A most useful reminder …

… Edward Feser: Aquinas on bad prelates. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… a bad prelate merits honor only because of the office he holds.  When we pretend his personal faults are not real, strain to attribute good motives to manifestly unjust acts or hidden wisdom to manifestly foolish utterances, we are like someone who fixates on an image and pretends that the many flaws and limitations it contains as a mere piece of matter must somehow really be divine.