The one true Church stuff doesn't mean that some individuals are more equal than others any more than saying that the best way to deal with pneumonia is this or that anti-biotic means that people who got recovered fromppneumponia before anti-biotics were less equal than I. I'm just grateful for the anti-biotics,and wish everybody had the access to them that I did when I had pneumonia.
I guess the matter of scripted liturgy is another issue. I personally have ALWAYS, even before I was a Catholic, preferred scripted worship to un-scripted. As an Episcopal priest I wanted very much to avoid inflicting my own notions on the people entursted to my care. As a lay Catholic, I resent the heck out of the priests who think their own individual notions are so much better than those of the Church that they re-write the prayers and change the ceremonial to suit themselves.
I'm getting the idea that ecclesiology (and sacraments) is/are where the big difference between us is. IMHO the Church, from the Qahal Adonai up to the ecclesia, is a BIG notion. I'd venture to say that the part of I Cor where Paul is most expansive about the Holy Spirit is where he is also most discursive about the corporate church. And I think it is good askesis to gaze upon Old Widow Busybody and to remember that she is as much a part of the Body as wonderful I am.
I suppose if I ever get some free-time it would be good to do a word study on ecclesia in the NT. And this is because certainly the Gospel has a very strong element of the individual's relationship with God. So the dicing and slicing and whatnot will be demanding and interesting.
I think you’re right about our main area of disagreement. Another area I forgot to mention before, but remember now that I look at your tagline, is some of the doctrine that the church has come up with that’s really pretty far removed from anything contained in Scripture. Every denomination does that to an extent, but in Catholicism, it’s at a whole other level. Thus, another layer between us and God’s inspired Word.
Ultimately, though, I don’t think there’s as much disagreement as at first it may have seemed. Still, I do think there’s some rhetorical dancing going on — as I’m sure anyone who went through div comps had to get good at :) I mean, look: in Catholicism, church-appointed people make a lot of rules and establish a lot of forms that don’t come directly (and I mean directly) from Scripture. Therefore, the human institution is tightly structuring people’s relationship with God. To me, that’s mediation. Maybe the issue is definitional; to you, perhaps, human structures don’t = mediation.