Beautiful arguments. But that's not really what I was asking in my first post.
My problem is that in 99.99% of situations throughout Church history when someone stepped out and said "you broke I commandment" or "the hierarchy is wrong" or "this council teaches error": they turned out to be wrong. Arius, the Eastern schismatics(Filioque) etc.: all of them presented the actual Catholic position as heresy or novelty. And they all had arguments that sounded just as clear and obvious to them as yours do to you.
So I don't really want to get into a debate about interpreting catechisms or quoting councils and popes back and forth. My question is simpler and harder: why should I trust my own (or your) judgment on this? What authority do I actually have to make that call? And since the vast majority of people who ever criticized the Church in this way (who discovered that the mainstream Church was "lying" to them) ended up outside the Church for good, why should I assume that this time it's different? That they all failed to discern correctly, but I (with no theological training) will somehow get it right?
The whole point of the shepherd and the sheep is that the sheep don't hold a vote, don't go to the library to verify the shepherd's credentials, don't tell him how to do his job. They follow.
Isn't the Church supposed to be the place where ordinary people can be comfortable - not in the sense of lazy, but in the sense of trusting? Didn't St. Ignatius say something like we should hold that white is black if the Church says so? That's a pretty high bar of trust.
I will say that the Ignatius quote gets weaponized, the hyperpapalism and ultramontanism is a 19th century historical artifact it's not synonymous with Catholicism, there is a level of healthy gallicanism and anticlericalism which was present throughout Christendom, that is, when the Pope or Bishop says some manifest nonsense, "the authority is recognized but the command is not followed".
The real issue is that a lot of the stuff is not manifest. Lots of the stuff Pope Francis said was manifestly heretical and wrong, and I think everyone will agree. But stuff like the validity of ordination rites or the see being vacant or not are obviously not manifest, even if some would like to say otherwise.
The Catechism every Spaniard learned for almost half a millenium has this phrase peppered throughout "a juicio de hombres discretos y letrados", that is "according to the judgement of wise and learned men". I think that is a very wise phrase. We are normal people with jobs and families living in strange times and, even though they may disagree on some things, if you follow people who are intelligent and have devoted their life to study and these questions and always follow your conscience above all (that is, what to your best of your knowledge you believe to be true and the will of God), then nor God nor any honest man can blame you.
Topic: Since when does being Catholic require a canon law/theology/history degree? (Read 59674 times)