Why i'm Episcopalian.

In "The Chosen" (June 16), Luke Timothy Johnson writes: "We [Catholics] genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament, make the sign of the cross, say the blessing before meals, attend the Eucharist, fast during Lent, and do a thousand other shared practices simply because that is what Catholics do. These shared practices, deeply (if irrationally) satisfying to the soul, hold us together even when we disagree on the meaning of Scripture or on a difficult moral discernment. Our Protestant neighbors don't enjoy that cushion."

As someone who left the Catholic Church when he discovered that every pious practice that Johnson mentions was available under other Christian auspices (not to speak of many other practices of great beauty and antiquity), I beg to differ. There is, in fact, nothing of Christian cultural or theological interest that is available only under Roman Catholic auspices except Romanita, the church's distinctive hierarchical, centralized form of governance. Some, I realize, are very attached to Romanita. I was not.

My Episcopal parish is not an especially Anglo-Catholic or antiquarian one, and yet I had the experience a few weeks ago of coming to the Communion rail just as a visiting boys choir was singing Cesar Franck's "Panis Angelicus." Many great tenors have sung Franck's immortal hymn, but for me the definitive version will always be John McCormack's. What could be simultaneously more Irish or more Catholic than John McCormack singing "Panis Angelicus," and me humming along, able to parse every word of the Latin if you called on me? But you can love all that, you can, and still be a committed Episcopalian.

JACK MILES

Los Angeles, Calif