“I can boldly approach the Throne of Grace and confess my sins directly to Jesus instead of some celibate (yeah, right),”
Jesus was celibate.
“dress-wearing”
Jesus wore clothes that many modern anti-Catholics would call “dresses”.
“weirdo”
Many people probably thought Jesus was a weirdo for preaching things like loving your enemies.
“who has a fetish for hearing other peoples’ peccadilloes while never admitting his own.”
Jesus had none to admit, but He never everyone else’s and probably patiently listened to everyone pour out their hearts to Him. He would even allow you to bathe His feet with dears and dry them with your hair...if you were humble enough to do such a thing.
“I can do that because the Holy Spirit told us through Paul the Apostle that we have one High Priest, Jesus Christ the Righteous (Hebrews 4:15).”
Yep, and I approach Jesus too to confess my sins - especially through His priests.
The power to forgive sins was not only explicitly given to Peter and His successors, but it was the emphatic understanding of the early Church Fathers, the Saints and Martyrs. The books in the Bible did it fall from the skies and self-assemble themselves,. They were the result of serious study by the early Church fathers (theologians) who under infallible Petrine authority declared the Bible to be the true written word of God. Under John 21: 25 there were so many things that Christ said and did that were not written down.
Thus ONLY the Catholic Church has within her the written and unwritten word of God. This infallible authority did not simply evaporate into thin air some eleven centuries later with the evil of the Reformation that in the words of the brilliant essayist, Hillaire Belloc, that unlike other heresies, Protestantism “spawned a cluster of heresies.”
Is this kinda like the EXTORTION that our Government is trying to implement for travelers thru the odious process of being approved to board an aircraft?