“The solution is for Catholics to live Catholicism”
You say to live Catholicism, but with the changes listed below seems to me that no one really knows what “Catholicism” really is. For a church that claims beginnings and traditions from Peter I would have to say that your first pope must have forgot to tell you a few really important things.
1 . Prayers for the dead . …………-—————————……300 A.D.
2. Making the sign of the cross ………………………… …300 A.D.
3. Veneration of angels & dead saints …………-————…….375 A.D.
4. Use of images in worship………………………………… . 375 A.D.
5. The Mass as a daily celebration……………………………… 394 A.D.
6 Beginning of the exaltation of Mary; the term, “Mother of God” applied a Council of Ephesus……………. .-———————————————————— 431 A.D.
7 Extreme Unction (Last Rites)……………………………… ..526 A.D.
8. Doctrine of Purgatory-Gregory 1…………………………… .593 A.D..
9. Prayers to Mary & dead saints ……………………………… .600 A.D.
10. Worship of cross, images & relics ……………………… … 786 A.D.
11 Canonization of dead saints ………………………………… ..995 A.D.
12. Celibacy of priesthood …………………………………… …1079 A.D.
13. The Rosary ……………………………………………… … 1090 A.D.
14. Indulgences ……………………………………………… …..1190 A.D.
15. Transubstantiation-Innocent III …………………………… 1215 A.D.
16. Auricular Confession of sins to a priest …………………… 1215 A.D.
17. Adoration of the wafer (Host)…………………………… .. 1220 A.D.
18. Cup forbidden to the people at communion …………………..1414 A.D.
19. Purgatory proclaimed as a dogma……………………………..1439 A.D.
20. The doctrine of the Seven Sacraments confirmed …………….1439 A.D.
21 Tradition declared of equal authority with Bible by Council of Trent…………………………………………————————… 1545 A.D.
22. Apocryphal books added to Bible ………——————……….1546 A.D.
23. Immaculate Conception of Mary……………………………….1854 A.D.
24, Infallibility of the pope in matters of faith and morals, proclaimed by the Vatican Council ……………… 1870 A.D.
25. Assumption of the Virgin Mary (bodily ascension into heaven shortly after her death) ……………………………-—————————————————……1950 A.D.
26. Mary proclaimed Mother of the Church……………………… 1965 A.D.
The short answer is that there is a difference between innovation, and development of doctrine. Development is legitimate, and involves the logical and reasonable application of doctrine to new situations, to answer new questions or settle new disputes. The Bible is chock-full of the "development" of doctrine, from cover to cover.
A reliable guide to Catholic doctrine is theCatechism of the Catholic Church (LINK). It is online and easily searchable.
Many a misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine could be avoided by taking 3 minutes to look up the topic in the Catechism.
But now: where did you get your information?
I do wish to refute a few of the more egregious errors.
You claim that the "apocryphal" books of Scripture were added by the Roman Catholic Church in 1546 (apparently at the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent?).
First, they are books of the Bible and not apocrypha. Second the present Catholic Canon of the Bible was declared by Pope Damasus who was pope from 366 to 384 AD, a tad earlier than 1546.
Second, Pope Damasus's Canon of the Bible was also repeated in identical form in a letter to a bishop in 405 by Pope Innocent I.
The honest and non-denominational answer to the controversy you are trying to raise is that there were TWO canons of the Old Testament among Jews (these were THEIR books, after all) one from the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem and the other from Biblical scholars at Alexandria. Surprisingly, I learned this from a Lutheran pastor and scholar after asking him what his reaction would be if Luther had simply dumped those OT books which had some content that Luther found disagreeable. He had no immediate answer but got back to me the next week with the news that Luther's preferences in theology had little to do with the canon he had chosen.
The Roman Catholic Church, at a time when NO ONE had declared which books were and were not to be included, ruled that all Old Testament books (including those that were later labeled "apocrypha") were to be included and that various questionable or outright ridiculous books (The Gospel of Jesus, The Gospel of Mary, The [original] Gospel of Thomas [not the one discovered in Egypt in the 1960s], etc.) largely promoted by Gnostic heretics were to e rejected. Someone had to take out the trash an Rome did.
There has never been genuine controversy over the New Testament, although Luther was not at all a fan of the Epistle of James. Luther did, as to the Old Testament, insist that the shorter Jewish Canon was to be what he believed in. So the innovation within Christianity was Luther's not Rome's and he, at least, had historical reasons for his position as did Rome have for its position.
Next, the celibacy of priests, required only in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in the West is NOT DOCTRINAL. All the other rites in communion with Rome allow married priests. In the Roman rite alone, this is a matter of long-standing discipline but it has NEVER been doctrinal.
Next, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was long held by the Faithful but never formalized as doctrine until 1854 after Mary's apparition at Lourdes describing herself as "the immaculate conception." Catholics believe in this dogma that Mary, alone of all women in the human race (her Son being the only male exception), having been created by God to be the perfect (sinless) vessel through whom Jesus would be incarnated and enter into this world was not subject to the consequences of original sin committed by Adam and Eve. She was not subject to death which is a wage of original sin. As a woman, she was not subject to the pangs of childbirth, a wage of the original sin of Eve visited on all of her female descendants other than Mary.
Next, the Assumption of Mary is just that and not an ascension. Jesus Christ ascended to heaven on his own power. Mary had no such power. She was taken body and soul to heaven by angels upon God's command to the angels.
Mary never died. In the Eastern Orthodox Churches (which despite some differences are closer to us than any other Church in ways that count like Apostolic Succession, valid sacraments, transubstantiation, valid Masses, etc.) they speak of the Dormition of Mary (her falling asleep literally and not metaphorically). Does it not surprise you that we know and still have the actual house in which the Apostle John and Mary lived until the end of her days on Earth (my then Protestant wife and her Protestant mother visited this house in the interior of Turkey in the mid-1970s) but no one claims to know ANYTHING about Mary's death or as to where she might have been buried. I would think that she was an important figure to early Christians (Catholics) and her death, if any, and burial would have been important enough to notice and remember. No????
Next, the rosary was given to St. Dominic in 1214 in a Marian vision.
Next, indulgences are essentially Biblical from the Peter passage: What you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven. WHAT YOU SHALL LOOSE ON EARTH SHALL BE LOOSED IN HEAVEN. I give you the keys to the kingdom. If you are talking about SALE of indulgences such would not be efficacious and is, in fact, the very serious sin of simony. Unless Jesus Christ and Simon bar-Jonah who became Peter were among the living on Earth in 1190 AD, indulgences had a much earlier and quite Biblical origin.
I could spend a week researching the rest of your list but the foregoing should suffice. We serious Catholics do generally have a very good idea of what we believe. You may disagree with what I have written as I disagree with you. That's one of the things that makes the USA such a great country.
God bless you and yours!