Refusing to become a Christian

Refusing to become a Catholic because of the imperfections of the Church would be like refusing to donate to the Red Cross because a file clerk--or disaster victim for that matter--might be siphoning joff a little cash for his or her crack habit. I'd be wrong to claim the church is perfect, but I'd be just as wrong to overlook the schools and orphanages and hospices, the faithful priests, the martyrs and saints, the incalculable amount of good, seen and unseen, that flows out from the Church, all over the world, and has for two thousand years.

As Flannery O'Connor observed in a letter to a nonbelieving friend, dated December 9, 1958.

To have the Church be what you want it to be would require the continuous miraculous meddling of God in human affaursm whereas it is our dignity that we are allowed more or less to get on with those graces that come through faith and the sacraments and which work through our human nature. God has chosen to operate in this manner. We can't understand this but we can reject it without rejecting life.

Source: Redeemed, by Heather King, Viking Press, 2008, page 69.