When we refer to the Church we should define the word a little. We mean the whole Church, the Church as an ecumenical body spread around the world, and not just its particular form in a parish in a local community.
The Church we are talking about is a tremendously powerful institution in our society, and in the world. That Church is one form of the Presence of God on Earth, and so naturally it is powerful. It is powerful by definition. It is a powerful moral and spiritual force which cannot be ignored by any movement.

The Church as an institution personalizes a whole people on the move; it is a force for action. There is also a danger: the Church should not be limited to consecrated or clerical members but to all the baptized. Through challenges and controversies, joys and projects, the Church tries to make a central place for Christ, the Gospel and Gospel values. It is made up of human beings and, therefore, is not perfect.

The Church is more than the buildings and the ecclesiastical structure; the Church is us, the members. We are The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with Christ at the head and the prophet as His mouthpiece.

Properly understood, the church is not an institution. It is the community of Jesus' followers on earth - men, women, an children filled with God's Spirit, living in communion with him, one another, and the world.

This word church has diverse significations.

In both her sacramental life and in her proclamation of the Word, the Church constitutes a distinctive subject whose memory preserves the seemingly past word and action of Jesus as a present reality.

Christianity probably has been the most important institution in the world in the last 2000 years. It has achieved more for western civilisation than has any other factor; it has helped far more people than it has harmed.

I think that it [the Church] stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonisms in existence. Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. It presents many faces towards the world, but everywhere it is systematic in its fight against freedom.

Leo Tolstoy says, “Love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy, tenderness exist in the hearts of men, and are the essence of religion, but try to encompass these things in an institution and you get a church – and the Church stands for and has always stood for coercion, intolerance, injustice, and cruelty.

The concept which assumes that everything in the Church is irrevocably set for all times appears to me to be a false one. It would be naive to disregard that the Church has a history; the Church is a human institution and like all things human, was destined to change and evolve; likewise, its development takes place often in the form of struggles. Most of the definitions of dogma are conclusive results of preceding intellectual conflicts lasting for decades and even centuries. The same is true of ecclesiastical law, liturgical forms — especially all objective forms reflecting our spiritual life.

That dualism of the Church and the Chapel taken together has been one of the most potent influences in the life of our country. The one fostering, perhaps, more than the other, the respect for authority and tradition and the sense of historical continuity; the other laying its main emphasis on individual obedience to eternal law. They both have defects of their qualities, but they have both been, and are, and will be great social forces with great political consequences. Both at their best penetrate life with serious purpose, and are in constant war with that spirit of secularism which finds its paradise in idleness and frivolity, with which no country can ever prosper.

Throughout the Middle Ages the sway of the Church over the moral and spiritual life of the people, her power to inspire and direct their enthusiasms and energies, her chance for molding their conceptions of life, were amazing and unparalleled by any other force.

The Church as the body of Christ, as a spiritual and visible reality at the same time and as a great unity of action, presence and service, must work to convert to God and transform the world. And this is by her own conversion, sanctification and commitment with people and society.

Paul consistently proclaimed that the church of Jesus Christ is not so much an organization as an organism, a mystical body. I will present the church accordingly as a living thing, whose purpose is to gather the whole world into the praise of God. And the central act of the church, its “source and summit” in the words of Vatican II, is the Liturgy, the ritualized praise of God. I will therefore walk through the gestures, songs, movements, and theology of the Liturgy. The entire purpose of the Liturgy and the church is to make saints, to make people holy. This is why Catholicism takes the saints, in all their wild diversity, with such seriousness and why it presents them to us with such enthusiasm.