Having become thoroughly sick of Rome, I did not know how much Catholicism meant to me. I have studied many religions and practice three of them. There is truth in all things. Ever since my junior year in college when we studied Buddhism and Islam I wished that I could study my native religion afresh with new eyes. I wished that I could look at it as someone coming to it for the first time.
For me, this is what being an Anglican is like. It is the same Mass, but different. If one were asleep or inattentive he might mistake an Anglican service for a Roman Mass, but no devout member of either church could ever confuse the two.
Now we are in January, the time of new starts, the end of the Christmas season. I cannot believe how happy I am when I heft the weight of the Book of Common Prayer in my hands and begin the morning office. It is as if the gift I have received if Catholicism again after such a long isolation from it.

I have been thinking. All of us have an ax to grind. If we live in this world long enough, we’ve got an ax to grind. It’s all a matter of having the presence of mind not to waste out time grinding those axes. This means that from now on in my writing I will have to be very careful as to what I say on the Church of Rome, careful of how I portray Roman Catholics. Good storytelling should be like good coffee: strong, but with no room for bitterness.
It is a common flaw of people who leave one house, one tradition, one religion for another, to remain forever bitter at what they left, turning it into a monster while placing all hope and all salvation on the NEW church, the new philosophy, the new way. I will not be so foolish. All ways have their good things and their flaws. Let it suffice to say that I parted with Rome because she was an ill fit for me, and leave it at that. If I can rejoice in where I stand now, it follows that I must rejoice in the road that brought me here. If I had not been a devout Roman for twenty-one years, I could not be a devout Anglican this year, when I am twenty-six.