For better or for worse, we Papists have a kind of metaphysical quasi-canon in Aristotle through Aquinas. The good of that (again, if any) is that we have a baseline language for talking about questions like “What is knowledge?” and “What is a thing?”
What makes these contentions all the more futile is that there is neither common language nor a shared starting point for the comparatively simple questions. As I may say too much, I'm already stymied when we ask what bread and wine are. And IMHO without some way of talking about that sort of question, we're not going to get to talking about what the change (if any) is that takes place (or not) during the Mass.
As to the differing knowledge or ability of Catholics to discuss their faith, that accords with our idea (which we venture to propose is not only Scriptural but common sense)of what the Church is, and in particular the diversity of the gifts and vocations of her many members.
Without knowing or even wanting to know the context, I found your array of questions to be interesting. Thank you.
Crazy Evangelicals (like me) point to the Aquinas phenomenon as a fellow who was finding a best approach, still imperfect, to the truth of the Lord as he was genuinely being saved as a believer. Studying his history is quite illustrative and helpful. The world would be poorer without that view into salvation. What would be wrong would be to ossify Aquinas’ recorded observations into canon. If I could myself be the best extant prophet of God on earth... I wouldn’t want my works to go into a canon either. The infallible canon’s closed... it says so at the end of the book of Revelation.
Perhaps for both better and worse, depending on who is doing the describing. And in this, there can be agreed upon wordage, but with differing conceptualization resulting using the very same words.
Thank you for your polite reply.