How I'm interpreting what Mick said: there are people who do both bad and good things in the church. The structure and beliefs can be both good and bad. For him, the church at its heart is a good thing that needs work.

As far as belonging to a repressive institution, I wonder whether women in the US would ever have won the right to vote if they'd all moved elsewhere. I assume they believed in the ideals of the US, and stayed here to fight for change. I wonder about all those workplaces Mick works to organize. I wonder why all those mistreated employees stay and fight rather than just bail and find new jobs. Once you leave an institution you care something about, you lose almost all power to affect change.

I'm not Catholic and have never been Catholic. I'm not fond of the concept of organized religion in general. The feeling that there are those within the Catholic church who will keep advocating good and fighting bad is still comforting. The feeling that some would like those concerned folks to bail out and leave only the ones who don't care or the ones actually doing the bad things, is scary.

There seems to be a few extremists views expressed here, and I find extremism in general pretty scary. Seems like those views are pretty much summed up by "The church - love it or leave it." No room for people who see faults, work for change and DON'T leave.