Hey wmfights,
All good questions, and excellent points. I'm headed off to bed right now, but would like to give you a quick response and make three small revisions to your list. First of all, the Catholic Church makes no claim to ownership of Scripture. The point in noting that our ancestors (yours and mine) in the Catholic Church preserved, protected, canonized, and handed the Scriptures down to us today is to frame the relationship between the Catholic Church (Roman and Orthodox) in a more productive light than it often is set in some of these conversations. Rome is not the enemy.
Secondly, you mentioned praying to dead people. I understand what you mean when you say that, but we might refer to it as the communion of the saints, or intercession of the saints, as we don't see the saints as being dead but rather alive in Christ, since God is the God of the living and not of the dead, and we are therefore surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
Finally, you mentioned Grace preserved through the Sacraments. I think a better description of how we see it is Grace received through the Sacraments.
These are all good points, and would all make for excellent discussion. I'm logging off now, however, so I won't be the one discussing them with you this evening. I think this is the first discussion you and I have had here on Free Republic, and I will look forward to some of these conversations with you in the future.
In the mean time, if you would like a few thoughts about Transubstantiation, you could consider looking at the thread
“He who grounds his faith on Scripture only has no faith , post # 267 where I was asked about that doctrine by another Freeper earlier this week. He felt I wasn't using Scripture enough to support my faith, so I spent a considerable amount of time on this post. Unfortunately, he didn't read it, because he said it hurt his finger to scroll down the post. Perhaps you might have better luck.
Kind Regards,
-iq