The heavenly hosts, Spirits like the flames of fire, / praise Your name, / and with holy Cherubim and heavenly Seraphim offer worship to Your Majesty; Crying out and glorifying without ceasing. (From the Anaphora of the Syro-Malabar Mass.)

The Church is more, much more, than the chancery -- it is all the angels and saints, and our Mother and Father in Heaven, and all the faithful now living and who have gone before. What Chesterton had to say about tradition applies to the Church:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

Bad priests and corrupt bishops there are in abundance, and always have been. But the Church is so much more: It is souls beyond counting. (Image: Church of the Gesu, Rome)