To wit: "Catholics are going to Hell because they follow the teachings of men! Show it to me in the Bible."
"This phrase or doctrine is not stated in the Bible, but my denomination / Bible teacher told me, and I believe it with everything within me!"
The catchphrase, of course.
What you're missing, is that there are scads of people who love and serve and obey Jesus, without having formally uttered the sinner's prayer or gone to an altar call.
And here's the points of disagreement:
Besides, if you actually understand what sola Scriptura means, you would know that it is the belief that because Scripture is the Divinely-inspired word of God, by its authority everything we must believe in order to have eternal life and live godly in Christ Jesus is explicitly or implicitly taught in Scripture:
“The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.” —Westminster Confession of Faith
I agree with doctrinal elements for Salvation: the fallen state of man, "original sin," death as a consequence of sin, who God is and his perfection, (implicitly) the Trinity, the incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, all that.
What I *disagree* with, is that any teachings of men afterwards, must *necessarily* be wrong.
In particular, faith (how to increase in faith, what practices in life aid or increase the faith) and life (how and when to pray, who to pray for, whether for an individual, group, city, country, what have you).
And, I find it odd, that the many Protestant groups seem to neglect, or fail to practice, many practices enjoined in Scripture; and openly insist (as a DOCTRINAL point, from sola scriptura, that any apparitions, vision, prophecy, revelation, from any source whatsoever, on any topic whatsoever, is necessarily an Orwellian "crimethink" instead of Scripturally testing the spirits.
And that they take for granted certain elements of the faith which were hammered out in post-Biblical times, *cough* Arianism *cough* *cough* Albigensians *cough* *cough* Donatism *cough* to name a few, while still loudly Demanding sola scriptura (hint, in a lot of heresies, the heretics cited Scripture, but it was decided they were misusing it; the reason that is important is there are folks like the extreme Calvinists (predestination) who also quote Scripture, and yet both the Catholics and most other Protestants insist they're wrong.
The last area of, hmm, "practice" so to speak, is that I've heard Protties say that "Catholics teach prayers of empty words by repetition" e.g. the Rosary. I used to think so myself, until I started praying it. The practice is to devote oneself to meditation on certain episodes of the life of Jesus, or Mary, thematically. I've published on this thread one such set for the Sorrowful Mysteries. And the statements to meditate on in it, openly contradict a lot of the ignorant blather about dead works and Mary _substituting for_ Jesus.
A lot of the other revelations / apparitions, were calls to prayer for particular circumstances in time, and in particular, calls to pray for Mercy to ward off Judgment or God's wrath. (E.g. Fatima's warning in 1917 of an error which would come from Russia and affect the whole Earth *cough* Communism *cough*, or prayers in Reparation for Atheism and Blasphemy ("what if ten righteous were found there? For the sake of the ten I will not destroy it.")
And that is NOT something I believe/espouse nor is it a conclusion from sola Scriptura. Nobody here has even alluded to that. What we should understand is any teachings of men cannot contradict what God has spoken through His word.
And that they take for granted certain elements of the faith which were hammered out in post-Biblical times, *cough* Arianism *cough* *cough* Albigensians *cough* *cough* Donatism *cough* to name a few, while still loudly Demanding sola scriptura (hint, in a lot of heresies, the heretics cited Scripture, but it was decided they were misusing it; the reason that is important is there are folks like the extreme Calvinists (predestination) who also quote Scripture, and yet both the Catholics and most other Protestants insist they're wrong.
And do you know how it was/is determined people misused Scripture? By knowing what God has revealed to us IN Scripture. For example, Athanasius of Alexandria disputed the heresy of Arianism. He defended the Biblical teaching about the Deity of Jesus Christ by having the better argument from Scripture - even when the hierarchy of the church at that time exiled him for doing so. False teachers have ALWAYS tried to pervert the truth - it's nothing new.
What we shouldn't get caught up on is demanding others MUST always think the same way about everything - without taking into account areas that are called "disputable matters". We have liberty of conscience - between me and God - on those things that are not spelled out specifically in Scripture. You want to fast on Fridays? Be my guest, just don't mandate to me that I must also or else I'm not a good Christian.
In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity (often attributed to great theologians such as Augustine, it comes from an otherwise undistinguished German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century, Rupertus Meldenius).
P.S. Hope your cough gets better. :o)