The headway of reform in English-speaking Cathohcism owes a great deal to the intrepidity of Fr Hans Küng's publishers. The spectacular popularity of The Council and Reunion, the paperback which made his name, demonstrated his charismatic audacity in bringing out into the open what a vast number of reflective Catholics had long been nervously and fumblingly trying to articulate for themselves. Of course extravagant claims have been made for him: he is not the long-awaited new Aquinas nor the anti-Christ. He is a hardworking theologian with some good ideas, as the only two major studies he has so far written bear witness. The first of these is Rechtfertigung (1957), a confrontation of Karl Barth's doctrine of justification with Catholic teaching; and the second is Strukturen der Kirche (1962), an attempt to situate the papacy with regard to the episcopal college and the general Council inside the mystery of the Church. Neither of these books is yet available in English.

Two things prompted me to think a little more closely about the relation between fear and Christian belief; one was reading a book by Pfister on Christianity and Fear and the other was a growing concern with the extent to which fear seems to rule the lives of many Christians and provides an apparent contradiction of the love and freedom which are formally acknowledged as the keystones of Christianity. I have taken this opportunity to offer you the result of some reflection on the subject in the hope that in discussion we may gain some further insight into the meaning of the psalmist's words:

Despite the ‘liturgical movement’, the reform now taking place in the Roman rite, and the considerable efforts made by recent popes to render the Church's worship accessible to all, it would still be possible for an unbiased observer to form something like the following views about Catholic worship in the West, and particularly in English-speaking countries, in the latter half of the twentieth century.

He would find in the first place a system of worship, with the text printed out in the liturgical books of the Roman rite, which had developed from the simple elements whose origins are to be found in the New Testament, the worship of the synagogue and the practice of the primitive Church; he would observe that by study of the history of these liturgical forms it is possible to trace the evolution of the various rites to their present complex form. Thus he would discover a highly developed system of worship which has grown up in the course of some two thousand years. On the other hand, he could hardly fail to observe from the celebration of this worship that very much of it appears to be totally incomprehensible to those using it. Not only the language (though that forms a considerable barrier) but other things as well could confirm him in his opinion.