I will continue to agree that you are my brother, in Christ, as long as you offer me the same courtesy.
All of your argument about the pope "could give credence to any doctrine of devil or God at any time" presupposes the worst potentialities, because you are not Catholic. Part of the papal charism, from a Catholic perspective, is that the Holy Spirit will PREVENT the pope from defining any doctrine that deviates from the Deposit of Faith.
At least try to understand the Catholic definition of terms from the Catholic perspective first, before you read the worst case scenario into it.
You do not have Catholic faith. Certainly not in its fullness, at any rate. We believe that THAT faith comes from God. Read into this the proper implication.
The problem with these arguments is that the terminology is not mutually understood. Nearly 500 years after being cut off from its last contact with the Catholic Church, it's understandable that Protestantism finds some Catholic statements to be alarming departures from its own collection of traditions of understanding.
But let's be clear. If your traditions of teaching that differ from the Catholic Church's are right, then the ENTIRETY of church teaching was wrong right up to the 1500's. You can only be comfortable with that if you presuppose that Almighty God did NOT have a providential inclination to safeguard His Church's teaching from error, despite Jesus promise of the same in Matthew 28:19-20 and His prayer for unity in John 17.
You ignore the vehicle that Christianity travelled on right up to Luther as irrelevant, but, were it not for that vehicle, there would be no Christianity at all today, for it would have long since disappeared from the world, and Luther and the rest would have nothing to rebel "from."
The reason you, and some others on threads like this, dislike Catholic teaching so much is that your branch of Christianity has been so long removed from the vine that you can't recognize it for what it is. Your own highly developed theologies justifying a 500-year-old split take umbrage and offense at things that the whole of Christendom took for granted for the first 3/4 of Christian history to date. Is this simply arrogance on your part, or did it really take that long for some segment of Christianity to "finally" figure out the truth? The implications here should be pondered a bit before a snap answer is made.
This is giving veto power to 'a Man' on earth.
First, one can obviously take that attitude towards the Scripture as a whole. A person can just as easily dismiss the whole book as a fable and walk away. HOWEVER, Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God. This is based on belief, the idea that the Apostles were valid witnesses to a man who claimed to be God. We believe them. As such, we ALSO continue to believe the Scripture when it says that God would continue to guide His community that He formed on earth, called first the Jews, but later called the Catholic Church. If you believe that the Apostles gave valid witness to the above, I fail to see why you discount the other promise by Christ to remain with it for all time. If you believe the Church can at a whim overrule God, than what keeps you from even believing that our book is from God in the first place???
The protestants have, they have thrived, and they continue to follow as best they can the Holy Spirit, not the pope.
So have the Muslims, for twice as long. What is your point? Have you considered that God Providence controls such things?
Your pope and his cronies have for centuries disregarded the move of God in their practice and application of their supposed authority.
According to your very argument of binding and loosing, any pope could give credence to any doctrine of devil or God at any time.
Wrong. A pope can be dispensed if he were to teach heresy. This is in the Code of Canon Law. And we believe that the Pope, when speaking ex cathedra, is merely speaking the mind of the Church in a defined manner. It is not just made up on the spot.
The tradition of men is warned against in a warning by Jesus about a practice that is considered spiritual, but that is truly the attitude of religion. Saying this does not apply to the RCC is merely jousting at syntax.
I am not sure what your point is here. That religion is bad? Don't judge all religion as bad because some choose not to practice it.
The practice of a central church as being the only church is nowhere supported in scripture.
Care to prove the idea of many churches with various different doctrines and beliefs from Scripture, please? Who gives the Luthers and Calvins the authority to make off with some of the sheep and mislead them away from part of the Word of God? Where does the Scripture tell us that we are to judge the Church, and then make up our own if we don't think it is holy enough, or teach what an individual thinks is God's teachings?
Please brother; I see very little of the practice of the RCC as described in the catechism as having merit.
Such as?
In Love
I will take you at your word, but if that is the case, you will have to, in the future, actually stop with the stereotypes and give more solid evidence of your concepts and ideas on why the Roman Catholic Church is so evil and misleads others. Brothers don't make such wild accusations or misrepresent their beliefs without proof, so I expect future considerations to be more well thought out and documented.
Brother in Christ