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Oh yeah, I just want to comment on this:

“This is a continuous process which has never ceased, in all of its many conflicts and travails never suffered a total irreparable rupture, in any century since the first, and to this very day.”

It’s quite easy to never suffer an irreparable rupture, if you just slice limbs off the body when they disagree with you, which the Catholic church has done several times over the millenia. So, those within the church who might have caused such a rupture are simply pronounced outside the church, and with a rhetorical flourish, the possibility is avoided.

In this way, all Catholics now agree that it is appropriate to call Mary the “Mother of God”, because those Christians who refused to accept that title were cut off and said to no longer be “true Christians”. Even if everyone doesn’t agree, with the stroke of a pen, everyone now agrees!

Your point about the Church over the centuries suffering various schisms, desertions, dissentions, declaring interdicts, falling into disunity --- is indisputable.

But I must fault myself for not making my point clear. When I said the Church had not suffered a "total irreparable rupture," I just meant that her existence has been continuous. There have neve been a gap or hiatus in time, from the Apostles' day until now, in which there was no Succession, no Catholic Church.

Surely there were departures. Some of them cause by faults on the part of priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes on the Catholic side. (I personally think that Cardinal Humbert of Moyenmoutier on the Catholic side was almost totally unjustified in his actions in 1054, typefying multiple offenses committed by the Latins --- don't get me started!!) --- But none of these caused a rupture in the very existence of the Catholic Church.

Here's where the human and ugly side of the Church comes in --- Paul discusses that even in his earlies epistles --- the spirit of faction, ego, self-promotion, pride, discord. There is plenty of biggetty-britches spirit all around. It does serious and lasting harm. But even all this sin has never closed down the Church.

Reconciliations are still possible. They still, through the power of the Spirit, happen. Christ Himself prayed for "one flock, shpeherd." You and I, let's pray for this as well, for His sake.

“This is a continuous process which has never ceased, in all of its many conflicts and travails never suffered a total irreparable rupture, in any century since the first, and to this very day.” It’s quite easy to never suffer an irreparable rupture, if you just slice limbs off the body when they disagree with you, which the Catholic church has done several times over the millenia. So, those within the church who might have caused such a rupture are simply pronounced outside the church, and with a rhetorical flourish, the possibility is avoided. In this way, all Catholics now agree that it is appropriate to call Mary the “Mother of God”, because those Christians who refused to accept that title were cut off and said to no longer be “true Christians”. Even if everyone doesn’t agree, with the stroke of a pen, everyone now agrees!

your entire post is inane...