There have been many false starts getting the Taos Tatler tattling again, all flops. Here is another one, but this time your Tatler is hell-bent (if you’ll pardon the expression) to succeed. To begin, the tale of how this blogger came to Rome. Some readers will protest they have read it already. True, but only in bits and pieces. Here is the whole thing, written in the first person to appear less pompous.
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Long ago I was baptized, and partially raised as an Episcopalian. Alas, my mother (Father stayed home Sundays) was on the losing side of an intra-parish squabble over how Sunday services ought to be celebrated, in a catholic or protestant manner. Mother’s side lost, which resulted in her pulling herself and her children out of this Episcopal church. Though attempts were made by her in the ensuing years to find another church for her and her children, none proved satisfactory for various reasons and eventually the family became irreligious.
Some years later, while studying music at Boston University, I joined the University’s chapel choir for both performance credit and, a big plus, pay. The chapel’s services followed Methodist practice in keeping with BU’s affiliation with the United Methodist Church. To my great surprise, I not only found myself enjoying the worship music under the able leadership of the late Dr Max Miller, but the service as well.
Despite that, I felt there was something missing, but not being a church goer, I did not know what that was. I spoke to a friend and colleague in the music school, who was musically and liturgically knowledgeable, about this incompleteness I felt at the BU chapel. My friend asked me what I remembered from my early church days. When I told him, he said the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill was the only church for me. He was right on the mark. Advent, which happily still thrives, is an Anglo-Catholic, or irreverently, “smells and bells,” church. To paraphrase the leader of another faith, this was the place. I was at home. I became a regular attendee and was later confirmed by our bishop and Advent’s rector, the Rev’d G. Harris Collingwood. For the first time in many years I was a church goer again, in an Anglo-Catholic parish.
Skipping ahead a few decades, my last Anglo-Catholic parish, and my favorite, was the Church of the Resurrection, in East 74th Street of Manhattan. As a happily ensconced parishioner at that church, I was unprepared for a strange occurrence I experienced there.
At a Good Friday service (no mass, as per catholic practice), during a procession, with incense billowing, I heard a voice in my head I did not know tell me, “Jesus is not here.”
That was disturbing. Our Lord, I thought, must surely be present in this church, with its glorious liturgy and music. There was a similar occurrence a few days later, this time while walking to work on the far West Side of Manhattan. Another voice spoke to me, but this one I did know. It was mine and it told me, “You must become a Catholic.” Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with that voice.
Accomplishing that, however, I was at sea. I knew not one Catholic priest, and my Episcopalian reticence disallowed walking into a Catholic Church and telling whomever I saw, I want to be a Catholic.
I had, however, heard of a Catholic priest, owing to his writings, interviews et al, Father George Rutler. Poor fellow, he was my nominee. At my job the next day, instead of archiving job parts of classical recordings for Sony Music, I tapped out a letter to Fr Rutler telling him what I wished to do. Not knowing his email address, I mailed it to his postal address at the Church of Our Saviour in Midtown and included my email address should he wish to respond in more modern medium.
Fr Rutler responded via email only two days later with the encouraging message, “Come see me.” I did. Father told me what was involved, and after seven months of intense instruction by two able catechists, at the Easter Vigil at Our Saviour’s Church, this sinner, was received into the Holy Catholic Church, along with several others, with impressive ceremony.
THE TAOS TATLER. 
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