in which under the name of obedience we are often brought into subjection to the most worldly influences and powers.”
Thomas Merton, Letter dated January 31, 1962 in Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994) 79.