[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Originally Posted by Monolith

I frequently hear comments like:"I believe in God, but not in the Church"

A very wide-spread and somehow Protestant attitude.

Originally Posted by Monolith

People believe in the omnipotent deity that we call God, but refuse to believe in a system that is governed by human beings and thus flawed.

In the Catholic teaching, the Holy Ghost works even through the church run by corrupt priests. The flawed men of the Church will bear responsability for their evildoings on the individual basis, but they cannot "corrupt" God or his church as repository of the Holy Spirit.

Originally Posted by Monolith

Aside from that, people see that the church (like any human-controlled system for that matter) is flawed and vulnerable to human weaknesses and imperfections, considering that priests are just an ordinary people who make mistakes.

It has always been so. In the Middle Ages people used to mock corrupt clergy, even by putting a hat of a cardinal on a donkey's head etc. But those people believed nevertheless, they saw those flawed priests as not fulfilling their duty and serving God properly. In more modern times, however, many people came to the conclusion that, since the Churchmen are so corrupt, that the very institution of the Church has no meaning, nay, that even there is no God. Is this also stemming from this overestimation of man's powers? From this worship of man I referred to... As if mortal and sinful men who make mistakes were so powerful that by their malice they could "abolish" God.

Originally Posted by Monolith

It is exactly the opposite in my country, where Church has been a safeguard of our national identity, culture and pride through centuries.

The role of the high Church hierarchy was not always unequivocally positive in the Croatian history. But the lower clergy was generally always "on the side of the people" and lived with the people and its distresses.