Shelter Ethics: Merton and the Coronavirus

by Presbyter JOEL WEIR

This past spring, I had an essay forming in my head about the Roman Catholic writer Thomas Merton’s reflections on politics. The essay would have dealt with the struggle that anyone of serious faith, especially the contemplative (or in Merton’s words, the one who strives to “be attuned to the inner spiritual dimensions of things”), faces when addressing world affairs. I would have taken cues from Jim Forest’s excellent book, The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton’s Advice to Peacemakers. Set in the early 1960s, the “duck and cover” era of the Cold War, the book details how Merton, a priest-monk, struggled through the intersections of ecclesial, political, ethical, and personal concerns in a time of crisis. Its relevance, back in February or March, was overwhelmingly obvious.

However, the world is now in a very different place. As I sit here writing, in the fifth week of Great Lent, the reality of the coronavirus pandemic has become abundantly clear. Churches have ceased public services. Much of the nation is in varying degrees of lockdown. Millions have lost their jobs. Most devastating has been the rapid rise in infections and deaths. Amid all of this, there have been difficult decisions made by both civil and religious authorities. Our hierarchs have had to navigate these circumstances with one eye to public health and the other to the spiritual needs of the faithful. Priests have taken on the arduous tasks of explaining restrictions and changes to their flocks, whether pertaining to public services, or most difficult, concerning visiting the sick.

As I considered the tension of this moment, I came to appreciate Forest’s book and Merton’s words even more. The linchpin for me that connected a book about a monk who opposed “the bomb” in the 1960s to the experience of living through COVID-19 in 2020 was the issue that seemed to initiate Merton’s serious foray into the public debate : "shelter ethics.” How is a Christian citizen to think about a fallout shelter?

In 1961, Catholic writer and ethicist Fr. L. C. McHugh made the case that in the event of imminent nuclear war, a Christian would be justified in defending his own fallout shelter against outsiders seeking to get in. Merton’s rebuttal appeared shortly thereafter in The Catholic Worker:

This is true war-madness, an illness of the mind and spirit that is spreading with a furious and subtle contagion all over the world. Of all the countries that are sick, America is perhaps the most grievously afflicted. On all sides we have people building bomb shelters where, in case of nuclear war, they will simply bake slowly instead of burning quickly or being blown out of existence in a flash. And they are prepared to sit in these shelters with machine guns with which to prevent their neighbors from entering.

(Forest, Jim. The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton’s).

In the past months we have been faced with our own “shelter ethics” of sorts. In one clear sense, the situation is opposite: in the ’60s, to retreat and bolt the door was selfish; now, in the spring of 2020, in the earliest weeks of the pandemic, to not stay in unless it is necessary is selfish. But the deeper issues, which I believe Merton uncovered in his writings, that cut through the political and economic

to get to the communal conundrum, have much to teach us. Unlike in Merton’s time, the sheltering-in-place we have been asked to do is not a futile act. However, it has disrupted work, family routines, and Church life, raising questions over whether it is justified. As in Merton’s time, it has been easy to get lost in economic, political, or even theological details when we count the cost of sheltering in place for an undetermined amount of time. We can debate statistics about how many people die of other illnesses; questions abound over whether the economic collapse could cost us more lives; and worries consume us over the potential ramifications of Church being designated as ”nonessential.” These are not unimportant discussions to have, nor were the debates in Merton’s time concerning security, the threat of the spread of communism, and deterrence.

In his writings Merton did precisely what the prophet, the man of God, is called to do, which is to return to the Gospel with humility and discern what it means to love God and love neighbor in the actual moment. Merton did this knowing that it might appear foolish to the world, a stumbling block to some who considered themselves “religious.” At the height of the rhetorical battle, Merton seemed to have arrived at a moment of clarity in his own heart. He wrote in The Catholic Worker, the newspaper launched by his close friend, Dorothy Day:

It seems to me that at this time….instead of wasting our time in problematic ways of saving our own skin, we ought to be seeking with all our strength to act as better Christians, as men of peace, dedicated wholeheartedly to the law of love which is the law of Christ...We are in the midst of what is perhaps the most crucial moral and spiritual crisis the human race has ever faced during its history. We are all deeply involved with this crisis, and consequently the way each individual faces the crisis has a definite bearing on the survival of the whole race... While each individual certainly retains the right to defend his life and protect his family, we run the risk of

The difficulty of this crisis is that for most, there is nothing 'active' one can do to confront a visible enemy. Rather, one is called to look within and exercise humility and restraint.

creating a very dangerous mentality and opening the way to moral chaos if we give the impression that from here on out it is just every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost...This means that a Christian will never simply allow himself to develop a state of mind in which, forgetting his Christian ideal, he thinks in purely selfish and pragmatic terms. Our rights certainly remain, but they do not entitle us to develop a hard-boiled, callous, selfish outlook, a “me first” attitude.

(Forest, 34-35)

Like the crisis of Merton’s time, the coronavirus pandemic affects the whole world. Much more acutely than in the nuclear crisis, everyone’s actions really do affect the whole. The difficulty of this crisis is that for most, there is nothing “active” one can do to confront a visible enemy. Rather, one is called to look within and exercise humility and restraint. The outbreak hit the U.S. during Lent, a time already set aside for increased focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We have been called to commit ourselves in our homes to rekindle the “liturgy of the heart” spoken of by St. Dionysius the Areopagite. We have been called to fast, not only from the foods proscribed by the Church, but from going out and doing day-to-day things. Perhaps most difficult, we have been called to fast from the Divine Services and the Sacraments (even while those who work in healthcare, emergency response, the food industry, and other essential areas have faced profound ascesis of another kind). Hopefully, much of our almsgiving has been directed at supporting those on the frontlines as well as helping our neighbors who have lost work or faced other struggles due to the pandemic.

We have likely all felt tempted to respond to this by asserting our “rights,” by finding someone to blame, or by getting into a numbers game of situational ethics. These are so tempting because they can help us make sense of our situation in the short term. However, just as Merton, at the end of his exploration of all the sides, all the ramifications, all the ethics of the crisis of his time, arrived finally at the foot of the Cross, which called him to speak to higher things, to eternal things, we have been asked in our time to do the same.

After celebrating Mass on the Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, Merton reflected:

What we have known in the past as Christian penance is not a deep enough concept if it does not comprehend the special problems and dangers of this present age. Hairshirts will not do the trick, though there is no harm in mortifying the flesh. But vastly more important is the complete change of heart and the totally new outlook on the world of man. We have to see as our duty to mankind as a whole. We must not fail in this duty which God is imposing on us with His own hand.

(Forest, 80)

As Christians, the way through difficult times is often not a way that will fit easily into any “side.” This is a lesson in the Gospels and throughout the history of the

Church and witness of the Saints. The reason for which we shelter in place, fast for a time from Divine Services, do with less, are willing to suffer economic hardship, and do not “assert our rights” to do the things we wish to do is not just based on the advice from medical experts and orders from civil authorities. We certainly are informed by this, but the primary reason the Christian makes these sacrifices is to love our neighbor, especially the least among us, the sick, the immuno-compromised, the elderly, whose value is not based on their “productivity” in society but in the fact they are created and beloved by God. We do not simply “take care of our own,” especially at a time of shared suffering, but imitate Our Lord, the Saints, and those like Merton who met the temptation of a partisan, self-preserving response with a call to return to the Cross.

REV. JOEL WEIR is the rector of St. Stephen the First Martyr Orthodox Church, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He serves as a Frontliner in the emergency response network of the International Orthodox Christian Concern and as dean of the Indianapolis Deanery of the Orthodox Church in America. He is also a musician with numerous recordings and regular live performances. Blog: www.savedtogether.com Music: www.joeldavidweir.com

The Good Shepherd

(1977) Sadao Watanabe