Your comment:
‘We believe in Christ for salvation. Not membership in a church.” I made the wrong assumption that you were not a member of an organized protestant church.
Catholics agree (and Catholic doctrine)that salvation is not based on actual membership in the Catholic church, but on doing God’s will under the guidance of the teachings of Jesus and His Catholic Church. Catholic doctrine and teaching is based on the Truth of Jesus Christ as passed onto the Apostles and their successors - Catholic bishops, priests and deacons.
Again, you make false statements about the Catholic Church and do not accept some of the teachings of Jesus as stated in the Bible. Your false statements: “The current roman Catholic Church with its worship of mary, prayers to Mary, reliance upon Mary for salvation,etc, the belief in venal and mortal sins, penance, indulgences, resacrificing Christ over and over again is not the ekklesia started by Christ. We do not see roman catholicism in the New Testament.”
All of your false statements are addressed in the Bible and the Catholic doctrine(and specific references have been provided to you) and yet you reject the specific teachings of Jesus Christ.
So you seem to follow a man made religion and state that it is the church of Christ. I suggest that you truly listen to God and understand His teachings, and not listen to Satan who does not want you to understand the Truth.
Yes Catholics have issues with people, organization, sinfulness and many other areas. However, the Catholic Church has kept the Truth and doctrine of Jesus and the relationship with God. The Body of Christ needs to work together so that we may all attain salvation with Christ.
And we do pray to Mary and other members of the Body of Christ to intercede with Jesus Christ on our behalf, We respect and venerate the Mother of God as full of grace.
Is following the teachings of Jesus too difficult so that you accept some and reject other teachings?
The NT has no admonition to pray to Mary nor does it invoke Mary as mediatrix, advocate or redemtrix. None.
There is nothing indicating the wearing of a piece of cloth can somehow keep you from the hell-fire because you trust in what an apparition said.
If the roman catholic position on penance/purgatory is correct, that man somehow has to further cleanse himself through works, then Christ's death on the cross is somehow insufficient to cleanse us from all sins as John notes in 1 John 1. The Greek in that passage is clear He is the means of forgiveness for all of our sins.
There is no work we can do, other than believe, to atone for our sins.