Are you admitting to being poorly catechized?
I have been meaning to get back to your post, but didn’t have time to for a few days so it ended up getting pushed to the side for a bit.
No, those who believe in some form of sola scriptura don’t hate the Catholic Church, and that’s not where the criticisms of it come from. I came to know and understand the Bible first and was neutral about RCC teaching then. But as time went on I came to see more and more how it was in error. And those conclusions weren’t arrived at in knee-jerk reaction, superficially, but in serious consideration and humility, with the thought that the intial appearance of error doesn’t mean there’s error. It takes a lot of examination to reach those conclusions. Seeking to discern what’s true according to God is not in any way a light matter.
One thing about Catholic apologetics is that when both ordinary Catholics and so many of the clergy do it, they tend to not mention that sources like a Catholic encyclopedia (for example, newadvent.org) will say that there isn’t conclusive proof from the Bible for a Catholic teaching. Yet, Catholics will so very often argue just that sort of thing, that by Scripture alone, even independent of Catholic tradition, the Catholic teaching is proven true. But in actuality, they are attempting to use Scripture and Catholic tradition to prove Catholic tradition’s interpretation of Scripture. Not the same thing. That’s actually saying that Catholic tradition teaches something, and you can also make a case for it from the Bible, so therefore Scripture itself says Catholic teaching is correct.
But this thinking, so common in Catholic apologetics, violates proper logic. Proper logic goes:
All bassett hounds are dogs.
Spot is a bassett hound.
Therefore, Spot is a dog.
But this is very often Catholic reasoning on things:
All dogs are beagles.
Spot is a dog.
Therefore, Spot is a beagle!
Spot could be a beagle, because he’s a dog, but it’s a logical possibility, not a certainty, from that information. Yet Catholics will argue that because the Catholic Church says he’s a beagle, and the Bible indicates that it’s talking about a type of hound, and a beagle is a hound, that the Bible therefore proves he’s a beagle. That’s backward. The real questions that need to be answered are how the tradition truly formed, so that it can be shown to have been a faithful belief when it was, and if it is in accordance with Scripture. Much of doctrine can be implied, according to sola scriptura beliefs, but some measure of implication doesn’t make any old interpretation true.
The Bible tends to teach many of the same lessons over and over, often with new little points made here and there, and then even demonstrating how different lessons relate to each other. If you take a passage or even a few, and come up with an implied interpretation from them, it shouldn’t directly contradict major lessons from the Bible. Nor should an implied interpretation teach things that go beyond what the Bible has revealed.
That’s the case in Revelation 12. You will admit other possible meanings for the woman, but they’re actually trivial as the one and only interpretation that matters is that it’s Mary, to Catholic thinking. But although it is indeed reminiscent of her, again, other things about it don’t fit. And much is a deliberate mystery left by the Lord. I wholeheartedly believe He means it to be something that we partly but cannot fully grasp here. This “woman,” if she really is an actual woman, was apparently with child before Satan drew the fallen angels out of Heaven, and she appeared in Heaven and then later was on earth.
Really, though, the problem in discussing these things with many Catholics, to put the logic and sola scriptura issues another way, is that they look at it all through confirmation bias, so for the most part they simply can’t see the issues at hand, and the different implications of those issues that are involved. Rather than truly investigating in an impartial sense the claims of the Catholic Church, including on how doctrine was created, many Catholics go looking at the evidence merely to defend Catholicism. No true investigation is going on.
So, if that’s the case, the matters involved in Revelation 12 just can’t be grasped when such Catholic thinking is used. I see Revelation 12, and Revelation on the whole, as revealing a lot of things, but they’re wrapped in mysteries. Many answers are given, but maybe just as many questions are raised. And for now, that clearly seems to me what God’s will is for us, in how much we are to know. The grappling with what different things mean, without being able to come to definite conclusions, though, is good for us spiritually. It causes us to study and dwell on what different things might mean.
Then, for another example, if you take the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it didn’t really come along until relatively recently, and then it was optional at first, as some supported and some opposed it, and then it became a mandatory belief. If you read the Bible, and consider the very low priority given to the matter at the Church’s beginning, versus all that we can see that they gave high priority to, then just by that the whole issue must be seen as a distraction, something to pull the attention of Christians away from far more important matters.
On implied doctrine, then, what should be considered is how something is implied. Is the Trinity just something barely mentioned one time, that Scripture is inconclusive about? No, over and over again, with support from the Old Testament, too, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are clearly described. The Trinity is never identified and defined, but it clearly demonstrated for us. And, considering how much the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are spoken of in Scripture (they are virtually the entire focus of the New Testament, in one way, while in another mankind and Satan may also of course be considered as very important in the New Testament, too), then it is no far reach to accept the Trinity. It’s clearly there, and undeniably of the greatest importance. It’s also an implication that arises by itself, out of Scripture.