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Listen, the Church can be accused of a lot of things, but it does not create doctrine out of thin air. You obviously have no understanding about how difficult and long the process is that the Catholic Church undertakes before pronouncing that a teaching is a doctrine of the Church. Sometimes it takes literally centuries of open debate, scholarship and most importantly, prayer. A perfect example is the fact that the Nicean Creed (or Apostle's Creed)was not finalized until the 4th century.

Furthermore, as cogently illustrated by the statements in this thread, alleged doctrines are often attribted to the the Catholic Church which are not, in fact, Church doctrine.

In fact, there are a surprisingly limited number of actual teachings that are considered essential doctrine of the Church, and most of those are set forth in the Apostle's' Creed.

I consider your statement that the Catholic Church is a good social organization, but not a proper standard bearer for the Christian Faith, Ito be offensive at worst and ignorant at best.

The Church is an institution created by God but occupied by falliable men. Like any institution that has human influence, it will make mistakes and it often has. But, as Christ stated when he annointed Peter as the first Pope, the "Gates of Hell will not Prevail Against It."

You may be able to point to current problems in the Church, such as the sex abuse problem in the U.S., but these errors are fleeting, and cannot be used to indict the entire Church and its role as the principal teacher of the Christian Faith in the World for 21 centuries -- 900+ million Catholics cannot all be wrong.

May you find peace. In Christ, CWW

900+ million Catholics cannot all be wrong

Well now, surely you can't be using the sheer weight of numbers to bolster your argument? I won't pursue that any further except to say that it's holey enough to march a division through. You previously attacked the Protestant side of Christendom because you suspected me to be of that bent, but when I didn't respond as predicted, you hid behind the flying buttresses of Notre Dame.

Look, I don't blame you, but I do blame your leaders for being so afraid of losing their grip on power that they will resort to any means to keep the faithful in line. Human foibles aside, including the robe wearing pedophiles, monetary indulgences, confession on the hoof, and Purgatory, etc., etc., the Catholic church needs to be raised to the ground along with the rest of the so-called Christian churches. The Christians in the more restrictive Asian countries (China, Laos etc.) know something we don't about worshipping God. They avoid red tape and they steer clear of the government sanctioned "Christian" churches.

When we finally lose our freedom to worship as we please in this country, then we'll really understand true faith. Until then, all this talk is just that. Talk.