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The apostate churches reject the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture.

Odd. I thought all Protestant denominations, including the apostate ones, claim they believe in the authority of Scripture. It's everybody else's denomination that doesn't understand Scripture, right?

The basis for the 16th Century Protestant-Catholic split was the primacy of the Magisterium vs. that of Scripture alone.

I think you have that backwards. Primacy of Scripture was put forward as an alternate to the Magesterium to justify the split. It was not the basis, but the rationale.

the fallacy of some Catholics in blaming the Reformation for secular humanism

The Rationalist school of thought was in opposition to the Church. To that extent, they found common cause with the Protestants. Protestants supported Rationalists because they stood against the Church. It's no accident that Protestant fundamentals have served the Rationalists, and by extension liberal notions of the collective, well.

unite and rule

Agreed. Come on in! The water's just fine. ;-)

The apostate churches are no more Protestant than the Polish National Catholic Church, the Liberal Catholic Church, or the Celtic Catholic Church are Catholic. For instance, the Auburn Affirmation of 1924, which was a statement of the liberal wing of the Northern Presbyterian Church, the signers denied the truth of Holy Scripture, the factuality of the Virgin Birth of Christ, His miracles, His sacrifice on Calvary to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to Christ, and His resurrection as essential doctrines of the Christian faith. All of these doctrines are Biblical and are affirmed in the early church creeds and in the confessions and statements of faith of the Reformation era. By holding to these positions, liberal theology ceases being either Protestant or Christian. Liberal theology is simply another religion, dressed up in the backward collars and Murphy robes of the old Protestant denominations. Shelby Spong is no more an heir to Luther and Calvin than Sinead O'Connor, an ordained priestess in something called the Celtic Catholic Church, is an heir to Aquinas, the Council of Trent, or Cardinal Newman.

The Reformers were clear in their assertion that reliance on Scripture only was their reason for departing from Rome. The argument that Luther made before Charles V at the Diet of Worms when the emperor asked him how he could go against 15 centuries of Church teaching regarding sola fide was that the teaching of the church was contradictory but that of the Bible was fixed. Calvin stated in Chapter 7 of The Institutes of the Christian Religion that "the Scriptures are the only records in which God has been pleased to consign his truth to perpetual remembrance." While the Anglican Church was initially established for political purposes and was schismatic and not heretical (from a Catholic standpoint) at its beginning, the influence of Archbishop Cranmer and others moved the church in a Protestant direction during the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I. The paramount importance of the Magisterium vs. Sola Scriptura moved the Council of Trent to anthematize those who held to the latter doctrine. The Reformers' assertion of the Bible only as the source of faith and doctrine was the springboard for their split.

You are correct in your statement that Protestants have aligned with rationalists, or more particularly, secular humanists. Universal state-run education (where the secular humanists suckered Protestants into believing that public schools would be entirely under local control) and the statism of the Progressive Era (income taxes, direct election of Senators, the Federal Reserve, Federal regulation of commerce were not opposed by conservative Protestants in exchange for Progessive support of Prohibition) were direct results of this unfortunate collusion.

However, the results of political activism by Catholics in the same time period was also deplorable. The big city political machines, such as those run by the Pendergasts in Kansas City, Curley in Boston, and Tammany Hall in New York, were riddled with corruption. These big city Democratic political machines, which were mostly run by Irish Catholics, essentially created mini-welfare states. They were a model that Franklin Roosevelt used for his New Deal programs.

Neither Protestants nor Catholics were friends of limited government or individual liberty, by and large, from the late 19th Century forward. However, it appears evangelical Protestants have come to their senses more quickly. We need only to contrast the predominantly Protestant South and its more conservative politics with that of the Northeast, which is simultaneously both the most liberal and the most Catholic region of the nation.