后记
Postscript
以上文字写于1984年，同年首次出版。
All of the foregoing was written during 1984, and the book was first published in that year.
1985年复活节守夜礼中，我被接纳进入罗马公教会。
At the Easter Vigil in 1985, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
或许需要一点说明，因为读者可能要问：既然我在书中一直用「使徒性教会」这一不分彼此的说法，把罗马、圣公会、东方正教等——也就是自称其主教传承可追溯至使徒的教会——统归其下，为何最终仍作此选择？
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.
若我在此详细叙述从坎特伯里走向罗马的每一步，难免带上党派色彩，这非我所愿。最简单的说法也许就是：这是纽曼、诺克斯、切斯特顿及凡作此决定者之共同故事。「教会是什么」的问题终至无从回避；人发现自己再也给不出强有力的理由，去把信经里「独一、圣洁、大公、使徒」理解成与最初一千五百年不同的意思。我深知拉丁教会与东方教会在此议题上的裂痕；在此我只能躲在一面明知脆弱的盾牌后面：身为普通西方平信徒，我无法解决这两大教会千年来未能解决的难题。我是西方基督徒，无论好坏如此。然而，对一切愿以「基督徒」为名，并承认这一尊名自五旬节以来所有意涵的人，我毫无争论——一点也没有。
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——我相信罗马公教会就是古老的教会；我接受其宣称；我相信在此可找到信仰的「丰满」（即大公性）。因此，我为基督教分裂而忧伤，并每日祈求主的教会再度合一。
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.
汤玛斯·霍华德
马萨诸塞州贝弗利法姆斯
1988年4月
Thomas Howard
Beverly Farms, Mass.
April 1988