It is clear that the early Christians expected the coming of the Kingdom almost at once, and equally clear that it has not come. This long period of waiting has caused a number of problems for the Christian church and it is intended here to consider some of these and the way they were solved until recently in the Catholic church.

A number of them are those which are inevitable in an organisation that goes on a long time. The original spirit of the movement is replaced by routine. Rules and regulations are drawn up. Early practices lose their meaning—this is particularly true of liturgy—but, since they continue, new meanings are invented for them. A clear example of this is the old rule of eating fish on Fridays. When the original connection with fasting was lost people began to argue that it was about establishing one’s identity in an alien environment. The history of the Mass and the complicated meanings attributed to the most trivial and accidental details are another obvious example.

In the same way a form of organisation develops which, as time goes on, becomes increasingly complicated and unwieldly. A special class of people, the clergy, grows up for running it, all with a career structure and rewards of their own and their established place in wider society—and so a gap forms between the clergy and the other members of the church.