This a new edition of a classic critique by Joseph McCabe first published under the singular title, Twelve Years in a Monastery.

From the new introduction: Joseph McCabe was a remarkably courageous thinker and writer, who was not shy from pointing out the numerous errors he found in the monastic lifestyle which he eventually felt distracted human beings away from an unvarnished and more honest approach to understanding the cosmos around us and how to live within in it.

I realize that some Catholics may be offended by Mr. McCabe’s unyielding skepticism, but I think we are helped (not hindered) in our spiritual pilgrimages by allowing our doubts to be fully vocalized and not suppressed in fear that our God is so puny that she will strike vengeance on anyone who thinks logically and coherently and wisely. I often remark to my philosophy students at Mt. San Antonio College that we are puny creatures and there is nothing wrong with asking the hardest questions possible. Truth doesn’t evaporate because of our uncertainty, just as the sun doesn’t shine any less brightly because we occasionally spit at it.

The problem with Roman Catholicism, as Joseph McCabe will illustrate throughout his text, is that it is too concerned with its own survival as a worldwide organization and less as school for open and unabashed inquiry.

Yes, Joseph McCabe can rightly be regarded as an agnostic and a non-believer. But as the distinguished sociologist, Peter Berger, insightfully opined in 1979, we must all become heretics if we wish to scale beyond the walls of our own myopic indoctrinations.