...but she is also my Mother.

"The Church is a whore, but she is also my mother."

- Attributed to Augustine, as quoted by Martin Luther

There's no getting around it. The Church is imperfect. You know the situation is particularly bad when the word "imperfect" is a euphemism for what the Church has traditionally been. Pick the immorality or crime against mankind, and the church has either been guilty of it directly or has been complicit at one point or another. She has had consensual alliance with secular power since Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, AD 800, and she has used it to great effect to oppress and marginalize the very people she was commissioned to embrace. These are not aberrations of normally stellar behavior; they have been repeated and explicit. They have been her habit, not a an occasional slip-up. So, that's the bad news.

The good news is that the Church is a profound mystery, instituted by our Lord himself, empowered by his Spirit, authorized to carry his name and entrusted with the administration of the sacraments, which are themselves deep mysteries. The Church is our Lord's physical body on the earth, literally not figuratively. Jesus is present in creation through his Church in a way that acts in the present to address suffering and injustice, and in a way that looks toward a future fulfillment when all tears will be dried in a final way. The Church is the arbiter of God's covenant with his creation, the outworking of his faithful, everlasting love, a love that loves as an act of the will, fully aware of the probably cost. It is at once a sobering responsibility and a shining opportunity; we stand or fall based on our ability to love, not to rule.

Despite her many missteps, misunderstandings and frequency hypocrisies the Church is still the bride that Christ loves; she is the wife of Hosea (who was herself a metaphor for Israel), a wanton prostitute who in the misery of her licentiousness repents and in the comfort of absolution and grace returns to her former indulgences, which land her, predictably, on the slave blocks again. It comes down to two choices: to abandon her, which would be an act of direct disobedience to the revealed will of God, or to pray for her as David does for Jerusalem in Psalm 122:

May they prosper who love you.

Peace be within your walls

and quietness within your towers.

For my brethren and companions' sake,

I pray for your prosperity.

Because of the house of the Lord our God,

I will seek to do you good.