Thomas Verner Moore (1877-1969)

Today in 1969 marks the death of Thomas Verner Moore: priest, ethicist, religious founder, psychiatrist, and writer. Born in Kentucky in 1877, he joined the Paulists in 1896 and was ordained in 1901. In 1903 he received his doctorate from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He went to Germany for post-graduate studies in Psychology, and in 1915 he received a medical degree from Johns Hopkins. He taught Psychology for many years at Catholic. During World War I, he served in the U.S. Army, but not as a chaplain. He was in the Medical Corps working with shell-shok victims. Drawn to the monastic life, he founded a Benedictine community near Catholic University, St. Anselm’s Abbey. In later years he joined the Carthusians, the Marine Corps of monastic orders. In 1947, at age seventy, he joined the Carthusian monastery (known as a charterhouse) in Miraflores, Spain. In 1950 he returned to America, where he founded the nation’s first charterhouse. He later returned to Spain, where he lived until his death at age 92. Moore wrote more than twenty book, mainly in psychology and ethics.