Your comment: “Well, see, that’s the whole point! I don’t believe in any church founded by man, I believe in Jesus Christ and it is this faith that places me within His universal body/assembly/church.”
Well then, it sounds like that you maybe a member of the Body of Christ - His Catholic Church which Jesus founded for our salvation.
Since his Ascension and until the end of history, Jesus lives on earth in his supernatural body, the body of his members, his mystical body. Having used his physical body to redeem the world, Christ now uses his mystical body to dispense “the divine fruits of the Redemption” (Mystici Corporis 31).
The Church: His Body
What is this mystical body? The true Church of Jesus Christ, not some invisible reality composed of true believers, as the Reformers insisted. In the first public proclamation of the gospel by Peter at Pentecost, he did not invite his listeners to simply align themselves spiritually with other true believers. He summoned them into a society, the Church, which Christ had established. Only by answering that call could they be rescued from the “crooked generation” (Acts 2:40) to which they belonged and be saved.
Paul, at the time of his conversion, had never seen Jesus. Yet recall how Jesus identified himself with his Church when he spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus: “Why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4, emphasis added) and “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Years later, writing to Timothy, Paul ruefully admitted that he had persecuted Jesus by persecuting his Church. He expressed gratitude for Christ appointing him an apostle, “though I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him” (1 Tim. 1:13).
The Second Vatican Council says that the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and the mystical body of Christ “form one complex reality that comes together from a human and a divine element” (Lumen Gentium 8). The Church is “the fullness of him [Christ] who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). Now that Jesus has accomplished objective redemption, the “plan of mystery hidden for ages in God” is “that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:9–10).
According to John Paul II, in order to properly understand the Church’s teaching about its role in Christ’s scheme of salvation, two truths must be held together: “the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all humanity” and “the necessity of the Church for salvation” (Redemptoris Missio 18). John Paul taught us that the Church is “the seed, sign, and instrument” of God’s kingdom and referred several times to Vatican II’s designation of the Catholic Church as the “universal sacrament of salvation”:
“The Church is the sacrament of salvation for all humankind, and her activity is not limited only to those who accept her message” (RM 20).
“Christ won the Church for himself at the price of his own blood and made the Church his co-worker in the salvation of the world. . . . He carries out his mission through her” (RM 9).
In an address to the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (January 28, 2000), John Paul stated, “The Lord Jesus . . . established his Church as a saving reality: as his body, through which he himself accomplishes salvation in history.” He then quoted Vatican II’s teaching that the Church is necessary for salvation.
In 2000 the CDF issued Dominus Iesus, a response to widespread attempts to dilute the Church’s teaching about our Lord and about itself. The English subtitle is itself significant: “On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.” It simply means that Jesus Christ and his Church are indivisible. He is universal Savior who always works through his Church:
The only Savior . . . constituted the Church as a salvific mystery: He himself is in the Church and the Church is in him. . . . Therefore, the fullness of Christ’s salvific mystery belongs also to the Church, inseparably united to her Lord (DI 18).
Indeed, Christ and the Church “constitute a single ‘whole Christ’” (DI 16). In Christ, God has made known his will that “the Church founded by him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity” (DI 22). The Catholic Church, therefore, “has, in God’s plan, an indispensable relationship with the salvation of every human being” (DI 20).
The key elements of revelation that together undergird extra ecclesiam, nulla salus are these: (1) Jesus Christ is the universal Savior. (2) He has constituted his Church as his mystical body on earth through which he dispenses salvation to the world. (3) He always works through it—though in countless instances outside its visible boundaries. Recall John Paul’s words about the Church quoted above: “Her activity is not limited only to those who accept its message.”
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/no-salvation-outside-the-church
Catholics believe that as Jesus Christ lived his natural life on earth two thousand years ago in a body drawn from Mary, so he lives his mystical life today in a body, drawn from the human race in general, called the Catholic Church. Catholics believe that her words are his, her actions his, her life his (with certain restrictions and exceptions), as surely as were the words, actions, and life recorded in the gospels. It is for this reason that they give to the Church the assent of their faith, believing that in doing so they are rendering it to God himself. She is not merely his representative on earth, not merely even his bride: In a real sense she is himself. Catholics believe that in this manner, as well as in another that is not our business at present, he fulfills his promise to be with his disciples all the days, even to the consummation of the world.
“I am the vine, you the branches,” or, “He that heareth you, heareth me: he that despiseth you, despiseth me,” or, “As my Father sent me, even so send I you.”
For the only distinction possible to draw between the Vine and the branches lies in saying that the Vine stands for the whole and the branches for its parts. The branches are not an imitation of the Vine, or representatives of the Vine; they are not merely attached to it, as candles to a Christmas tree; they are its expression, its result, and sharers of its life. The two are in the most direct sense identical. The Vine gives unity to the branches; the branches give expression and effectiveness to the energy of the Vine; they are nothing without it; it remains merely a divine idea without them. You cannot, that is, apprehend the Vine at all in any real sense as vine except through the branches. So, again, in passage after passage of Paul’s writings, phrases are used that are practically meaningless, or at the best wild and furious exaggerations, unless this identity of Christ and his Church is assumed to have been in the writer’s mind.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/christ-in-the-church
So much wrong here I dont know where to start. I do not recognize the Roman authors or popes, what they say is of no consequence, and you cannot find the Roman church in scripture, it hadn’t been invented yet. Christ would be surprised to find He needed help in the work of salvation. His finished work on the cross is sufficient and needs no help, not from us, from Mary or from the Roman church. The Church is the body of believers across time and space and will be revealed when Christ comes for His bride. It has nothing to do with a particular Roman sect.
The Roman church has done many things that are contrary to Christs Word and have harmed the true Church, they have nothing to brag about. As for which leader has primacy in the Church, it is Christ alone. If you think your pope is leader of the Church then I have to ask which one? There have been times in your history when you have had two different men claiming the office. Your group has added its writings and man made rules to be equal to Scripture and done so without shame, in fact you are proud of it. You have robbed your followers of the blessed assurance of their salvation then scoffed at those who have it.
Believers are indeed the body of Christ and some in the Roman sect are included in that but far from all. As Paul said we see through a glass darkly - no group or sect has the exclusive inside track on Truth. We only find Truth in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. Return to Christ and trust Him only, give up your man made rules and extra Biblical teachings and you will have a much deeper relationship with our Savior and a more fulfilled life. If you cant do that, at least stop trying to tell others your convoluted way is the sole repository of Truth. You are wrong.
ADSUM: Well then, it sounds like that you maybe a member of the Body of Christ - His Catholic Church which Jesus founded for our salvation.
Are you prepared to say the injunction of Unam Sanctam which in part declares "for salvation every human creature must be subject to the Roman Pontiff" is no longer valid?
Non Roman Catholics do not consider themselves as subject to the Roman Pontiff (Roman Catholic Church).
You are saying salvation is possible for a person and not be subject to the Roman Pontiff (Roman Catholic Church)
Further, are you prepared to say a person is saved through their belief in Christ, and only Christ, prior to baptism and that baptism is not what saves you, but is an outward demonstration of what has happened on the inside of a person.
Further, are you prepared to say once a person believes Christ they are forever His...they are not lost?
There is no Scriptural proof that Roman Catholicism is the body of Ch4rist, the church that Jesus Christ is building here on this earth.
And a person who trusts in Christ for salvation IS a member of HIS body but that does not by default equate to ROman Catholicism.
The Catholic church is the only one claiming they are the one true church and that anyone who believes in Christ is a member of it, Catholic by default. But that is only their CLAIM.
It’s not true.
The NT church in Rome was only one of many congregation spread throughout the Roman Empire and each body of believers were their own separate entity, united only by their faith in Christ, but not administratively under one head.
Jesus did NOT set up the hierarchal structure the Roman Catholicism has become.
Well, gee, thanks. I was raised in the Roman Catholic church until the Holy Spirit led me out from it and into a fellowship that taught the truth of the gospel - that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works. This is how I know I have eternal life and am now one of His sheep - an assurance NOT taught by Roman Catholicism. You, know, I think it is disingenuous for Roman Catholicism to use the adjective "catholic" - which initially meant the universal body of Christ - and presume they alone are exclusively THE church. Like I said, why limit the work of the Holy Spirit by elitest thinking? Here is the rest of what Paul said in Ephesians 3:10-21