He wanted to be genuinely Catholic, excluding nothing, including all. To Higgins's credit, the Merton in Heretic Blood is well-balanced. Merton, like Blake, is also fundamentally concerned about language and vision. In this age of abstraction in which scientism and rationality have eroded, or put into question, the words we need to talk about what we love, Merton wants to return to early man in very much the same way Blake returned to the child. This very holistic vision centred on the interdependence of all persons and all life-forms is vanishing.
All quotations are from Heretic Blood and use the pagination of that text.
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