Thank you, Allan.

You know, I took a chance in asking Allan to be my confirmation sponsor. I mean --well, you know how Allan is-- I was afraid Allan would think "Godfather" and show up, mouth stuffed with cotton balls and talking like Marlon Brando.

My other sponsor, Patrick, is a character too. I know Patrick through Allan. Allan brought Patrick into our men's reading group. It was just a few weeks into our Monday evening discussions of Plutarch's Lives that Patrick brought up religion, having already gotten us all into a row over politics. I think his precise words were: "David, when the **** are you going to stop being an **** heretic and join the True Church?"

I responded that Anglicans are schismatics, not heretics; that meant I was still going to hell, but for a different reason. These distinctions are important, you know. Patrick continued to urge me to come home to the Church. But as for me --well I was afraid that if I ran out of the Church of England I wouldn't stop at Rome. I'd keep running until I'd passed Rome and wouldn't stop until I ended up a Lefevrite -- thus exchanging one schism for another.

Seriously I came to believe that Anglicanism is heretical and well as schismatic. And oddly, for at the time I had not yet read Cardinal Newman's Apologia, it was on precisely the same ground as Newman that I was persuaded -- development of doctrine. But enough about theology.

My family had all been vaguely Protestant. My grandmother became a Jehovah's Witness and, the whole family really tried, for her sake, to be good JWs. It didn't "take" for any of us. The JWs have a saying, "read God's word the Bible daily." Well I did, and found it incompatible with the Witness teachings. That bizarre sect taught me to love and seek the Truth, and that's, of course, what drove me out of it. After reading St. Augustine's Confessions, I knew I needed to become a Catholic Christian. And Anglicanism put forth a fair claim of catholicity. Anglicanism also taught me to love the form of the liturgy, as done so perfectly by the Anglican Church. And love of the outward and visible signs led me to seek the inward and spiritual grace of the True Sacraments of the Catholic Church.

The point is here I am. I took me long enough to get here. It's rather like the quotation often attributed to Winston Churchill: "you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing --after they've tried everything else first.

And so, to Allan, and Patrick, my wife Mary, Father O'Regan, and all of you who in some way helped me along to do the right thing after trying everything else. Thank you. Cheers!