We are facing great dangers as a society. An excessive emphasis on the rights of individuals not only dissolves those institutions in which we learn and grow as persons but also paradoxically it entails a huge extension of state surveillance and regulation. Regulation is increasingly necessary as social bonds erode, to order the traffic and prevent collisions among autonomous individuals so sensitive about their rights that they have the tendency to crash into one another like so many billiard balls. The family unit, the oikos, which was once fundamental to the economy, [the two words have a common root] is now largely marginal. We lack any common language of moral decision making and as a result it is difficult to build the stable frameworks in which people can grow and flourish and communicate truth to the next generation.
At such a time, the church must be forever building the city of the living God. This entails initiating individuals into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Mellitus belonged to the community of St Benedict who established new forms of community in the ruins of the antique pagan world. We have a similar task in the neo pagan world.
The future lies with communities, which have re-discovered the structures and the faithfulness, which make for human flourishing. Some of them will emerge from existing parishes; some will be organised in networks. All need to be serious about communicating with one another through the common celebration of the liturgy, the public work which binds us together as a community, as members of Christ and through him participants in the life of the Holy Trinity. It is the liturgy in which Word and Spirit are present, which builds us into a church fit to be a sign of the Kingdom.
The Bishop of London on the feast of St Mellitus, first bishop of London
