Debate raging on In Between Naps in regard to Mrs. Welborn's take on Rod Dreher's WSJ article.What I am interested in is this comment:

It's an interesting defense but the mindset is odd. May I ask -- just what would the Church have to DO, before you concluded it had failed sufficiently to find a better way? Would it, say, have to promote genocide? Slavery? Aggressive wars? Burn innocent people alive? Perhaps such doesn't count if it happened before anyone now living was born. But then, what if, right now, it was excusing rape? Would it be a sufficient institutional failure if it was only excusing such crimes wholesale -- or would retail be enough?

[second paragraph deleted because irrelevant for my purposes]

I mean it to be a sincere question: what is the limit beyond which the Church cannot go, and remain legitimate? Given the givens (including the poster's mindset to fix responsibility on those without authority as a way of excusing, well, anything), I don't think there ARE any.

TheAmericanist