On graduation from college I entered Yale Divinity School, not because I had decided to become a minister, but because of increasing doubts about the religious faith in which I had been reared. I supposed God had a purpose for my life, but I had no idea what that purpose might be. I entered the seminary to find out, but was required at once to accept field work as pastor to a small Baptist Church. I found that having to deliver pastoral prayers and sermons in my state of confusion increased my growing doubt. As a Protestant, I had direct access to God, but while I could call on Him, God never saw fit to reply. Finally my tie to Christianity became so tenuous that it was perhaps best expressed by Augustine’s prayer: “Thou hath made us for thyself and we are restless till we find our rest in Thee.”
In that frame of mind I was invited by a good friend to attend his high nuptial Mass, rich in ceremony, music, and liturgy. I am embarrassed to recall how deeply that Mass offended my Protestant sensibilities. In the midst of incense and the recitation of an almost endless Latin liturgy, I heard only mumbo-jumbo incantations that seemed to me barbaric and in violation of the clarity of Protestant Christianity. I had a hard time believing Calvinist doctrine, but, I asked myself, how could anyone buy into all this dumb show and noise?
Subsequent events set me
