I think there’s a lot of truth in what you say, however, I still disagree, and here’s why.
My husband and I did NOT want to see Catholicism in the Bible!!!
Oh, my no! Ai yi yi! CATHOLIC? US?!! No way!
After we were thrown out of our Protestant church, we prayed that God would lead us to a church where people were really serious about God and were teaching the Bible.
Two years later, after being part of a Catholic apologetics class in the parish nearest us (the class was taught by a professor and former pastor of one of the evangelical Protestant churches that we had attended! He and his wife had converted to Catholicism.), my husband and I realized as we were driving home that God had answered our prayer and led us to the Catholic Church.
And you know what we told God?
“NO! God, we didn’t mean the Catholic Church! We meant a 'real Christian church! C’mon, joke’s over! Now lead us to a real church, a Protestant church!”
2nd Adam, we fought like cats to remain Protestant!! Turning Catholic meant giving up everything. If you know anything about evangelicalism, you know that it’s an entire lifestyle. ALL of our friends, except for our skating rink friends, were in our church. We didn’t drink, go to clubs, dance, etc. --we were total misfits in the Catholic Church because of our evangelical upbringing.
We were afraid that if we became Catholic, we would lose all our Protestant friends (which kind of happened), and we wouldn’t have any Catholic friends (which is kinda sorta the case–the drinking thing really does get in the way of forming close friendships).
I’ve often said on these forums that when we were Protestant, my husband and I were either at church or involved in a church ministry at least 5-6 days/evenings a week. Our whole life was church–our reason for living was to fulfil the Great Commission and tell the world about Jesus Christ.
To become Catholic meant starting a whole new life, and that’was extremely scary, terrifying. We didn’t know how to “be” Catholic!
In fact, one reason I wrote my children’s novels was to create devout Catholic characters (the Officer and the skating coach) who live their faith in their everyday life. It gave me a chance to “practice” being Catholic, and helped me to see what it would feel like to “put on Catholic clothes,” figuratively speaking.
Add to everything else the scorn and shock of our relatives, including our two daughters. (Since then, our oldest daughter has also converted to Catholicism, and our younger daughter and her husband have expressed interest, but both of them are very distrusting of any church. My husband and I are their “church.” And amazingly, my parents-in-law have softened towards the Catholic Church and have attended Mass with us.)
Anyway, we worked very hard to find errors and flaws in the Catholic Church theology and practices. We did NOT want any part of Catholicism at all, and fought hard to stay Protestant. I’ve never read so much Bible in my life, and I’ve read a lot of Bible! I had my Heidelberg Catechism out and was reading like crazy all the “proofs” that “Romanism” was wrong! I also got out all my favorite Protestant apologetics books and re-read them, looking for proofs that my husband and I had fallen into a pagan, non-Christian church. I even read through the old Jack T. Chick comics (I have a complete collection!).
I think a lot of Protestants who are considering Catholicism have more to lose than we did. After all, we were not pastors or missionaries, but had secular jobs. Those who make their living in the evangelical churches give up everything we gave up, but also give up their livelihoods. That’s tough.
At any rate, I think that Protestants, especially evangelicals, who are comparing the Catholic Church to the Bible will look extremely hard to prove that Catholicism is wrong, not the other way around.
I’ve read some of those books too.