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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What medical emergency does Merton experience while waiting to enter a monastery?
(a) He has serious stomach trouble and ulcers.
(b) He gets appendicitis and has surgery.
(c) He has an abcessed tooth extracted.
(d) He breaks his arm and must remain in a cast for months.

2. What religious order does Merton first consider joining?
(a) The Templars.
(b) The Jesuits.
(c) The Dominicans.
(d) The Franciscans.

3. What prompted Merton to confess his sins to the abbot?
(a) The abbot's forgiving demeanor.
(b) Merton's trip to Cuba.
(c) A discussion with Dan Walsh.
(d) Merton's medical emergency.

4. What religious rule do the monks follow at Gethsemani?
(a) The Franciscan rule.
(b) The Trappist rule.
(c) The Dominican rule.
(d) The Carmelite rule.

5. What behavior characterizes Merton's life while he is teaching?
(a) He schedules his life as if he were a monk in a monastery.
(b) He no longer prays daily.
(c) He works during the day and goes to bars at night.
(d) He tells everyone he knows that he wants to be a priest.

6. How could Merton have registered for the draft?
(a) As a lay person.
(b) As a lay person.
(c) As a religious person.
(d) As a conscientious objector.

7. What does Merton write in his draft papers?
(a) That he won't go into the military because he is religious.
(b) That he can't argue there is no just war.
(c) That he is ready to fight the enemy.
(d) That he must receive a teaching exemption.

8. What action does Merton take to become a monk after lunch at the Columbia Faculty Club?
(a) He applies for early admission to the Franciscans.
(b) He follows the advice of Mark Van Doren.
(c) He visits his brother to discuss the matter.
(d) He writes to the abbot at Gethsemani.

9. What does a Carmelite tell the Master of Novices about Merton?
(a) That Merton deserved to be a monk.
(b) That Merton was his role model.
(c) That Merton was converted to faith by reading James Joyce.
(d) That Merton followed the teachings of the saints.

10. What does Merton feel about the war?
(a) Regret.
(b) Pride.
(c) Fear.
(d) Avoidance.

11. What sends Merton into a frustrating "holding pattern"?
(a) Being told that he must wait to find a teaching job until the next year.
(b) Finding out that he was taken off the waiting list at St. Bonaventure.
(c) Discovering that his friends had sabotaged him in his desire to be a priest.
(d) Being told to withdraw his application to the monastery and that he has no vocation to be a priest.

12. What does Merton say he needs when he begins talking about being a priest?
(a) A rule that would lead him to parish ministry.
(b) A rule designed to detach him from the world.
(c) A rule that would prepare him to teach at the university.
(d) A rule that would allow him to do community outreach.

13. Where does Merton first apply for a novitiate?
(a) The monastery of Zion Church.
(b) A monastery in Pennsylvania.
(c) The monastery of St. Francis of Assisi.
(d) A monastery in Rome.

14. Who accepts Merton into the community of monks?
(a) Abbot Dom Frederic.
(b) Father Edmund.
(c) Father Brown.
(d) Abbot Snow.

15. Who does Merton talk to when he first starts to tell people he wants to be a priest?
(a) Robert Lax.
(b) Ed Rice.
(c) Mark Van Doren.
(d) Dan Walsh.

Short Answer Questions

1. What pattern of behavior is repeated in Merton's quest for the priesthood?

2. Who is the Baroness?

3. What does Merton neglect to mention to the abbot?

4. With whom does Merton receive the habit he will wear as a monk?

5. How does Merton want to live in the world?

(see the answer keys)

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