The conflicting nature of church

I've heard Dorothy Day quoted as saying "The Church is my mother, even when she's a whore."

This heartfelt poem/prayer came to my attention today, and though the images it evokes are not mostly in line with my feelings, I admired the way it captured the conflicted, tension-holding nature of the living Church.

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand
sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more
compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more pure, more
generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how
often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not
completely.

And where would I go?

- Carlo Carretto

It reminded me of a third-century poem that describes the Divine in beautifully conflicting imagery, the Thunder, Perfect Mind.