The gospel proclaimed by the worship of the Church is a public event. It not only takes place in public and intends to be heard by the public but it creates the public that can hear it, and which can take part in it. Each church understands that it is speaking to its own community and nation, and that they can hear what this church is communicating to them. This worship gathers together and reconciles persons representative of different and hitherto antagonistic groups, bringing their enmity to an end. It demonstrates that the power that cuts persons and groups off from one another is itself overcome. It establishes that that human relationship cannot be broken or brought to an end by any power, not even by our mortality and death. Relationship between person and person may continue without limit, and thus the universe is open, and man is the creature of hope, directed towards his future.
So Christians ask, is twenty-first century Christian theology faithful to the teaching of the great Church? Would ancient or medieval Christians recognise us as fellow Christians? Or would they say that we have turned from the faith towards some simulacrum of it? Would they charge us with robbing our own future generations to the point which our society is disintegrating and its culture disappearing before us? How could we reply? Lord, have mercy. What other reply could we make? Lord, have mercy.
