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Tinfoil hat alert.

Meaning, as you are also the OP, that you will brook no disagreement or criticism.

Acknowledged - and hardly new from Catholics. But I would point out that as a person, a human being before God, you have still chosen to be a Catholic. So while you try to shift the responsibility for your personal faith to the teachings of the Church, just remember, you chose that Church, with those teachings.

And the Church agrees - do and think everything it says you should do or think, but remember, before God you're still personally responsible for everything you do or think, even though you were following Church instructions. So the shifting of spiritual responsibility here is temporal, not spiritual.

Which is kind of a spoiler for the idea of obeying the Church = obeying God. Because if it ain't necessarily so, then what role does the Church play other than advisor? Spiritually, before God, none. Temporally, before the world, however, it provides pretty heavy indemnification and social protection. So I guess it serves the purpose most Catholics want it to serve, and to make up the difference they figure God will be merciful because they "tried."

And hey, I can easily see how the Church is pleased with the deal. But as for Catholics, I don't think they've thought it through as carefully as they claim to have done - otherwise we'd hear a lot more of them admitting personal belief for their thoughts and actions, rather than Church obedience to evade that personal responsibility.

Lest you think this is just a hack attack on Catholics - think again. If you want to understand, really understand, why non-Catholics most often get irritated with Catholics, understand this post. Because everyone has their own ideas about religion and God, but Catholics play both sides against the middle - they hide behind Church teachings when it helps them, and then they claim personal responsibility when that serves them, and it simply comes across as morally dishonest and hypocritical to everyone else, because, in fact, it is. But the kicker is that the Church itself doesn't provide the indemnification before God that most Catholics think it does, so ultimately, this personal fraud certainly will not be ignored.

Benedict himself said that he would rather have a much smaller Catholic Church of members who strictly conformed to Church teachings, than a huge, sprawling inclusive Church where everyone takes their own slant. He was addressing this very issue of hypocrisy. Before God, it's better to honestly not be a Catholic, then to claim Catholicism as some sort of indemnification for your own beliefs, bobbing, dodging and weaving through life in the delusion that somehow you're actually going to fool God in the end as to what you actually stand for.

Let me say up front that I am a Baptist - a Southern Baptist to be exact. I know that Baptists and Catholics have not always had a cordial relationship.

However, I am a Christian first, not a Baptist. I am not hostile to Catholism. In fact, I shared some brief jail time with some Catholic priests following a pro-life abortion clinic rescue. I count Catholics as my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, since we both believe in God, and in His Son Jesus Christ, second Person of the Trinity, who lived among men, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again on the third day. We both believe that salvation is through faith in Christ, by His death for our sins on our behalf, and His resurrection from the dead as He demonstrated His victory over sin and death.

The Bible is God’s word. We both believe that. I believe that if a tradition or a teaching violates the clear teaching of the Scriptures, then we are to avoid that tradition or teaching, we are to repudiate it and show others where that teaching or tradition is violating God’s word. I don’t care where a tradition or teaching comes from, if it contradicts or violates clear doctrine from the Bible, that tradition or teaching is heretical and is to be not only ignored but rejected and rebuked by right teaching.

The writer of the article you posted wants to say that the sole authority for interpreting Scripture is through the heirarchy of the church. I do agree that people who have studied the Scriptures, who know about the languages and translations of the Bible, who know about Biblical and early Church history, who know about proper Biblical hermanuitics (how to interpret the Bible) - but, I do not agree that there is some “sanctified” pristhood or papacy that alone can properly interpret the Bible.

I see no support in the New Testament for a priesthood as practiced by the Catholic church. I see no support for a papacy as an office that has sole authority over Christian teaching and practice or Bible interpretation.

I see no examples of those things in the New Testament. Even if you take the Catholic position that Peter was the “Rock” upon which Christ would build His church - I do not see that acted upon or practice in the early church. In Acts or in Paul’s epistles, nowhere do I see theological controversies settled by a sole, individual pope - Peter in this case.

I never see examples of Peter acting as a sole, all-ecompanssing authority figure in Acts or in any of the letters of the other Apostles. When Peter witnessed to Cornelius, a Gentile, and he saw the Holy Spirit indwell Cornelius and other Gentiles around him - Peter realized that Christ was for everyone, not just the Jewish Believers. When he reported back at Jerusalem, he was not received carte blanche by what he said. He had to convince the other Apostles - AND other leaders in the church (only referred to as “the circumcision party”).

Another example, when the idea that Gentiles had to become “Jewish” (circumsised, follow all the OT laws, etc.) in order to beomce a Christian became topic of debate and controversy. It was settled (see Acts 15) in Jerusalem by all the Apostles, including Paul, and other Elders of the church. Peter does speak to the issue, but all the leaders apparently spoke - in fact, it seems like James had the final say in the matter (see Acts 15:13-19).

Anyway, I don’t wish to argue or fight with my Catholic brethren. Let’s just serve Christ as best we can and be the best witnesses we can be for Him. For, to Him alone will be all glory and honor.

....we as Catholics must admit something. From external appearances, and in reality in many churches, we do not appear to be a people alive in the Faith, burning with zeal for Christ and the salvation of souls, such as is often seen in many evangelical churches. As such, it can be difficult to convince a fundamentalist of the truth of Catholicism when the faith of Catholics so often appears dead, and our Church is bleeding from scandal after scandal....So we come closer to answering the fundamental problem: who, then, has the authority to interpret Scripture?

It's a big jump from "having the authority" to "getting it right". Ping back to your excellent 2008 thread:

Protestants have reacted strongly against the doctrine of apostolic succession. They have done so in a number of ways, historical and theological. One of these ways is by affirming the apostolicity of the church. Apostolicity may be defined as receiving and obeying apostolic doctrine as it is set forth in the New Testament. In matters of doctrine and life, Protestants permit no ultimate appeal to traditions that are distinct from canonical Scripture....
....Even if it were historically provable that there was an unbroken succession of bishops from the first century to the present day Roman Catholic bishops (and it is not), Protestants would still demur to claims of Roman authority based upon apostolic succession. It is the apostolicity of the church that counts. And it is precisely by the standard of apostolicity that the Roman Catholic Church is measured and found wanting.
-- from the thread Apostolic Succession and the Roman Catholic Church

If anyone deserves to wear tinfoil hats it's Catholics! This article is chock full of all the typical Roman Catholic propaganda and twisted Scripture passages that there is scarcely a paragraph that hasn't already been shot full of holes in previous RF threads. Hasn't the Religion Forum been monopolized enough the last few weeks with all the hourly Pope news that this old stuff has to be brought up again? Here's just a sample:

The thought that continued to run through my mind as I read those emails was, “So, whose interpretation of the Bible is right?” With nearly 60, 000 denominations in the world and counting, all of them claiming that they have the monopoly on truth, who do you believe (the first letter I received, or the letter from the guy after that?) I mean, we could debate all day about whether this biblical text or that text means this or that. But how do we know at the end of the day what the proper interpretation is? Feelings? Tingling anointings?

Sixty thousand denominations now???!!! Can you see why nothing else this guy says can be trusted? All of them claiming a "monopoly on the truth"??? I wonder, did you hunt around and dig up the most insulting one you could find? I sincerely hope NOBODY reads this article thinking the person who wrote it knows what he is talking about. He doesn't!