**So if one has Christ, what does one need with all the extraneous folks?
L**
If a person has Christ, he wants to attain Heaven so as to be with Him for all eternity. However, this person is not the only person who has Christ and wants to attain Heaven, and many of those other people are those “extraneous folks.”
Additionally, God created us as social beings, which is not to say that all of us are extroverts who want to be constantly surrounded by people, but that we do not live in isolation, nor are we meant to. Part of our road to salvation is dealing with people around us. You may say that you want to isolate yourself, but what do you do when your electricity goes out? Do you go out and try to fix the transformer or electric lines yourself or do you rely on the employees of the company to fix them? Do you raise your own food or do you get some from the grocery store?
All that aside, we are a part of the communion of saints. On a spiritual level, we pray for each other, help each other, perform works of mercy for each other. We need others if only to obtain the sacraments: even priests need other priests for confession.
You look at every bad thing which some Catholic has done to you and you blame the Church. It is not the fault of the Church–people who do bad things, people who do not exercise proper oversight and allow bad things to happen, these are the faults of people in the Church, these are actions contrary to what the Church teaches and is supposed to be.
If instead you meditate on Christ and what He did for us, and why He did it, and what He did it for, then you can begin to glimpse a beautiful vision. Consider how things would be if everyone was a perfect Catholic–that is what God’s will is for us. The fact that people mess this up is not the fault of the Church but the fault of the people as individuals.
If I were trying to make a tapestry and the threads were messed up, weak and easily broken, improperly dyed and so losing their color, and so on, would I blame the tapestry? No, the problem would lie with the threads.
As long as you do not correctly define the source of the problem, you will search for the wrong solution. I am a sinner, you are a sinner, we are all sinners. If we cannot each see how sin is what damages, and how each of us has contributed some damage, then we will focus on the wrong thing and direct our efforts in the wrong direction.