You see, my estimate was correct. Your cohort takes on the color of commitment by donning the skin of the Greater Catechism (of which I have a copy), yet refusing to acknowledge its inconsistencies and the many ways in which its opinions and "traditions" are set above the authority of the Written Words of God, whose Personalized form is its Author, the Savior and Lord Himself, nominated by Beloved John as The Logos, The Word: Jesus Messiach, Lord of All.
Neither numbers nor the uninspired sayings of fallible men can save and justify you and yours in the Biblical view. Only absolute, unreserved persistent trust in the Jesus of the Bible--discarding all else temporal and unreliable--and in His Cleansing Blood can do that.
I have had the privilege of discipling many young Christians into greater maturity. In my later years I have been using the materials (click here) with which I was myself discipled by an old veteran missionary and Bible translator (click here).
My most sincere primary instruction to those I have been given the opportunity to help to spiritual maturity is taking the position of looking at every experience from God's point of view, and never taking the counsel of a sincere but fallible discipler or preacher-herald without exercising the kind of noble followup of the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures daily with an open mind to see if what they were told was true, The Bible being the final appeal.
This has set my mind and my energies quite against the methodology of the Romanists, whose minds are utterly closed, like those Thessalonikans reported by Luke (Acts 17:1-14) who experienced first-hand the kind of killing fury that has also been manifested by the Judaising Catholegalism when its sponsors have the upper hand, to extinguish both the power of The Book and the People of The Book.
You noted that I mentioned the sixteenth century humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Though Erasmus Rogerii (as he once termed himself) remained nominally a Catholic, his body is buried among those of his friends at a Protestant cemetery in Basel. He himself helped undo the overwhelming excesses of his fellow Romanists, and that is why I mentioned him as a tool used by God to reassert the supremacy of the Word of God as the arbiter in human affairs, rather than the Vatican.
I don't know if you've read through a particular biographer's account, "Erasmus And The Age Of Reformation" by Johan Huizinga (translated from the Dutch in 1929 by F. Hopman, with Erasmus' letters later translated by Barbara Flower), but I have. It is detailed, and doesn't have much to say about the kindness of the Catholic heirarchy to him.
Another summary of Erasmus' mark on civilization is the essay A Tolerant Mind: Desiderius Erasmus (click here), an essay by Jim Powell web-posted on July 4, 2000.
Here are some highlights from it:
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"Erasmus wrote Enchirdion militis christiani [The Handbook of the Christian Soldier], a practical guide to Christianity. He insisted that people save their souls not by performing religious rituals but by cultivating faith and goodness. The book was translated into English (after 1518), Czech (1519), German (1520) and then into French, Italian, Polish, Portugese and Spanish, the Enchirdion helped set the stage for the Reformation."
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"Because of all the errors in the official Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, Erasmus went back to Greek manuscripts — 14th century copies as it turned out — and produced a fresh Latin translation of the New Testament with annotations and commentary. His translation, published in Basel, inspired others to translate the New Testament. For instance, Martin Luther’s German translation (1522), William Tyndale’s English translation (1525), Benedek Komjati’s Hungarian translation (1533) and Francisco de Enmzinas’ Spanish translation (1543).
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" 'Erasmus,' noted William Manchester, 'died a martyr to everything he despised in life: fear, malice, excess, ignorance, barbarism.' The Spanish Inquisition excommunicated him as a heretic, and, Manchester continued, 'everything Erasmus had ever published was consigned to the Index Expurgatorius, which meant that any Catholic who read the prose which had once delighted a pontiff would be placing his soul in jeopardy.' In 1546, the Council of Trent condemned Erasmus’ edition of the New Testament. Pope Paul IV called Erasmus 'the leader of all heretics' and urged people to burn his writings."
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"It was in America that people began to fulfill Erasmus’ vision of tolerance. 'Thus for the first time since the Dark Ages,' wrote historian Paul Johnson, 'a society came into existence in which institutional Christianity was associated with progress and freedom, rather than against them. The United States was Erasmian in its tolerance, Erasmian in its anti-doctrinal animus, above all Erasmian in its desire to explore, within a Christian context, the uttermost limits of human possibilities.' "
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It is in the spirit of the Erasmian genius of the Free Republic Religious Forum that I accept a tolerance of differences of religious opinion that may be debated, without coming to ad hominem argumentation, name-calling, flame wars, or isolation of FR members for augmented attacks; but my tolerance does not extend to accepting the oft-repeated Romanist touchstones of tran/consubstantiation, or Mariology/-otry, Peterine foundations, catholicism universality (whether Roman, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Arminian, or Orthodox), episcopacy, the clergy/laity model, as primary examples. Nor do I accept paedobaptism, continuation of special revelation, or unsubstantiated "miracles," to name a few areas in which I will contend for The Faith, and support others of a like mind.
I can understand why a sin-distressed delusional world-clinger (1 Jn. 2:15-16) would rather, as a last-ditch dependency on his own perceived goodness, become a bondslave of the Roman "Church", rather than admit his/her depravity angive it all up to become a regenerated believer-disciple-servant and friend (Jn. 15:14,15) of The Christ of the Bible. With that, I accept your "adieu" with a "ciao," as I rest in Him from Whom all blessings flow.