There is both an invisible Church and a visible Church. The visible Church is whom St. Paul addressed his epistles to.
If you think the visible Church is something else than the Catholic Church.. Well I’m not going to follow you there. It surely isn’t the Baptist Church of Dallas.
No one I know of ever tried making the claim that the "visible" church was singularly (and only?) a Baptist church in Dallas. If they did, I'd have a bone to pick with them over that.
So--- take the strawman arguments like that -- and shove them.
Your own church doesn't (from more official levels) cut off all others as much as Romanists often resort to doing [rhetorically] here on the pages of FreeRepublic.
Meanwhile...all the evidence is stacked up against the claim that the church of Rome (and any affiliate in it's thrall) is the "one true church". That is just so much Romanist fantasy which God would possibly laugh at, if the implications of that sort of thinking were not so grievous (AS HISTORY HAS SHOWN IT TO BE).
Without the Reformation --- the RCC would have been entirely lost. It is only to the extent which it has conformed itself to the intended return of the original charter of Christ's own Church that the ecclesiastical bodies which comprise the RCC today can even call itself a part of that church.
But "they" don't do that, now do they? They do not declare themselves to be "a part of" what the Lord intended as to how church should function -- but instead, at their very most generous moments towards all others, like to refer to themselves/itself as being the center of everything (Christian), the end all to beat all... go the various claims.
Given it's decidedly mixed...and upon occasion MOST FOUL self-history...if that was God's own best intents towards mankind, then God could be fairly enough seen as capricious & duplicitous.
I thank God He has drawn me towards Himself using channels other than those defined and claimed by the church of Rome, as singularly, exclusively their own, but instead or more as Himself making good upon what is promised in the scriptures, concerning how He may be known.
God is good in that way. Good enough for me.
If I had never learned a thing about Roman Catholicism, or had to contend with it's various adherents (who do not all agree with one another on all that is said must be agreed to, etc.,) my own relationship with Him would be much simpler. Easier, even. But for the sins of man...I must suffer also. It's the nature of the beast of this world we all live in...
It could be worse, I suppose. I could have been born at another time and place(?) or be made to suffer needlessly at the hands of those who claim authority for themselves in His name, rather than just be irritated with the ceaseless blathering on of Romanist fantasies (which can vary dependent upon which Romanist is doing the asserting --about what)
If those of the church of Rome would but read Paul's Epistle to the Romans and understand it -- then compare that to a few [ahem] doctrinal developments which have arisen since that writing --- they would be shocked into shutting their pie-holes (out of which flows all sorts of distortion and wickedness engaged in, in the name of God) and repent. After which they would need further challenge or reform their own church from within (ha! good luck with that) or need leave and join an Orthodox, a Lutheran, or possibly Orthodox Presbyterian, even some humble and lowly "Baptist" or Methodist, or Pentecostal congregation.
BUT --- Romanists obviously do not understand the Epistles to the Romans.
Try Chapter 7
How do you KNOW?
Because the Catholic church says so? It claims it for itself?
Christ said He would build His church. He never gave a name to it and claiming that it is the Roman Catholic church retroactively with nothing to support it, is a power grab, plain and simple.
And those epistles were addressed to besides Rome were Philippi, Colossae, Ephesus, Galatia, Thessalonica, Corinth, and people like Timothy, Titus and Philemon.
Additionally, in the book of Revelation, there is zero mention of Rome by Jesus to John.