You'd best be careful there, Chip. Scripture is certainly vitally important. But it is possible to become so focused on Scripture, that you forget what Scripture says is important: loving God and your neighbor.
As Jesus put it, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)
This passage (and the context within which it is found) point out the danger of your position. Jesus is not Scripture. Scripture is not Jesus. Scripture helps us come to Jesus -- but it does not give us life. To have life, we must love God, and thus be known by God. We are to love one another as He loved us. That's the important stuff.
You're basically using selected Scriptural passages as a bludgeon to to tear down other Christians. And in so doing you seem to have lost the point of what Jesus taught, in very much the same way that the Pharisees did.
As it happens, there are a number of elements of Catholic doctrine with which I disagree. I'm not a Catholic. But it just so happens that we agree on the really important stuff: salvation through Jesus Christ, faith in God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, belief that the Scriptures are the word of God -- and so everything else is distinctly secondary.
The Catholics on this thread recognize this, too. Unfortunately, you and your friends are so focused on the cosmetic differences, that you seem to have missed the fact that you, too, agree with them on the important stuff.
By focusing on the differences, and by being remarkably unpleasant about it, your clique ends up doing a great deal of damage to the Body of Christ. You need to wise up, and get over yourselves.
But how would you know that if you did not have the Scriptures to tell you that??? And when Scripture says "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart", the God you are supposed to love is the God who gave us the Scriptures, right????
As Jesus put it, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)
Jesus is telling them and you that He is the God of the Scriptures. You cannot have the one without the other. Read the verses before that:
"And the Father himself who has sent me, has borne witness of me. You have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his shape, and you have not His word abiding in you, for whom he has sent, him you do not believe." [John 5:37-38]
How does anyone claim with an honest heart that they love the God revealed in the Holy Scriptures, while at the same time trying to minimize those same Holy Scriptures of that God. It's a package deal. One cannot love God without also loving the Scriptures that He gave us.
Since you keep repeating this over and over and over, please back up your assertions by telling us some of the "elements of Catholic doctrine" you "disagree" with.
And because you're very quick with criticism, and because you continually tell us you "are not a Catholic," please enlighten us as to what faith you practice or what church you belong to.
cosmetic differences
I've never met a Protestant who believed the differences between Bible-believing Christians and the RCC were "cosmetic."
Far from it.