In a quip that makes the rounds, Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom, but it was the church that came. All these years later, the way many of us are doing church is broken and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it. We proclaim the priesthood of all believers while we continue with hierarchical clergy, liturgy, and architecture. We follow a Lord who challenged the religious and political institutions of his time while we fund and defend our own. We speak and sing of divine transformation while we do everything in our power to maintain our equilibrium. If redeeming things continue to happen to us in spite of these deep contradictions in our life together, then I think that is because God is faithful even when we are not.

Marriage is two imperfect people committing themselves to a perfect institution, by making perfect vows from imperfect lips before a perfect God.

In the Church, we must remember this: it is better to be imperfect in communion than to be perfect in disunity.

Your grace, when God sent you to your inheritance and the right of this realm, found the church in horrible confusion, and in respect of the true worship of God a church of brick, or rather (as Ezechiel saith) daubed up with unseasoned mortar. Your grace hath already redressed the doctrine: now cast your eyes towards the ministry; give courage and countenance unto learning, that God's house may be served; so shall you leave a church of God, and a testimony that the zeal of the Lord's house hath eaten you up.

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

My vision of the gathered church that had come to me... had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on... It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

The Church's temporary defects should not scandalize us. The Church is human. What is important is to believe that she is also divine and that if we Christians fulfill our obligation to love our neighbor, we are strengthening the Church.

You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly

The imperfect is our paradise.

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.

We have come to the church, Sancho.

I remember, you know, you go to these parties on Saturday night and people would say, about 8:00 on Sunday morning "Whoa, I have to go - I gotta get to church!" People would say, "Why do you want to go to church, all those hypocrites." And I say, "Look, why do I want to stay here with all you hypocrites?"I never knew why going to church made you a hypocrite. They'd say because you go to church and you're all "Holy, Holy, Holy" for two or three hours, and then you go home and sin. I'd say "exactly!" For two or three hours you're doing pretty good! Maybe the problem isn't that you go to church, maybe the problem is that you go home! I never understood why going to church made you a hypocrite either, because nobody goes to church because they're perfect. If you've got it all together, you don't need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning Every time you go to church, you're confessing again to yourself, to your family, to the people you pass on the way there, to the people who will greet you there, that you don't have it all together. And that you need their support. You need their direction. You need some accountability, you need some help.

Our culture values perfect pictures of ourselves, mirage, over and above authentic connection. But we meet one another through the imperfect particular of our bodies. Imperfection calls out for affinity — for the beloved to say, I too am broken, but may I join you?