BTW I trust the Lord and His promises to the Church. What you call an assumption is first of all in no ways required by trusting the Lord's promises to the Church and, second, is no more naive than trusting one's own interpretation, the doing of which has brought about the constant fissiparation of Protestantism. The confidence I have in the authority if the Magisterium is confidence in God's providential care of the Church. Dante puts plenty of Popes and bishops in hell. Is that naive? We don't necessarily trust the men themselves. We trust what God can do with and through them.
Further, and this is not an argument but an observation and speculation, it seems to me that the tendency of many Protestants to mischaracterize what we hold and then argue NOT against our beliefs but their own caricature of our beliefs suggests the kind of thing that Dante talks about when he says le gente dolorose c'hanno perduto il ben dell'intelletto .
How you think you will persuade me by arguing against something I do not hold escapes me utterly.
Nice try.
The problem isn't that we don't know what you believe, but that we do know.
How you think you will persuade me by arguing against something I do not hold escapes me utterly.
I don't believe for a second you can be persuaded. I do believe I have brothers and sisters in Christ who read these threads and it is beneficial for them to understand what the various Christian sects believe.