Granby, Quebec, has a controversial new by-law that restricts noise on Sunday. Fines of between $150 and $1000 are aimed at "the minority of people who don't respect their neighbours", those who work on noisy building and repair projects on the first day of the week.

A counter-petition has been launched by Sebastien Ouelllet. "We live in a new economic reality", he says. "If I can get work I can't afford to turn down a job. Hardly anybody goes to church anymore on Sundays". Neither does Claire Hoy, my columnist neighbour. "I stopped going to church years ago", he said on this page two weeks ago.

Nor do I 'go to church' either. I do attend the Eucharist and various devotions in buildings where churches meet.

A church is a community of people, not a place. Through profession of faith and baptism I am part of the Universal Church. I do not simply attend it.. Similarly, I neither attend nor patronise Canada. I am part of it. I participate in its life, accepting tolerantly those aspects of it that, if the choice were mine alone, I might like to change. So it is with the Church.

Some call the last Sunday of this month 'Back to Church Sunday'. There are those who have been absent for much of the summer and there are those who should be reminded to return. My former student, Fr Douglas Anderson (ODSS 1987), pastor of St James Church, Texarkana, Texas, calls it EPIC (Every Person in Church) Sunday. Shepherds, too, need to have round-ups.

No Christian need hesitate to assess the Church critically any more than any Jew should ignore the faults of the State of Israel. As a rabbinic friend says, it is the People of Israel, not primarily the state, that matter. The Second Vatican Council echoed that by defining the Church as the People of God, what the Book of Common Prayer calls "the blessed company of all faithful people". The words "I have other sheep that are not part of this flock" challenge all narrow dogmatists.

Too many people confuse their own definition of the Church with what C.S. Lewis called Basic Christianity. And some aspects of "the institution" are open to question. Rightly or wrongly, many see it as an overbearing teacher, even as a policeman, rather than as alma mater, a nourishing mother. Nor do its ministers and members always remind people of those whom Chaucer called "Christ and his apostles twelve".

Claire Hoy, who is seldom very happy about anything, targeted the "United Church of Canada" which is no longer all that united and has never been the influential national force that some of its founders hoped would "fire warning shots across the bows of any government". The Canadian Council of (Roman) Catholic Bishops takes better aim. But governments have long since reminded church leaders that politicians do not urge revision of the Creeds, so nether should bishops , (rabbis or mullahs) expect a decisive voice in affairs of state.

The Church's influence should come from its rank and file members who have the expertise and responsibility in various areas that the clergy, by and large, lack. Ordination, like a teaching certificate or a union card, does not convey either omniscience or great wisdom. It does not catapult one into either the mandarin class or the Brahmin caste. Dr Derwyn Owen, Provost of Trinity College, Toronto, once answered a seminarian's question, "What causes anti-clericalism?" by saying, "I think it may be clericalism". Bernard Shaw said that the Church should practise the humility it preaches. Undue dogmatism is as off-putting to mature, educated and intelligent people as is academic, political or managerial arrogance. Pastors are teachers but "when you're a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught". The best captain is not the whole team.

This space is inclined to think that the great Roman Church, although still in schism from Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, should recognise that a New Reformation is in progress. As in 16th Century Western Europe, and while we await an 'aggiornamento' in the Eastern churches, some turbulence is indicated. It is to be hoped that the highly centralised (and some would contend 'unreformed') Roman Curia will not return to the pre-Second Vatican Council exclusiveness and triumphalism that ultra-conservatives might wish. The Church, is semper reformanda, always in need of reform .

Meanwhile, there are Roman, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed and Independent church communities plus many schismatic sects. Whether the majority Roman rite can be an effective and reconciling Mother Church for the People of God remains to be seen. Its most thoughtful would-be reformer, Fr Hans Kung, is officially persona non grata.

It would be a mistake to overemphasise the conservatism of the Vatican. A world-wide, multicultural Church needs strong central direction as well as broad ecumenical outlook.. The late Cardinal Emmett Carter said that the problem of working with the Anglican Communion was that it has so many voices but no visible head. A Jesuit who prefers anonymity remarked, "There is also the problem of having only one voice that does not always speak for all the faithful".

While doctrine develops, truth is not decided by majority votes. That is the Anglican weakness. The problem increases when the synods of the national churches - or even different bishops within them - reach divergent conclusions and act independently of the "Communion".

Claire Hoy noted the impending "extinction" of the United Church due, he said, to its political and theological radicalism It calls itself Canada's largest Protestant denomination but whereas Protestantism values a firm Biblically-based faith above large numbers it is basically a non-confessional, congregational alliance. Rome has the united 'persona' and the world-wide constituency.

Dufferin County will likely have a mosque and a synagogue before the churches learn to cooperate. The fact is that their pastors and leading supporters do not meet or even wish to know one another. Still, more people worship as churches every week than attend all sporting, cultural and other public events combined. They are a potentially significant presence among us.