Which is also why you've come up with wild, un-referenced apostasies you claim are held by the Clergy and Popes, bizarrely blame them on ME, and then declare an ability to determine dogma and doctrine of the Church YOURSELF while still staying Catholic - AND while dismissing any Clergy that disagrees with YOU, including, specifically, any Pope.
Let us go point by point, and you may see just how far off you are.
POINT 1: wild, un-referenced apostasies you claim are held by the Clergy
Just what do you think the Church teaches about clergy? Do you really believe we think they are ALL infallible in ALL of their opinions? Is it really amazing to you that clergy could believe such things? I hate to burst your bubble, but go read a book. Almost every heresy to confront the Church throughout history has been started by a cleric. Arianism, the most pernicious and insidious of all heresies of the early Church was from Arius, a cleric. Nestorianism, another biggie, came to us from the patriarch of Constantinople himself. That would be the number two to the pope. And the Protestant Reformation, so-called, is largely due to the efforts of another priest, Martin Luther. Clerics are every bit as able to be wrong as are lay people. I really do not understand your unwillingness to believe this.
Just as a personal note I can mention, right off the top of my head, one priest who, to me directly, denied he could absolve sins in confession. (HINT: this OPINION is not Catholic teaching.) Another, in front of our entire church, refused to read the Gospels as they were "a bunch of legends and didn't happen" and then he denied that there were saints in heaven who could pray for us. (HINT: these OPINIONS are also not Catholic doctrine.) If I sat down and really thought about it I could probably come up with a few more of these, and that ignores the many heretical things I have read which were written by clerics of various types. No, sorry. Infallibility does not extend to all clerics, or personal opinions of any. You are just wrong about this.
POINT 2: bizarrely blame them on ME
No, never happened. You imagined it. I said that it was your argument, not mine, that clerical opinions are binding on the faithful. And that is true. I have never argued that individual clerical theological opinions are binding on the faithful. Have you really forgotten what it was you were disagreeing with?
POINT 3: and then declare an ability to determine dogma and doctrine of the Church YOURSELF while still staying Catholic
Determine? Sure, it is called reading the Catechism and the conciliar and papal documents which are authoritative teachings of the Church. Not really that hard to do. I cannot help it that you seem to think we Catholics are forbidden from learning something and must simply believe whatever the nearest guy with a white collar tells us. That is just a myth. You have a very flawed and skewed idea of what the Church teaches.
POINT 4: AND while dismissing any Clergy that disagrees with YOU, including, specifically, any Pope.
Dismissing any clergy? Hardly. I have never dismissed any clergy at all, especially any pope. I have simply said that theological opinions are not authoritative teachings. And, guess what, they aren't. They are personal opinions. You seem to have a very tough time differentiating opinions from teaching. When the Church teaches, it does so authoritatively. And the Church knows the difference. When John Paul II suggested some new mysteries may be good in the Rosary Catholics could either do it or not. Nothing binding about it. Why not? Because he said as much. But, when Pius IX promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception he did so definitively, and therefore it is required to be believed as a matter of faith. Not really a difficult thing to figure out you know.
LOL, why not pick the MAIN paragraph, instead of a tangential one? Let's see, which paragraph could it be? Oh, look - how about THIS one:
That's why you parse, and parse - and parse. I said something very, very simple: that the Church determines whether something is doctrine or not, and that the Clergy has that determining role in the Church. This is so obviously, flat-out true, the only people who could possibly object to it ARE American liberals "Catholics." No one else would notice or care.
So you completely avoided my one, single main point, which I repeated numerous times, and then - you parsed, and parsed, and parsed on an admittedly tangential paragraph.
Your brazen shamelessness is truly appalling, but I don't imagine you see it.
But hey, don't mind me. You decide what you believe. And don't let any of them Popes, Bishops, Priests or any other Clergy tell you any different. The teachings of the Catholic Church, it's dogma, its magisterium, it's canon law, are what YOU decide they are. Because let's face it - the only thing Popes, Bishops, Priests or any other Clergy can offer is opinions, and who needs that?
Just remember that in all your deciding, you are NOT Protestant. Nope. Even though you decide for yourself what the Church teachings are, and deny any legitimate guidance from the Clergy and all their apostate, heretical opinions, and rely SOLELY on your interpretation of Church documents for the authority you accept, you are still entirely, wholly Catholic. And of course, if any of the Clergy's opinions are actually true teachings, well, then after due consideration, if and only if you decide they are correct, you will accept them.
And as a matter of fact, to be any different than what YOU are is to be heretical - isn't that what you said?
Un.Real.
"Catholic."
LOL!