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The sad reality is that Romanists have no alternative but to deny that their communion is infected with a disease. Trained minister and writer Steve Hayes succintly defined the problem in a Third Mil magazine article in 2003:

As with sola Scriptura, how you come down on the efficacy of the sacraments affects your polity and ecclesiology. If you believe the sacraments to be a means of grace, especially in the ex opere operato sense, then that generally commits you to a firm lay/clerical division and apostolic succession to help ensure the valid administration of the sacraments.
And that, in turn, weighs in the relative gravity of schism. If you believe that the sacraments are a means of grace, and the Church the appointed custodian and gatekeeper, then a break with the true church is a worst-case scenario. Unity is put at a premium.
If, on the other hand, you deny these assumptions, then there are worse things than schism. In that event you travel light and keep your bags packed (Acts 7; Heb 11).
Although the scandal of schism is often treated as the scarlet letter of the Protestant movement, less is said about the opposing scandal of catholicity. For if you identify the true Church with one visible communion, then no matter how corrupt the institutional Church becomes, you are committed to that system. It is like the old Roman punishment in which a murderer was chained to the rotting corpse of his victim.
The Catholic sex scandal is a case in point. The problem was not only with sodomites in the priesthood and vile prelates who facilitated their crimes. The problem is that the good Catholic is just as complicit as the worst, for the good Catholic is more loyal to the lofty pretensions of his church than a cynical Magisterium, and his institutional allegiance to a rotten institution is just what enables a corrupt clergy and vicious hierarchy to stay in business. For the good Catholic, his church is the only church in town, and so his duty to defend Mother Church takes precedence over institutional reform inasmuch as the institution, if deemed to be divine, is beyond reform.
The problem with pretensions to a divine teaching office is that it leaves you exposed to the same mistakes as any other uninspired organization, but you're even worse off; on the one hand, you disdain conventional standards of investigation and verification; on the other hand, you don't dare admit error for fear of losing face. This has a cumulative effect as special pleading advances a new lie to cover up an old blunder. Otherwise innocent errors or petty mistakes, which are harmless enough if caught and corrected early in the process, instead supply the premise for further falsehoods in a downward spiral of systematic deceit. The Roman Church has a long history of this, viz., the False Decretals, the Galileo affair, the Sixtine Vulgate

Quix, would you mind weighing in on this? If I'm not mistaken I believe you have some training in sociology.

For the good Catholic, his church is the only church in town, and so his duty to defend Mother Church takes precedence over institutional reform inasmuch as the institution, if deemed to be divine, is beyond reform.

As a result the radicals can creep in and as teachings change the congregation will follow. A case in point being the expansion of Mary from the Mother of Jesus to this creation we see today. The Mary of today was born without sin,was a virgin forever, was assumed into heaven, she magnifies prayers, she appears in visions to bring messages from God, she cures those that are obedient to her.

None of these changes about Mary occur in churches where there is a requirement that all teaching and belief must be consistent with Scripture. These changes only occur where other sources are considered coequal of Scripture for measuring the validity of teaching and belief.

Forest Keeper's remark noting the wide difference in "plain meanings" applies here.

What we mean by one church is not what you think we mean by one church.

For us ex opere operato is precisely an affirmation of grace made available without merit, while going after congregations which are more congenial or similar to one's own thinking, seems to be an insistence on at least right thinking, right preaching, all of which strike me, at least, as works.

It's good piece. I used pretty much to think what he says. But here's his error, or one of 'em:

For if you identify the true Church with one visible communion, then no matter how corrupt the institutional Church becomes, you are committed to that system.

He doesn't understand our teaching of one church of whom all who are baptized with water in the name of the Trinity are in some sense members. The identification is not as he says it is. What we identify with "one visible communion" (in his words) is full access to all the assured means of grace. That does NOT indicate that God limits the His grace to these means. Rather, we are promised that God's graces are made available to us AT LEAST and ASSUREDLY through these means.

I have already referred to this line of thought in some posts responding to issues raised about the necessity of Baptism.

I think Mr. Hayes makes all the usual generalizations about the sex scandal which overstate the complicity of the Church leadership as a whole, suggests a misunderstanding of what "magisterium" is, minimizes the contribution of people in Quix's profession who , on the basis of a mistaken understanding of the problem counselled Bishops to hush the thing up and move the clergy around. There's not much point into going into that on this topic.

But the main thing is, I think, the misunderstanding about the relationship between "the True Church" and "one visible Communion".

And I think Pope St. Pius V or John XXIII would disagree that the Church was "beyond reform".

WE have such profound differences that our "plain meanings" radically differ and certainly our ecclesiology is not well understood and nothing like what many seem to think it is.

***For the good Catholic, his church is the only church in town, and so his duty to defend Mother Church takes precedence over institutional reform inasmuch as the institution, if deemed to be divine, is beyond reform.***

Interesting premise.

Now this little quote is interesting. We in the Church understand that things within it need to change and they are. The whole deal with Vatican II dealt with needed change, and we are dealing with the misunderstandings and implementations of the recommedations.