" Hint to WSJ. the Catholic Church is not a democracy nor a republic. It has and will continue to withstand terrible leadership even the worst ever such as this one People can discern that there is even in the hierarchy and remain Catholic. "Yet at any stage of her history, to ascertain the veracity of Catholic teaching based upon your judgement of what valid historical church teaching consists of and means is to essential be as a evangelical Bible Christian (and a NT one) in that regard,except that for the latter, valid historical church teaching means what is seen in Scripture. And which creates division (which is how the NT church began) yet a better unity than a broad one based upon error.
Thus we have threads as, , Is Catholicism about to break into three?
Archbishop Viganò: We Are Witnessing Creation of a ‘New Church ’
The SSPX's Relationship with Francis: Is it Traditional? post #6
Is the Catholic Church in De Facto Schism?
The Impossibility of Judging or Deposing a True Pope...If Francis is a true Pope …
However, the basic premise of Catholicism as expressed by so many popes in the past is that the flock are not to be ascertaining the veracity of Catholic teaching based upon their judgement, but,
* Epistola Tua: To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment , and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation.
Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor.... Similarly, it is to give proof of a submission which is far from sincere to set up some kind of opposition between one Pontiff and another. Those who, faced with two differing directives, reject the present one to hold to the past, are not giving proof of obedience to the authority which has the right and duty to guide them; and in some ways they resemble those who, on receiving a condemnation, would wish to appeal to a future council, or to a Pope who is better informed.
On this point what must be remembered is that in the government of the Church, except for the essential duties imposed on all Pontiffs by their apostolic office, each of them can adopt the attitude which he judges best according to times and circumstances. Of this he alone is the judge. It is true that for this he has not only special lights, but still more the knowledge of the needs and conditions of the whole of Christendom, for which, it is fitting, his apostolic care must provide. - Epistola Tua (1885), Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII; http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage_print.asp?number=403215&language=en
"It follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock...the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors ." - VEHEMENTER NOS, an Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906.
Nor can we pass over in silence the audacity of those who, not enduring sound doctrine, contend that "without sin and without any sacrifice of the Catholic profession assent and obedience may be refused to those judgments and decrees of the Apostolic See, whose object is declared to [only] concern the Church's general good and her rights and discipline, so only it does not touch the dogmata of faith and morals." But no one can be found not clearly and distinctly to see and understand how grievously this is opposed to the Catholic dogma of the full power given from God by Christ our Lord Himself to the Roman Pontiff of feeding, ruling and guiding the Universal Church. (Quanta Cura. Encyclical of Pope Pius IX promulgated on December 8, 1864; http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm)
20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent... if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. - PIUS XII, HUMANI GENERI, August 1950; http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html
The authority (of papal encyclicals) is undoubtedly great". It is, in a sense, sovereign. It is the teaching of the supreme pastor and teacher of the Church. Hence the faithful have a strict obligation to receive this teaching with an infinite respect. A man must not be content simply not to contradict it openly and in a more or less scandalous fashion. An internal mental assent is demanded. It should be received as the teaching sovereignly authorized within the Church." - Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, esteemed Catholic theologian and professor of fundamental dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of America, who served as a peritus for Cardinal Ottaviani at the Second Vatican Council. Extract from the American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. CXXI, August, 1949; http://www.catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/encyclicals/docauthority.htm
For it is quite foreign to everyone bearing the name of a Christian to trust his own mental powers with such pride as to agree only with those things which he can examine from their inner nature, and to imagine that the Church, sent by God to teach and guide all nations, is not conversant with present affairs and circumstances; or even that they must obey only in those matters which she has decreed by solemn definition as though her other decisions might be presumed to be false or putting forward insufficient motive for truth and honesty.
Quite to the contrary, a characteristic of all true followers of Christ, lettered or unlettered, is to suffer themselves to be guided and led in all things that touch upon faith or morals by the Holy Church of God through its Supreme Pastor the Roman Pontiff, who is himself guided by Jesus Christ Our Lord. - CASTI CONNUBII, ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI; https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html
...when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed ; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents ; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey – that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority ; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.
The Bishops form the most sacred part of the Church, that which instructs and governs men by divine right; and so he who resists them and stubbornly refuses to obey their word places himself outside the Church [cf. Matt. 18:18]. But obedience must not limit itself to matters which touch the faith: its sphere is much more vast: it extends to all matters which the episcopal power embraces. - (Pope Saint Pius X, Allocution Vi ringrazio to priests on the 50th anniversary of the Apostolic Union, November 18, 1912, as found at http://www.christorchaos.com/?q=content/choosing-ignore-pope-leo-xiii-and-pope-saint-pius-x
to scrutinize the actions of a bishop, to criticize them, does not belong to individual Catholics, but concerns only those who, in the sacred hierarchy, have a superior power; above all, it concerns the Supreme Pontiff, for it is to him that Christ confided the care of feeding not only all the lambs, but even the sheep [cf. John 21:17]. - Est Sane Molestum (1888) Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII; http://www.novusordowatch.org/est-sane-molestum-leo-xiii.htm
In addition, as concerns social teaching, The "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church" (2005) states:
80. In the Church’s social doctrine the Magisterium is at work in all its various components and expressions. … Insofar as it is part of the Church’s moral teaching, the Church’s social doctrine has the same dignity and authority as her moral teaching. It is authentic Magisterium, which obligates the faithful to adhere to it . - http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html
And it is quite well
evidenced that the pope's encyclical Laudato si' (http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html) is intended to teach what the Church's moral teaching demands as regards ecology and economy. (172 references in this encyclical cite church teaching and prelates for support).
Thus we either have Trad. RCs contradicting past papal teaching in dissenting from modern papal and magisterial teaching, and that Rome's interpretation of herself is to be trusted. They also disagree on whether a pope can be deposed.
But the real problem is that RC distinctive Catholic teachings are
not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, especially Acts thru Revelation. which best shows the NT church understood the OT and gospels).