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maybe even more comprehendingly than a thoughtful Protestant.

Without the Holy Spirit as Teacher, you are only reading words. It is the Holy Spirit that brings life and Truth. Carnal minds cannot understand/know the things of God.

I've been on both sides. Once I heard the truth back then, I knew immediately it was right. Looking back, I realized I never went through an angrument phase and I believe it's because I didn't have my defenses up - I was, merely, listening and I was no light weight Catholic by any means.

We all have different experiences on our coming to The Truth tailored made for us. However, it doesn't happen automatically because God wants it to happen - we have our part to do. As we know He wants ALL saved, that NONE perish - we are, also, told also that will not happened.

Matt 7:13,14 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

God wants ALL, Jesus died for ALL and only a FEW find it. What happened? Free will, lack of knowledge, resisting Truth are some reasons. Those of the mindset that says God's Will just comes to pass - whatever, He wants, He gets, after all He is God - are wrong! That's dictatorship. God is ALL Love, He's not a controlling God. WE must want HIM with ALL our heart, mind, soul. He gave ALL, we must give ALL. How many do that? We are told...ONLY A FEW. Not good news. And everyone thinks they are in the FEW.

We find Truth, when we seek. Not a church doing it for us - WE are to seek HIM. That's the way God designed it. He wants us as individuals to have a personal relationship with HIM. We are married to Jesus/TheBridegroom not a church - His Church are individual members of His Body. God's Word says we cannot have two masters for we will love one and hate the other. It's like having 2 children and going to one child to find out about the other child. But it's really like have two spouses - being married to one (Jesus) but giving the other spouse the say so, the direction on how to conduct that marriage, what's important to the other spouse, when you are and how you are to celebrate the other spouse on what they think.

Yet we are told.. "'Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your strength and with ALL your mind'.

ALL doesn't leave ANY room for anyone/thing in that marriage. It's all about Jesus. Unless one's marriage is rocky and we don't feel close enough to Jesus to heal it, one invites in a marriage counselor and gives them 'reign' over their marriage. How long will that marriage last - it wouldn't, it can't - as much as we think being religious (appearance sake) keeps it alive.

God uses pastors, ministers for order in a particular community of believers and they should be in FULL compliance with God's Word and not have their own set of beliefs in anyway shape or form. And that has not happened in the RCC as we well know.

I do not disagree about the Spirit's role in imparting right interpretation.

HOWEVER, there is a peril. If we disagree about the Bible, instead of wasting time going over this and that text, why don't we just cut to the chase and say, each to the other, "Well, you are carnally minded."

End of discussion. And they call MOI divisive!

On the flip side, we do not teach adult converts some doctrines in full until after their Baptism. It's called "Mystagogy." The notion is, kind of, that there's no point in talaking about the Trinity and, for example, some parts of Christ's "high priestly prayer" in John's gospel before one is certainly granted some fruits of the Spirit, which granting we think tales place in Baptism, however long it takes that gift to come to the surface.

However, my point, which seems to have driven at least one person away, is that driving people away through needlessly pugnacious rhetoric is simple not consistent with all that Paul said about his ministry. Sure we all know that Jesus, Peter, and Paul were sometimes confrontative. We also know that they weren't always confrontative.