The Body of Christ on earth always knows its enemies. Obvious enemies attack from without. The more dangerous have infiltrated and done much damage from within. Still, the faithful know and understand the eternal truth: we have nowhere else to go.
We who remain are grateful for having been given the Gift of Faith. Some use that gift to understand that The Church has always been in a process of purification. Just as the 11 faithful Disciples who comprised the entirety of the early Church were better off without Judas, so we are better off without his modern counterparts.
One way or another, every Judas always goes off and hangs him or herself. The longer they live in betrayal, the greater their punishment. As we trust more in God’s justice, we see that Judas’s suicide is sometimes delayed, often for decades. We ask, often in anguish. “Why doesn’t The Church get rid of those people?”
Of many answers, one comes to mind: Shepherds use a bellwether ewe to control the flock. The bellwether ewe brings those who follow it wherever the shepherd wants them to go, even when it is time for them to be slaughtered. In the same way, a straying soul attracts to itself those who have similarly given in to error.
Letting a Judas live within a vastly larger organization lets him draw others to the same destruction. That results in a greater purification than could be accomplished by getting rid of one Judas to the applause of those who are as short-sighted as they are self-righteous.
(Many people make a living by criticizing The Roman Catholic Church, some from the right; others, from the left. Both groups of criticizers dislike Catholic Fundamentalism as soon as they find out about it. Typical Catholic Fundamentalism columns, like the two preceding, take away reasons to criticize what is after all, The Body of Christ on Earth. Some would rather criticize than accept and obey.)
