Heights Church Celebrates Religious Intellectuals

In his memoir The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton, CC '38, describes his first visit to Corpus Christi Church on 121st Street in 1937. "How bright the little building seemed," he writes. "Indeed, it was quite new. The sun shone on the clean bricks.

People were going in the wide open door, into the cool darkness and, all at once, all the churches of Italy and France came back to me. The richness and fulness [sic] of the atmosphere of Catholicism that I had not been able to avoid apprehending and loving as a child came back to me with a rush: but now I was to enter into it fully for the first time. So far, I had known nothing but the outward surface."

Merton was going to Corpus Christi to be baptized a Catholic, and the decision would prove to be a momentous one, not only for Merton himself but for twentieth century Catholicism as well. Merton would eventually take vows as a Trappist monk and join the Monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and his prolific writings from the monastery prior to his death in 1968 would make him one of the most widely-read Catholic thinkers in history. His baptism, perhaps the most important moment in his life, occurred at a font that still stands in the back of Corpus Christi's sanctuary, and much of his memoir takes place in the surrounding neighborhood.

Merton's relationship with Morningside Heights is not unique among influential religious thinkers of the last century. He is one of five individuals being honored at Corpus Christi Church during its Lenten vespers series, entitled "Holiness and Wisdom," this spring.

The series, which was conceived by Corpus Christi's Rev. Raymond Rafferty, explores the legacies of five of Morningside Heights's most prominent spiritual figures over the course of the five Sundays of Lent, from March 9 to April 6, during sermons at 4 p.m. In addition to Merton, about whom Rafferty preached this past Sunday, the series includes sermons on Reinhold Neibuhr, Abraham Heschel, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Simone Weil.

Due to the presence of the Union Theological Seminary, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia, Morningside Heights has for years been a hotbed of theological scholarship and debate. But in the 1930s and 40s, the neighborhood was particularly vital, as an astounding number of pivotal figures in American religious thought lived here. "If you look back at the history of Morningside Heights," Rafferty said, "you had some incredible figures in the history of religion in this country, all around the same time."

"Only Jerusalem could perhaps surpass [the religious diversity of] this neighborhood," joked Rabbi Morton Leifman of Jewish Theological Seminary during his March 16 sermon on Abraham Heschel. "Most of us don't take advantage of the full range of it."
The lecture series' theme of "Holiness and Wisdom" focuses on the idea that religion and an intellectually curious mind are not mutually exclusive. "So often, you hear the idea that if you're holy, you have to be dumb and simple," Rafferty said, "or if you're wise then you don't have anything to do with religion."

Rafferty has chosen the vespers subjects with the goal of disproving this idea. All five subjects were widely influential writers in both their own religious traditions and in spiritual thought in general. All of them but Simone Weil also either studied or taught at a neighborhood academic institution during their lives. Neibuhr, the subject of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus's March 9 lecture, was a profoundly influential writer in the field of ethics, who also taught at UTS. Although he is more frequently associated with ethics than with religion, recent scholarship has focused on the spiritual dimension of his work. "There'll be those who don't think of him as a spiritual person," Rafferty said, "but I knew that there are those who did."

Abraham Heschel taught at JTS and was an influential figure not only in Jewish philosophy and poetry but in American religious life in general. Merton once described him as the greatest spiritual leader in 20th century America. Rabbi Morton Leifman, who teaches music at JTS and who studied under Heschel, emphasized Heschel's influence on and relevance to other religions in his March 16 sermon, reading lengthy selections from Heschel's poetry.

Rafferty spoke about Merton on March 23. He sees Merton, who received an M.A. in English from Columbia and who was also a literary critic, novelist, and poet, as proof that "a very well-educated person does not have to leave religion in the background. Religion permeate[d] his wisdom. He was an enormously well-rounded person. He was a very cultured man before he became a Catholic and afterwards, and he didn't see any [contradiction] in that."

Rafferty also considers Merton to be of particular relevance to the current state of international affairs, noting his pacifism--Merton was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War--and interest in the Civil Rights movement. "[Merton] was also a social activist, even from his monastery," he said. "He would deplore what is going on in the world today."

A concern for social activism defines many of the figures chosen by Rafferty. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, about whom Dr. Larry Rasmussen of UTS will preach on March 30, studied at UTS in the 1930s before returning to his native Germany, where his activism in an anti-Nazi Protestant resistance movement ultimately cost him his life: he was hanged in a concentration camp in 1945. Leifman highlighted Heschel's social conscience as well, recalling Heschel's friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his opposition to the Vietnam War. "He was interested in the plight of the poor and miserable and sick all over the world," Leifman said, and exhorted the congregation to not simply practice their faith in their places of worship but to "take it to the streets."

Regarding this dimension of the vespers sermons' subjects, Rafferty said, "Did I plan it that way? No, but that's certainly the way it's unfolding. I hadn't made those connections when I put [the program] together, but it's certainly come out in the preaching."

The final sermon in the series, on Simone Weil, will be delivered on April 6 by Barnard Professor Mary Gordon, who is also a member of the Corpus Christi congregation. Her subject, Weil, was born in France and raised in the Jewish tradition, but eventually became a non-denominational ascetic whose journals have had a lasting influence on spiritual thought. Although she, unlike the other four figures, did not attend or teach at any Morningside Heights institution, she lived for a time on Riverside Drive and mentions worshipping at Corpus Christi in her journals.

For several years, Rafferty has taken advantage of the Lent season to bring different perspectives to his congregation. Because the vespers service is not Eucharistic, Rafferty has been able to invite preachers who are not ordained Catholics, which would be an impossibility for a normal Sunday mass. Last year's Lenten vespers series, for instance, was entitled "The Golden Rule in Five Traditions," and featured sermons by Buddhist, Jain, Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim clergy. "When I started this series," he says, "I thought, this is an opportunity for the members of the congregation and others to hear voices that they may not normally hear."