Merton, cigarettes, and pie
Father John Hugo visited the Abbey of Gethsemane in 1947.
Readers are familiar with Thomas Merton, a.k.a. Fr. Louis, the Trappist monk-writer, but most will need the brief introduction to Fr. John Hugo (1911-1985) that follows shortly.
I’ve read most of Merton’s books, including his best-selling The Seven Storey Mountain twice, but it is not my favorite writing of his. My favorite is the seven-volume collection of his journals. There Merton’s heart is found—joy, suffering, and his sense of humor.
In his journal (Volume Two 1941-1952), we find an entry mentioning Fr. John Hugo in November of 1947.
Who was John Hugo? In brief. he was a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, a pastor, a preacher, and a retreat master. For many years he conducted retreats for the Catholic Worker, in fact Dorothy Day considered him her spiritual director for many years and is said to have credited her “second conversion” to one of his retreats. The retreats were modeled on what Day called, “the famous conferences on the spiritual life” led by Father Onesimus Lacouture (1881-1951).
(More on Lacouture and Hugo can be found in an essay by Dorothy Day here.)
More context: In 1947 Father Hugo was 36 years old. Merton was 32, not yet ordained, in formation at the Abbey, and The Seven Storey Mountain had not yet been published.
With that brief background here is Merton’s entry ….
“… after a half serous remark I made, Fr. Prior called in Fr. Raymond to talk with this famous Fr. Hugo, one of Lacouture’s gang, who was in the guest house for a day. It would take a long time to put down the few confused ideas I have about those people.
“All they say is that you have to mortify yourself to be a Christian which ought to be evident to a child who has had a few lessons in Catechism.
“However, it appears they get specific and enter into certain practical details which offend scores of respectable priests and religious. In other words, instead of just saying that Christians in general must do penance in general, it seems they say you priests specifically must give up so much smoking and drinking specifically, and don’t stuff yourselves with so much food and dessert.
This makes everybody sorrowful because they really like cigarettes, pies, etc. So, they say, “Where’s the sin in smoking cigarettes …” And there, so it seems, the trouble begins because per se there is no sin in smoking or drinking or eating a lot of pies, provided you don’t deliberately choke yourself to death on the quantity of pie.”
It seems Merton had suggested to Father Prior that he send Father Raymond to talk to Hugo because Raymond “used to get upset when words evidently borrowed boldly from Lacouture” came forth from the mouths of fellow Trappists.
Merton concluded his entry, writing “(Raymond) went in and had a long talk with Fr. Hugo and now understands and likes them better…”.
Merton, always the peacemaker—at times a troublemaker with a wink of the eye.
For more on Father Hugo, look for an out-of-print book titled Weapons of the Spirit: Selected Writings of Father John Hugo (Our Sunday Visitor, 1997) edited by David Scott and Mike Aquilina.