I appreciate the general tone of your post. However, I don’t agree with your statement - one we hear quite often from Roman Catholics - that the RCC is the “root,” and non-RCC Christians are but offshoots. The RCC is a syncretism of non-Christian elements mixed with Christian elements, it does not represent original Christianity.
True, people like Luther at first had hope that he might bring reform to the RCC, but he began to realize that the RCC had prostituted the truth. In other words, the RCC had become to Christianity what semi-pagan Judaism was in the OT, a syncretism of Judaism with paganistic thought, a whoredom if you please - which is precisely the term the prophets used for it. Spiritual adultery.
True Protestants pay hardly any attention to the claims of the RCC. They go on back past the RCC, back to the original Apostolic Biblical faith.
I myself am not RC, and have my own theological differences with them, but I also don’t wish to beat them about the ears. As a matter of fact, I reject their claim to be the original/true Church, but they’d say the same thing about me. We just agree to disagree and keep peaceful discussion. That’s all.
Well, it’s getting late here, and we lose an hour on top of that. So this will be my last.
Peter was a chief spokesman for the Apostles (not a Pope). And it was he whom God entrusted to set things right. Which he surely did at the very beginning of Christianity, on the day of Pentecost. No one can improve on Peter’s sermon on that day. It had far reaching consequences.
And what did he preach? He preached the gospel, Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. His hearers were pricked in their heart, the text says (Acts 2). However, Peter didn’t leave them with just pricked heart religion (common among Protestants). Having a pricked heart is good, believing the gospel is good, but Peter’s next words are the obedience of the gospel, which Paul would later refer to as “the obedience of faith.”
In answer to their inquiry, “men and brethren what shall we do,” Peter said...
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
He was sounding the keynote for all Christianity, Protestant or RCC. Here are the real keys of the kingdom.