That seems like a little bit of a stretch to me. The passage does not say that only "Holy men" can interpret scripture, it says that prophecy was only given by Holy men. There is also the matter of "private interpretation". I would agree that no scripture should be "privately interpreted", and that brings us back to the problem of our disagreement about to whom the Spirit will speak. I believe that God does guide the "little people" like me. :)
The question, FK, is whether whose pre-fab answers you are going to trust -- those of the Fathers of the Church from the earliest centuries, or those of the Reformation's fathers (not directly appealed to as authority, of course, but passed off as being understandings that each person just happens to arrive at through independent reading of Scripture...)
I do agree it is a matter of whom to trust. And of course I would disagree if anyone made an assertion that any interpretation challenging that of the fallible men of the Church is automatically private and therefore error.
Much of the reason I find myself currently distrusting the hierarchy of the Church, and its "ancestors", is the degree to which power has been declared transferred away from God and to men. Of course the Bible is declared to agree with this, since the recipients of the power are the only ones authorized to declare what the Bible says. That seems to work out pretty well for all those who have the power. :)
Another main problem I have is with the declared interpretation of scripture. I am thoroughly convinced that if the Church's interpretation of the scripture is correct, then the Bible is substantially incomprehensible to anyone without that interpretation. It is like a secret code, and only the men in power have the decoder. God does not have this decoder (such that He would share it with any of the little people) because the men in power have declared that God has transferred it to them.
Since it is true that the reach of the Bible has long ago outstretched the reach of the RC and Orthodox Churches, and God knew that this would happen, I just can't bring myself to believe that right now uncounted millions of people have in their hands an essentially useless revelation of God's word. I can't believe that is God's will. I cannot answer the question of why God would inspire His written word indecipherably to all but a small few.
Of course, my side uses interpretation also, but as I examine the degree to which words must take on new meanings and whole concepts, across many passages of scripture, must be interpreted counterintuitively to the actual text, I see no comparison between the sides. My "advantage" is that I don't "need" the Bible to match anything outside of the Bible because I don't think there is anything else of equal authority. This is not true of the Church.
And I don't think it is a matter of what came first, scriptural Tradition or extra-scriptural Tradition. Many, many things have been declared infallible since those in power held the Bible in their hands. I do not find it credible that absolutely everything that the Church holds infallible today was well known and widely established before the Bible was assembled.
So I think that you really nailed the heart of it when you brought up the issue of trust. And, I can fully understand how anyone could trust the Church. There is a lot of history, and there are a lot of like-minded people who agree. I do respect that. And I do respect that you reached a point in your life when you felt truly led to re-evaluate. I suppose all any of us can do is to follow the lead we believe has been placed on our hearts.
"The passage does not say that only "Holy men" can interpret scripture, it says that prophecy was only given by Holy men."
Do you suppose that the Apostles wrote their works in a vacuum? Do you not suppose that various faithful would ask St. Paul: "Could you explain what you meant when you wrote _______?" What was St. Paul talking about all night when Eutychus fell asleep in the window?
Surely you don't think that St. Paul would respond, "Well, my friend, it's Scripture, so your interpretation of it is as good as mine... just read it and figure it out by refering to other Scriptures, with the Holy Spirit to guide you."??
Of course not. The Apostles were actively preaching and teaching, and the people that they preached to and taught did preaching and teaching of their own.
This is why I, like a stuck record, keep asking Protestants to show me evidence from the early centuries of the Church that there was serious controversy about the things that Protestantism says the Church invented or perverted.
So many of the things that you disagree with in what we believe have no controversy associated with them. Take for example your own belief that infant baptism is not an Apostolic practice -- where is the record of the controversy over this when infant baptism was introduced. Where is the controversy over prayers to saints, asking them to pray for us, veneration of relics, the ever-virginity of the Theotokos, etc.?
If these things were all perversions, surely the teaching of the Apostles would have had enough staying power to last at least a couple of centuries, and the "true followers of the Apostles" would have raised a holy ruckus over these things. Yet, all we hear is historical static.
Some say that this is because the Church suppressed it -- but then we would have the Church's record of *its* side of the story, telling about these heretic proto-Baptists and the crazy things they believed! :-)
Again, historical static is what we actually have.
So, I do not think at all that we can separate the holy men who wrote the Scriptures from their interpretation and explanation of those Scriptures -- in short, from their preaching.