Dan Walsh Papers

This Records Subgroup contains the papers of Fr. Daniel Clark Walsh (1907-1975). Fr. Dan Walsh was a life-long educator and one of the most influential professors on Merton's life. After earning a doctorate at University of Toronto alongside Étienne Gilson, Walsh became professor at Manhattanville College in New York from 1934-1960. In addition, he was a visiting professor of philosophy at Columbia from 1936-1955, afterward serving as an adjunct professor at Columbia. In 1939, Merton had Walsh for a course on St. Thomas Aquinas. At the bar of the Biltmore Hotel in New York in 1939, Merton told Walsh of his interest in religious life. After mentioning difference orders, including that he was impressed by the Trappists at Gethsemani Abbey, Walsh recommended the Franciscans. Merton would later be rejected by the Franciscans, but remember Walsh's praise of the Trappists. Later, Walsh would join Merton at Gethsemani Abbey in 1960 as a advisor and new professor for the abbey's philosophy program. He soon became a visiting professor at Bellarmine College in Louisville. Archbishop John Floersh offered to ordain the sixty-year-old Walsh a priest in 1967. A surprised but delighted Walsh was ordained at St. Thomas Seminary, a ceremony attended by Merton. Walsh died in 1975 and is buried near the monastic enclosure at Gethsemani Abbey. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 515-516.)