Because the Church does not ask you to trust the humans — it asks you to trust Christ, who chose to work through humans anyway. That is the whole point. If holiness of the membership were the guarantee, the Church would have collapsed in the first generation, when one of the twelve hand-picked Apostles betrayed Him for money and the chief of them denied Him three times. The faith was never resting on the men. It rests on the One who keeps using them.

This exact objection has a name and a verdict. In the fourth century the Donatists argued that sacraments administered by unworthy clergy were void — that a sinful priest could not give real grace. The Church, through St. Augustine, answered decisively: the power is Christ’s, not the minister’s. “Peter may baptize, but this is He that baptizes… Judas may baptize, still this is He that baptizes.”1 The grace flowing through a corrupt cleric is no more contaminated by him than clean water is poisoned by the rusty pipe it passes through.

Scripture says as much without flinching. The treasure is deliberately stored in unworthy containers: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). And of corrupt religious leaders Christ said plainly, “whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do; but according to their works do ye not” (Matthew 23:2–3) — heed the office, do not imitate the man. The arrangement is intentional, not embarrassing.

So the sins of churchmen, real and grievous as they are, leave the question of truth untouched. You do not refuse a king’s letter because the courier is a scoundrel; you read the letter. The grace the Church carries reaches us through an unbroken chain of ordinary, fallen hands — and the proof that it is God’s and not theirs is that it has survived every one of them.2 Which is also why the scandals, however damning to individuals, never reach the deposit of faith.