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I soon found myself faced with a host of confusing theological and administrative questions. There were exegetical dilemmas over how to correctly interpret difficult biblical passages and also liturgical decisions that could easily divide a congregation. My seminary studies had not adequately prepared me to deal with this morass of options. I just wanted to be a good pastor, but I couldn’t find consistent answers to my questions from my fellow minister friends, nor from the “how to” books on my shelf, nor from the leaders of my Presbyterian denomination. It seemed that every pastor was expected to make up his own mind on these issues. This “reinvent the wheel as often as you need to” mentality that is at the heart of Protestantism’s pastoral ethos was deeply disturbing to me. “Why should I have to reinvent the wheel?” I asked myself in annoyance. “What about the Christian ministers down through the centuries who faced the same issues? What did they do?” Protestantism’s emancipation from Rome’s “manmade” laws and dogmas and customs that had “shackled” Christians for centuries (that, of course, was how we were taught in seminary to view the “triumph” of the Reformation over Romanism) began to look a lot more like anarchy than genuine freedom. I didn’t receive the answers I needed, even though I prayed constantly for guidance. I felt I had exhausted my resources and didn’t know where to turn.

Genuine freedom, then, consists of suspending one's intellect? Of course, he needn't feel such angst concerning the "tough questions". The majority of Catholics in this country deny one or more "essential" Catholic doctrine, despite claims that the "cafeteria is closed", but still feel comfortable warming the pews. Protestants, on the other hand, recognize that the vast majority of doctrinal disputes are not salvational in nature, but are significant enough to warrant recognition and a degree of separation.

Not salvational in nature.

Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will have no life in you!

I believe that this is salvational and I haven't come across any Protestants who believe that, though I do, and the majority of my Catholic friends and family also believe it.
The cafeteria is closed as far as most of us are concerned. The few that don’t subscribe to Catholic Doctrine are relying on God’s love and not His justice as are so many in the Christian world today. That actually scares the daylights out of me!

From my vantage point, it seems as though you have your Catholic statistics a little skewed !

Regardless, from all that I have read that you have written, you appear to be a person living out your faith in Our Savior, Jesus Christ, which makes us brothers and sisters in Christ.

God Bless us all!

Genuine freedom consists of finding the truth, which will set you free. The reason there are an infinity of Protestant (using the term in its broadest sense, as meaning neither Orthodox nor Catholic, since there is no theological unity even among Protestants) sects is that everyone has decided that their particular fragment of the truth, the one that really attracts them, is the only one. And if it's not emphasized in the church to which they already belong, they go off and found another one. The reality of Protestantism is that you have 30-40,000 bigger or smaller groups, each one emphasizing one little splinter of the truth that it finds more important than the others.

Note that I am not saying that Protestantism is based upon falsehood or maliciousness, or even upon the personal desire for power on the part of individual church founders. I think even those who found a church are genuinely seeking the truth, but because they have cut themselves off from the vast tree of doctrine that grows up from the death of the Lord and is watered with the blood of martyrs, they can inevitably get only a splinter of it. And soon someone else in their church comes along who sees another bit of truth he feels is underemphasized, and he goes off to found yet another church based on that splinter.

The Catholic Church does not replace thought and that was not the point the author was making. It's like accepting the Creed or any patristic formulation. Would you want to have to reinvent the Athanasian Creed? The Creeds, the doctrines of the Church, and all of the many doctrinal formulations achieved through the confrontation with historical challenges and often at the cost of blood and suffering and approved as being in line with tradition and doctrine from the very start are there for the taking. It's not necessary to reinvent them, and most of us would not be capable of it, anyway. It is certainly possible to think about them, however, and to call the attention of others to some aspect of them you find particularly attractive.

In the Catholic Church, people who have some aspect of the truth they feel called to emphasize more than another often found religious orders or do something similar to give a collective expression of their particular vision. I recently visited Assisi and was profoundly impressed by St. Francis and his prayerful, humble tenacity in following the Lord in the particular way to which he had been called - even though there was often considerable suspicion of him in the Church at that time, and there were other, similar movements that left the Church.

Yet because he accepted the vast trove of doctrine and simply remained certain that he was called to emphasize one aspect of Christian life within it, now, 800 years later, there are millions of Franciscans all over the world, doing good for the Lord. When I was in Assisi, I met young, orthodox Franciscans from all over the world who are absolutely on fire with their missionary zeal and desire to follow St. Francis' vision - 800 years later.

So the point I am trying to make is not that Protestant founders are evil, but that by cutting themselves off from the fullness of the Faith (that is, the doctrine that comes to us from the Apostles and has been developed over the centuries by the mind of the Church), they are condemned to have to "reinvent" it simply because human nature requires an answer to all questions. And in this process, others will come along who see some other part of it, and they will go off on their own. Human nature requires certainty of truth, but the human mind is limited. Accepting the truths of the Catholic Church is simply acknowledging that there are some things that require the collective intelligence and faith of the entire Church, and one you have accepted these truths, you are free to move on to the particular thing to which the Lord is calling you.