'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.' Bob Dylan could have been describing the experience of many Christians, who find over time that their faith becomes younger, more restless, more concerned with questions than answers. This occasional series presents the stories of people who have taken a leap of faith. First to go is Michael Roberts, poet and television producer, who lives in Cheshire, England.

As an Anglican, I had been caught up in the interest in 'Celtic Christianity'. I work as Radio Producer and was commissioned to make a series for BBC Radio 3 about this increasingly popular part of the Christian tradition. But I discovered that the claims made for it were substantially based on wishful thinking. The elements which remained – the ones which were historically well-founded – were not distinctively 'Celtic' at all, but part of the mainstream Christian tradition.

These common elements – prayers for everyday life, sacramental theology, stewardship of creation, the communion of saints – which attracted many low church Christians like myself, were as common in the Italian or Spanish church of the time as the Scottish or Irish Church. Those 'Celtic' churches had no sense of themselves as 'Celtic', just Christian.

The pull of Celtic Christianity was really a pull towards the broad Catholic Christian tradition. Now, you can certainly find that in Anglicanism, but there were other factors. My wife, as a Baptist, felt increasingly uncertain about the individual emphasis of nonconformity, the imperative to sort out your personal relationship with God. She saw the Catholic tradition as a huge ship full of people having good days and bad days, times of faith and doubt, yet always on course with the ship.

There were also more local factors. We wanted a Primary School for our sons which gave them a Christian foundation – and found that most evident in the Catholic Primary School. That school was strongly linked with the local Catholic Church, and when we eventually went along one Sunday morning, we found a broad and thriving community of Christians similar in number and age-range to evangelical churches we had previously attended.

That was not the only similarity. The people at this Church were 'evangelical' in belief and approach to the Christian faith. There was the same emphasis on Scripture, music, preaching, but also the extraordinary mystery of the real presence in the eucharist at the heart of it all. There was also, for me, a sense of being in closer touch with the historic roots of Christianity.

On the level of culture, politics, ethics, the Catholic Church is still intellectually formidable and influential. Although its influence on the world stage has not always been admirable (whose has?), I find its theological responses to many burning questions – such as genetic research – cogent, balanced and profound.

The Independent newspaper in Britain recently wrote in an editorial that Pope John Paul II is about the only truly world statesman we have at the moment. Although John Paul is reviled by some as a reactionary authoritarian, others claim he played a huge role in bringing down the iron curtain, has worked to close the schism between the Christian East and West, and written some profound Christian theology into the bargain. Not a bad papacy, unless you believe all papacies are bad by definition.

There was one other element in this journey. For me, as a poet, so many of my heroes past and present – David Jones, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the composer Olivier Messiaen, the artist Georges Rouault – found inspiration and space in Catholicism. Last year, I told the great Australian poet Les Murray (himself a Catholic convert), that we were moving in that direction, and I started listing the reasons. 'Yes', he said, 'But you fall in love first, and then come the reasons.'

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