Until about the age of 17 I had a strong though undernourished faith. What I mean by "faith" is that I believed in the Holy Trinity, the Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, the Virgin Birth and the reality of "life after death". I knew little else about the doctrines of the Church, even less about the importance of her moral teachings and almost nothing of her history.

By the time I finished boarding school and started my undergraduate career I began to lose my faith altogether. Not only did I stop going to Mass, I dismissed my former beliefs as childish superstitions, as a security blanket that I had done well to throw off. Around this time, as my poetry began to appear in journals and newspapers, I was drawn into a world of poetry readings, book launches and literary festivals, into a culture that mostly mirrored my unbelief.

My desire to fit into this culture was strong but shortly gave way to a despair in which I apprehended the logical consequences of unbelief in others and in myself. A trip to Europe moreover, coupled with my discovery of the poetry of Hopkins and the prose of Evelyn Waugh, re-kindled my desire for the Faith.

In Assisi I was moved and encouraged by the sight of Franciscans in habits going about their work in the streets and while there I attended Mass for the first time in a long time. On my return to Australia I started to consult the catechism and to attend Mass with greater frequency though still irregularly. Unfortunately in the Mass, in the place where I most needed to find solace and support, I found instead the greatest stumbling block to my new intentions. I simply could not reconcile what the Church told me was happening with what I was witnessing.

Having been to a Catholic boarding school I had been exposed before to post-conciliar abuses (as I now understand them to have been), but to few of the excesses that I found in parish Masses, which became more noticeable and seemingly more excessive the more often I attended. Constant and pointless innovations, the use of tape recorders and overheads, pop hymns that patronised the very people (like myself) to whom they were designed to appeal, liturgical dance, the absence of icons that I could remember from years gone by, banners hanging from the ceiling that seemed more appropriate to a one day cricket match — all of this drove me away from Mass into a corner where I felt compelled to doubt my recovered sense of the numinous.

 Before long I stopped going to Mass again. Nonetheless, sceptical of my doubt, I was perplexed by the idea that minds infinitely greater than mine had, in the past, assented to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. What was it about the Faith that had appealed to so many of the writers I admired — to genius’s like Oscar Wilde, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Evelyn Waugh? What was it that sustained them in their Faith?

Still asking this question (though becoming increasingly doubtful of finding the answer to it), about six months later I attended my first traditional Latin Mass at St. Brigid’s in Dickson, Canberra. An Anglican friend in town on business was going along and knowing that I was at least nominally Catholic he suggested I go too. I had no idea how that suggestion would change my life.

Kneeling at my first traditional Mass, listening to the beautiful, mysterious language and to the even more mysterious silences in which I could do nothing but contemplate the infinite, I was confused "by the double illusion of familiarity and strangeness" (to use a lovely phrase of Evelyn Waugh’s out of context). I had never experienced anything like it and yet I felt at home. Although the Mass challenged me, although it demanded something from me that I did not yet know how to give (my commitment to Christ, His Church and all its teachings) I knew I would be back.

I did not start to go exclusively to the traditional Mass until many months later, but as a consequence of that initial encounter I began to attend Mass again each Sunday. In Canberra where I was at university I would go to the traditional Mass, while at home on the coast I would force myself to persevere with a Novus Ordo, understanding that I was obliged to do so. What the traditional Mass affirms and reaffirms, what it can not help but proclaim and what it almost immediately convinced me of, was the truth of the Real Presence. I had believed in the Real Presence when younger but had never properly gauged its significance. Once this was conveyed to me I could no longer neglect what I now knew to be the source of all true faith.

Of course Rome was not built in a day and, in my case, things were going to get worse even as they got better. My love of the Mass and the Church presented me with a dilemma which took a long time to resolve; my life had reached a new point of crisis: a million questions kept running through my head. Why had the Church let this Mass, which had brought me back to the Faith, all but disappear? Why, now that the Holy Father had called for "a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See, for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962", were these instructions not being carried out by bishops?

Perhaps paradoxically, as my Faith grew my sense of confusion and betrayal grew. Why had I been taught error at a Catholic school, particularly in respect of morality? Why instead of being taught with a catechism in religion classes was I taught about "Relaxation Methods" and other banalities that had absolutely nothing to do with the Faith? It took me months to comprehend all of the issues involved and even longer to come to terms with them. At the same time I had to begin the difficult but necessary process of redefining myself in the eyes of others. A process that is still going on.

These days, almost 18 months after my first encounter with the old Rite, I divide my week between Canberra and the New South Wales south coast, between my few contact hours at university and the writing of my thesis at home in Kiama. In Canberra mid-week I have started to serve at a morning Mass, while on Sunday mornings I make the two hour trip each way from Kiama to Sydney and back so as to attend the traditional Latin Mass at the Maternal Heart of Mary Chapel, Lewisham.

I say this not for commendation. I travel these distances in order to get to Mass for my own peace of mind, which would otherwise be seriously disrupted. Indeed, as long as I mixed Novus Ordo with the traditional Mass my rejuvenated faith felt challenged by the liturgical abuses (and attendant doctrinal compromises) in the former. The decision to attend the traditional Mass exclusively was therefore one of personal necessity.

Once I made that decision, however, the positive effects were almost immediate. Through the immemorial rite of Mass the teachings of the Church are revealed in the light of the glorious whole of which they form the parts. I no longer saw them as rules in a rule book but as living, breathing utterances of Truth. I now realised what it was that enabled millions of men and women in the past to devote their lives to Christ and His Church, what it was that enabled the saints to perform their extraordinary deeds and what it was that gave strength and courage to the martyrs.

It also became obvious to me why, as vocations and Mass attendances drop in the rest of the Church, they are rapidly climbing in traditional communities. Since Christ is the focus of the traditional Mass it is logical that He becomes, more often than not, the focus of the lives of those who attend this Mass.

It is Saturday as I write this and it is with wonder that I think of the Mass I will attend tomorrow, of the beautiful chapel, the Gregorian chant and, most especially, of the consecration, when the bell in the tower will sound across Lewisham to awaken minds to the fact that the King of kings is wholly present amongst us. Yesterday, in a cafe next to the university college where I stay when in Canberra, I was speaking to the Greek lady making my chips. She had an Orthodox icon of Our Lady on the wall behind her and, in the discussion that my noticing it gave rise to, she told me of her faith - of how when she attends the sacred liturgy she never wants it to end, she never wants to leave. I know exactly how she feels.