How can you say you love Jesus…

…but not the Church? This is a common saying nowadays of people who pretend to be believers but pit themselves against the Church.
I should say, they've made a rather big mistake, and one that's sure to cause them endless grief later on, if they don't come to their senses.
The ground of their complaint is itself a deeper mistake. They've mis-identified the Church, thinking it's one thing, when in fact it's quite another. They've had plenty of help doing it, too, from the institution itself, from the institutional church.

What the institutional church often does has absolutely little to nothing to do with the actual life of salvation. You simply cannot limit yourself to thinking that the institutional church is what Christ calls the Church. It's not.

The Church of Christ, His Bride, is present wherever He really is present in their midst, in reality, not in mere imagination or in shows of public piety.

When Christ is in our midst, we don't have to force ourselves to believe it; we know it, because the Spirit guarantees His presence by the signs that follow. And that presence among us which reveals the invisible church, making us visible to each other, bestows on us actual grace, not pretended, and establishes us in the Kingdom, and the Kingdom in us. That's the Church, the Bride of Christ, against whom no one who truly loves Jesus the Bridegroom can ever find fault, because He is with her and in her, and she with and in Him.

Brothers, find this Church and find yourself within her, and no matter what happens to the institution called "church" your faith can never be shaken; not because of her, but because her Spouse is with her, and hence with you, always.