后记
Postscript
以上一切是在 1984 年间写就的，本书于该年首次出版。
All of the foregoing was written during 1984, and the book was first published in that year.
1985 年的复活节守夜礼中，我被接纳入罗马天主教会。
At the Easter Vigil in 1985, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
一段解释的注或许有助于那些完全可能问起是什么促成了这样一步的读者——因为在整本书的文本中，我已不加分别地谈到「使徒的教会们」，把那标题下的罗马、英国圣公会、以及东正教——即那些声称拥有源自使徒的主教不间断谱系的教会——都包括在内。
A note of explanation may assist readers who might well ask what prompted such a move, when throughout the text of the book I have spoken of “the apostolic churches” in an undifferentiated way, assuming under that heading Rome, Anglicanism, and Orthodoxy—the churches, in other words, which claim an unbroken lineage of bishops stemming from the apostles.
如果我去着手细述那将我自坎特伯雷带至罗马的那些步骤，就会敲出一种我无意在此敲出的派别之音。或许最简明地说法就是说，那是同一个古老的故事——你在纽曼、诺克斯、切斯特顿、以及所有作了这一转变的人那里所找到的。那问题——教会是什么？——最终变得棘手；而人发觉自己无法提出任何十分有力的理由，来说明那我们在信经中所共同说的「唯一、圣洁、大公、使徒所传的」一语，应以任何别于它在 1500 年中被人所理解之方式被理解。我极为清楚在这一点上拉丁与东正两教会之间的裂痕；对这一点，我必须躲到一面显然单薄的盾牌之后，那就是，我作为单独的平信徒，无法解开这些教会 1000 年来所未能解开之事。我是一位西方基督徒，无论好歹。但我与任何愿意以「基督徒」之名——连同那崇高之名自五旬节以来所意味的一切——自称的人，毫无争执——毫无争执。
It would strike a partisan note which I have no wish to strike here if I were to embark on a detailed account of the steps which took me from Canterbury to Rome. Perhaps the simplest way of putting the matter would be to say that it is the same old story which one finds in Newman, Knox, Chesterton, and all others who have made this move. The question, What is the Church? becomes, finally, intractable; and one finds oneself unable to offer any very telling reasons why the phrase “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” which we all say in the Creed, is to be understood in any way other than the way in which it was understood for 1500 years. I am sharply aware of the fissure between the Latin and Orthodox churches in this matter, and on this point I must dodge behind a manifestly flimsy shield, namely, that I, as a solitary layman, cannot untangle what these churches have been unable, for 1000 years, to untangle. I am a Western Christian, for good or ill. But I have no quarrel—no quarrel at all—with anyone who will own the name “Christian” with all that that noble name has meant since the Day of Pentecost.
是的——我相信罗马天主教会就是那古老教会。我接受它的声称。我相信，正是在这里可以找到信仰的圆满（「大公性」）。因此，我为基督教界的分裂而哀痛。我每日为基督的教会重新合一而祷告。
Yes—I believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the Ancient Church. I accept its claims. I believe that here one finds the fullness (“catholicity”) of the Faith. Hence, I mourn the splintering in Christendom. I pray daily for the reunion of Christ’s Church.
托马斯·霍华德
马萨诸塞州，贝弗利农场
1988 年 4 月
Thomas Howard
Beverly Farms, Mass.
April 1988