Thomas Merton (“Enduring voice of the world’s monk”, 31 January) did much more than make “provocative forays into the complex and incendiary areas of race relations, peace in the nuclear age, and monastic reform”. Since 1960, Merton’s interest had been turning away from writings about the “spiritual life” to books dealing with social and political issues. He even wanted the young monks at Gethsemani to know about the currents buzzing throughout the Church and the world. And he was quite blunt about it: there could be no monastic prayer worth talking about without such exposure. The last decade of his life found him almost feverishly engaged in peace work, writing no fewer than nine books on peace and justice issues, not counting essays, poem