Publisher's Synopsis
The peculiar value of the book becomes apparent when we remember that Mr. Joseph McCabe was formerly Father Antony, a Grey Friar or a member of the English section of the Order of St. Francis. He sums up his experiences in these words: "The writer, after spending twelve years in various monasteries of the Franciscan Order, found himself compelled, in the early part of last year (1896), to secede from the Roman Catholic priesthood. During those years, besides a long familiarity with the tenor of monastic life, a large experience of Catholic educational, polemical, and administrative methods has been accumulated, and it may not be inopportune to set it forth in simple narrative." For the Protestant there is always an air of mystery around the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church. He has often been victimized by the wild and repulsive stories of "the escaped monk." The accounts of monastic life by such men are evidently extremely onesided and bear the marks of exaggeration, to say the least Mr. McCabe is not an "escaped monk" of that kind. He has not simply laid off the monastic garb, but he has put on a manner of life differing in principle and practice from that of the monk. He is an intelligent convert from Catholicism and withal a gentleman in the description of the institution he has left behind.
