I WAS A MONK

Don't expect for thin the sort of market that materialized for I Jumped Over the Will the Monica Baldwin story of how she deserted her vocation and took her place in a strange world. This is by no means the sensational book the title suggests. It is a sincere and earnest story of how and why one young man decided for the monastic life, lived it for twenty five years, and eventually decided to leave it. The description of life within the monastery is the most interesting part of the book, revealing as it does the intellectual processes and emotional experiences by which the Catholic orders (he belonged to the strict Passionate Order) gain recruits and hold them. His abrupt decision to leave came after a protracted illness, during which he was able, for almost the first time, to allow his keen mind to roam at will. In this period he came to reject the philosophical basis of the Catholic faith, and with it other man-made creeds. While not a book theologians will like, it is an honest, sincere and reverent account of a spiritual pilgrimage from intellectual certainty and emotional ecatasy to philosophical doubt, emotional stability and peace of mind...If attacked as anti-Catholic, this book might exceed the predictable bounds of its market.