Who is Owen Merton from The Seven Storey Mountain and what is their importance?

Though his son describes him only in the most complimentary terms, Owen Merton leaves much of his childrearing responsibility to others. He leaves his two sons continents away for months at a time.

However, to hear his son tell it, Owen is the most noble and generous man one could hope to know, one of "exceptional intellectual honesty and sincerity and purity and understanding. In reflecting on his death, Merton wrote, "Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.