NOT SO. I can easily grant that was the purpose once upon a time. It has failed miserably repeatedly over the centuries. History is full of such examples. It failed. Many's organizations and systems can ONLY FAIL. It is their nature.
Christ did not send us an organization to dwell within us but HIS SPIRIT. And He did not send us an organization to dwell with--BUT HIMSELF ALONE are we to dwell within AS THE TABERNACLES with us, in us.
Were I to judge the organization according to the criteria mentioned in the above post . . . I would have to flunk it utterly. It has failed far more centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days than it has succeeded. I'm skeptical that it has succeeded since BEFORE IT'S FOUNDING.
Had it succeeded, we'd see more congruence between it and Scripture as well as between it and the predicted Scriptural results of walking intimately with Christ. We see neither. For many decades and centuries we observed THE OPPOSITE.
According to the criteria listed, the leaders and whole organization need to be fired and replaced wholesale. They have repeatedly failed and failed utterly.
That is partly why so many millions of former Romans in South America are leaving the Roman group in droves and joining Charismatic groups WHERE THE OBVIOUS AND REDEMPTIVE POWER OF GOD IS ROUTINELY DEMONSTRATED--and more miraculously, where a much higher percentage of folks are truly walking in Christ's Love to a much greater degree.
. . .
One does not have to choose between trusting the Magisterium and trusting the Word of God.
WRONG.
FOR THAT TO BE TRUE, they would have to be essentially identical. They are not. They have not been near identical since well before the founding of the organization.
And, when ANYTHING DIFFERS from THE WORD OF GOD, guess which I shall always, hopefully, choose! Otherwise does NOT help in life and certainly does NOT help deepen one's life IN GOD.
Only by trusting the Magisterium can we trust that we have the Word of God. The two necessarily go together.
WRONG.
NO INTERLOPPER CAN SUCCESSFULLY HORN IN ON THE PRIORITY OF GOD'S WORD. Nothing. What arrogance for any organization and/or group of individuals to PRESUME so. Talk about the mother of all presumptions!
CHRIST IS THE LIVING WORD, for sure. His Indwelling Spirit is to lead each individual into all truth . . . more or less without any destructive meddling by ANYONE OR ANYTHING ELSE.
GOD IS NOT THE LEAST BIT INTERESTED in having an organization between HIM AND ANY INDIVIDUAL in the SPIRITUAL MARITAL BED. Hint. God is not an idiot.
BTW, I consider the founding of the Roman organization to have been some 100-300 years or so--probably the 300 mark--AFTER CHRIST, PAUL and the lot of them. Nothing else is historically accurate, to me.
Man's systems and organizations can only fail
not Many's . . . Many got cement shoes in Chicago and dumped in the lake.
Assertions do not make it so. Please name one false Catholic dogma. Just one. (We already tried this with your claim that the Catholic Church had flipflopped on dogma, and you couldn't come up with a single example.)
-A8