The Quadrality

[davidv]

Um yes, when you make the sign of the cross you are invoking the **trinity **who is God. Little did you know, you have been actually invoking the quadrality! Four motions, four persons, one substance.

How can trinity (see your first sentence) be a quadrality? The illogic of equating these two is astounding.

Why don’t you go ahead and flesh out precisely why my assertions are baseless and highlight some of my errors in logic. Careful though, you could be hoist by your own petard if your arguments can be used against other Catholic teachings.

Why the mockery? Is this the next to last retort in a failing argument? When will the name calling begin?

It has already been shown the Trinity cannot be a Quadrality any more than a triangle can be a rectangle. It is a logical contradiction, not a development.

It doesn’t it implies human.

Nor does it imply divinity.

Mary and Jesus are both 100% human and also 100% divine. It’s very convenient for explaining various difficulties.

Many convenient things are wrong.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

Lack of evidence does not mean lack of truth?
Well the catholic church states all public revelation is from Jesus birth to the last Apostles death.
Therefore anything not in public revelation is Not catholic teaching.

Back up your view with a quote from Canon Law or the Catechism

The Pope put his apostolic authority on the catechism.as the rules and teachings and laws for all Catholics.
If it is not in the Catechism it is not in catholic teaching.
Anyone thinking and acting against the catechism.is in an automatic state of excommunication. Another church teaching
So if you cannot back up your allegations in the Catechism you are possibly under an automatic excommunication for.heresy.

Please provide us with a website to the Vatican giving us an actual quote of the Pope saying “Mary is God.”

Pope John Paul Ii followed the writings of St Louis De Montfort, and lived them in his motto “Totus tuus”
St Louis De Montfort wrote: we don’t worship Mary, Mary is not God, Mary is his greatest Saint, and has special titles and virtues and was given much grace by God, but God alone is the source of all grace, all Mary can do is pray for us, God is the one who gives grace and answers our prayers. To worship Mary would be a mortal sin.

Therefore according to a Saint who had apparitions of Our Lady, whom the Pope followed his writings, Mary is not God.
According to scripture Mary is not God.
According to public revelation Mary is not God.
According to all the saints (who were often given teachings that the Popes later made into dogmas) Mary is not God.
Pope Francis has not one quote officially saying “Mary is God.”

You are very wrong and teaching heresy my friend.

The catechism says anyone going against catholic teaching is in am automatic state of excommunication.
You need to talk to a Priest about this and follow His advice.

Look, calm down. I don’t believe a lick of this, and I’m not Catholic. I don’t think one single thing I’ve said is true, don’t worry. This entire thread is a thought experiment, a test.

Are you able to demolish this false teaching without using tools that can be turned against teachings the Catholic Church actually believes?

I don’t think so, based on my experience so far. We’ll see…

 

[PumpkinCookie]

You just proved my point. Mary’s Immaculate Conception is based in the reality that Mary needed a savior, and was saved at the moment of conception. The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception precludes your assessment/conclusion about what the angel meant when he said “full of grace”. You just contradicted an existing Dogma, or had to misrepresent it to make it fit your explanation.

More to the point, though: Gabriel didn’t say “full of grace”, he said “kecharitomene” (as recorded in the original Greek of the text). St Jerome just used the phrase “gratia plena” as the way to translate a (really difficult to translate) Greek participle into Latin.

The word “kecharitomene” means ‘one who has been given grace (and in whom the grace endures to the present, and is expected to continue enduring)’. Pumpkin’s analysis holds – but unfortunately, to the detriment of the argument being made: only a deity is 100% grace; Mary is not 100% grace – she is a human who had been graced (passive voice). She (as a human) had been graced by a being who is grace itself – God. Good job, Pumpkin – your own analysis proves your assertion wrong!

In the same mysterious way that Mary gives life to the author of life, the author of life gives Mary grace. Mary’s human nature has been “graced” in the passive voice, just as Jesus’ human nature mysteriously came into existence though his divine nature as always existed, though they are inseparable.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

How can trinity (see your first sentence) be a quadrality? The illogic of equating these two is astounding.

How can a singularity be a plurality? The illogic of equating these two is astounding.

Why the mockery? Is this the next to last retort in a failing argument? When will the name calling begin?

Please don’t take this personally. I am not trying to mock any of you as human beings. You all deserve absolute respect. I am mocking a certain set of ideas that I think are false. The mockery exposes the issues in a new way, it gets us out of the rut of rehearsed answers and ho-hum apologetic arguments.

Yes, my arguments are failing, hard. They are ridiculous and illogical. They commit all kinds of errors: but they are the same arguments offered by Christian/Catholic apologists applied to a foreign situation. These arguments fail so hard when they are taken out of the power structure and rehearsed dialogue of Christianity. Do you see why I think that is a problem?

It has already been shown the Trinity cannot be a Quadrality any more than a triangle can be a rectangle. It is a logical contradiction, not a development.

Nor does it imply divinity.

Many convenient things are wrong.

It has already been shown that the One God cannot be a trinity any more than a triangle can be a single point. It is a logical contradiction, not a development.

Nor does it imply divinity.

Many convenient things are wrong.

 

[davidv]

{snip}
It has already been shown that the One God cannot be a trinity any more than a triangle can be a single point.

Where has this been shown? Certainly not in this thread.

{snip}

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The obvious symbol for your new quadrality sect is a square, and I very much hope you call it The Quadratics

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I do plan on taking a trip to Ireland and using the four-leaf clover to teach the truth of Quadrality

 

[JuanFlorencio]

OK fair enough, it is totally circular. That’s the answer I expected.

Each time a pope declares some or such other human being to be a saint, I consider it to be the proclamation of a truth that no one can actually verify. Catholics are required to believe that all the people declared to be saints are actually in heaven with God because they were heroically virtuous. We don’t even have good records for the existence of many of the “saints” but Catholics are required to believe the pope is infallible in his declaration of their sainthood. What do you count as a new doctrine?

If one counts everything added or subtracted from second temple Judasim, the church has added thousands of doctrines and dogmas, seemingly without limit! The Marian dogmas are particularly outrageous to many people because they were defined thousands of years after the fact with a documented and long history of dissent within the church among fathers, doctors, and other saints. The doctrine of papal infallibility itself was controversial within the church, though the church maintains that the faith was “whole and entire from the time of the apostles.” In fact, we have documentary evidence of catechisms being produced in England, France, and the Netherlands by bishops explicitly declaring that papal infallibility is not true (before the declaration).

What I’m doing here is introducing another outrageous dogma thousands of years after the fact while using the same apologetic arguments that prop-up the marian dogmas, infallibility, transubstantiation, the primacy of the pope, formal declarations of sainthood, etc.

The funny part is that the posters on this thread are using protestant arguments to tear this down. Suddenly everyone is sola scriptura and isn’t willing to accept the lack of evidence of negation as being evidence of support! Odd…

I don’t count the canonization of a saint as the introduction of a new doctrine. I am sure you don’t count every acceleration of a body as a new physical law. Well, I am not so sure right now: do you think that when one declares that a body suffers acceleration he is introducing a new physical law?

Knowing about a saint whom I didn’t know before, always makes me happy. I wonder why the canonization of a saint or, in general, a catholic dogmatic declaration makes you mad? To request verifiability for every statement that is proposed to you seems to me so naive… Don’t you realize yet how you live?

 

[JuanFlorencio]

How can a singularity be a plurality? The illogic of equating these two is astounding.

Please don’t take this personally. I am not trying to mock any of you as human beings. You all deserve absolute respect. I am mocking a certain set of ideas that I think are false. The mockery exposes the issues in a new way, it gets us out of the rut of rehearsed answers and ho-hum apologetic arguments.

Yes, my arguments are failing, hard. They are ridiculous and illogical. They commit all kinds of errors: but they are the same arguments offered by Christian/Catholic apologists applied to a foreign situation. These arguments fail so hard when they are taken out of the power structure and rehearsed dialogue of Christianity. Do you see why I think that is a problem?

It has already been shown that the One God cannot be a trinity any more than a triangle can be a single point. It is a logical contradiction, not a development.

Nor does it imply divinity.

Many convenient things are wrong.

I have to say that there is one thing which surprises me in your thread: People is responding to your “theoretical example” even though from the beginning you have been practically explicitly saying that you will make fun of catholic dogma and apologetic methods. Obviously you will use whatever is said by anyone here to fulfill your objective. You don’t need to be too smart to do it. You just need to be hateful.

I am asking you to stop your thread. It will be difficult for you not to be hateful, but I have seen that you can sometimes make intelligent remarks (not always, but sometimes). I think that even for you it would be advantageous to exercise your intellect instead of feeding your hatefulness.

 

[JerryZ]

How can a singularity be a plurality? The illogic of equating these two is astounding.

It has already been shown that the One God cannot be a trinity any more than a triangle can be a single point. It is a logical contradiction, not a development.

Nor does it imply divinity.

Many convenient things are wrong.

The problem of your assertion is that it flies in the face of Jesus own and precise words.
Of course to you that is a moot point since you don’t actually believe in Jesus Christ.

It is a pity Have a blessed 2016 or do you go by the Jewish calendar too?

…

 

[Gorgias]

The “at least” is implicit. The reason the early church didn’t formally define the quadrality right from the beginning is because they all believed it and there was no controversy (just like the trinity/papal infallibility/the eucharist/tons of other stuff).

I understand that you think you’ve exposed a weakness in the formulation of existing Catholic doctrine, but you really haven’t.

In each of these examples you’ve brought to our attention, the Church has been able not only to assert these things, but also demonstrate that they are true. You, on the other hand, are asserting things that are unable to be demonstrated. Your whole thought experiment, therefore, boils down to the proposition “what if I could show you a four-sided triangle? Would you then agree that a triangle can be a square?” In other words, the answer to your proposition is “you cannot demonstrate what you propose; therefore, the answer is ‘no’.”

Most Holy? Mother of God? Queen of Heaven? Mother of Divine Grace? Cause of Our Salvation? Seat of Wisdom? Immaculate? These are all divine titles. We just haven’t become conscious of it until the pope formally declared it.

And yet, that’s precisely at odds with what you’re lampooning. No, the Church wasn’t unconscious of Mary’s singular experience until it was formally declared. No, the Church wasn’t unconscious of the Trinity until it was formally declared. Each of these was known but not formally defined. What you’re proposing is that something that is unknown – that is, that is known to be untrue – might be formally declared. That’s a horse of different color…

No no, of course not! Motherhood and fatherhood cannot be extricated from one another

In the physical realm, with respect to humanity? Of course it cannot. In the spiritual realm, where there is no body, and no reproduction? Yes, they can. As humans, our relationships as parents and children echo truths of God’s nature, but are not identical to it. If we make the mistake of presuming that our ‘parenthood’ is exactly like God’s, or our ‘sonship’ is exactly like God’s, then we misunderstand the difference between God and man. Read up on your Aquinas; his discussion on analogy (equivocal/univocal/analogical) will help you understand the deficiency in this argument you’re making.

Does evidence trump an infallible statement of the pope?

You’d have to show an example of this in order to assert it as a claim, wouldn’t you?

 

[PumpkinCookie]

What you’re proposing is that something that is unknown – that is, that is known to be untrue – might be formally declared. That’s a horse of different color…

A thing that is unknown is not the same as a thing known to be false. Nowhere in the Old Testament does it stipulate that the Messiah (Moschiach) would be a divine person or that God is a trinity, or that the Messiah would found a new religious organization based in Rome, or that…well basically most of it! All of those things were “unknowns.” That doesn’t mean that they were things known to be false right?

Nowhere in the New Testament does it definitely declare that Mary was sinless, or a perpetual virgin, that God is a trinity, that the elements of communion change substance, or many other things. If it did, the history of Christianity wouldn’t have been such a bloody and contentious battle over the essential doctrines of the faith right? I mean, millions of protestants are reading an essentially similar text and coming to wildly divergent conclusions. Is that a characteristic of a clear and unambiguous text?

How to reconcile this while maintaining that the true Catholic faith existed whole and entire since the time of the apostles? Well, it seems you have to resort to the argument that a group of people can have a religious belief of which they are unconscious temporarily. Therefore, I do not think it would be so far-fetched to have a belief like the quadrality defended by the same means.

Several people have already admitted that if a pope declared it to be so, it would be so. Therefore, my suspicion that Catholic beliefs are based on a circular reasoning or pure religious authority seems to be demonstrated. It goes like this:

Church teaching is taken as a given, and then apologists reason to what the facts must have been. Just like a kangaroo court, where the defendant has already been found guilty and the lawyers fabricate or “interpret” the facts to prove guilt.

I cannot abide this epistemology, I can’t be sure that it points me in the direction of the truth. This isn’t philosophy or science, but sophistry and rhetoric in the employ of authority. There are no seekers after wisdom in apologetics (in my view), but those who seek to justify their biases and dogmatic commitments.

Here’s the curious thing though: all of you in this thread see my illogic, unfounded assumptions, baseless suppositions, and pure silliness in the claim of quadrality. You are using reason and historical analysis to deny my conclusions. You start from the facts, and reason to the conclusion.

My question is: why do you not do this with everything? Why do you exempt Catholic claims from this process? By arguing with me, you have proven that you do want to believe the truth, but there appears to be a double standard. Why do you not apply the same rigor to all claims of this nature?

 

[peter26]

My question is: why do you not do this with everything? Why do you exempt Catholic claims from this process? By arguing with me, you have proven that you do want to believe the truth, but there appears to be a double standard. Why do you not apply the same rigor to all claims of this nature?

I am sure there are many people on this forum who are quite prepared to discuss whatever Catholic claims you have a problem with. I am also sure that there are many people who can respond with more than “the Pope says so”. There are many people on this forum including myself who made an active choice to convert to the Catholic faith who have had to confront theses sorts of issues themselves.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

The problem of your assertion is that it flies in the face of Jesus own and precise words.
Of course to you that is a moot point since you don’t actually believe in Jesus Christ.

It is a pity Have a blessed 2016 or do you go by the Jewish calendar too?

…

Why don’t you find me a quote where Jesus precisely lays out the doctrine of the trinity.

If he did do that, why would Arianism have spread so far and become so common? Why would most of the bishops have been Arians at one time? Why was the council of Nicaea necessary, if the trinity is so obvious in the text?

I go by the Gregorian/Julian calendar like most of the western world LOL. I am not a Jewish person, my ancestors are all Italians. Happy New Year to you too!

 

[PumpkinCookie]

I don’t count the canonization of a saint as the introduction of a new doctrine. I am sure you don’t count every acceleration of a body as a new physical law. Well, I am not so sure right now: do you think that when one declares that a body suffers acceleration he is introducing a new physical law?

Knowing about a saint whom I didn’t know before, always makes me happy. I wonder why the canonization of a saint or, in general, a catholic dogmatic declaration makes you mad? To request verifiability for every statement that is proposed to you seems to me so naive… Don’t you realize yet how you live?

When I was a Catholic, it didn’t make me mad to learn about a saint, but I felt burdened. I thought: another unsubstantiated claim that I have to commit to! Belief is precious to me. I can’t just give it away promiscuously on any/every thing. I’m sure you will agree.

I don’t want to commit my belief to something that I have no reason, or not enough good reasons, to suppose is true. I’m OK with not knowing, with being unsure. I’m not OK with giving my religious faith to something specious or doubtful.

My wife is a mathematician. New discoveries in mathematics require no faith at all. There is no analogy here. New discoveries in science require no faith either, they are demonstrable.

I do not think the canonization of a saint is similar to an instance of a physical law, or a derivative of an axiom. The church canonizing saints willy-nilly (especially recently) shows me that they are promiscuous with belief. What else have they put out as “dogma” with so little verification? It shows that they claim to know what no one can actually know: whether a person was truly right with God.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

I have to say that there is one thing which surprises me in your thread: People is responding to your “theoretical example” even though from the beginning you have been practically explicitly saying that you will make fun of catholic dogma and apologetic methods. Obviously you will use whatever is said by anyone here to fulfill your objective. You don’t need to be too smart to do it. You just need to be hateful.

I am asking you to stop your thread. It will be difficult for you not to be hateful, but I have seen that you can sometimes make intelligent remarks (not always, but sometimes). I think that even for you it would be advantageous to exercise your intellect instead of feeding your hatefulness.

You are right! I am a hater. I confess it. I’ve confessed it before. I’ve never felt a hatred so deep and so enduring, like a constant hum in my soul. It never spills into rage or anger, but it is like a quiet, constant seething. I need to move on from my hatred of Catholicism, you’re right. But, I’m not sure the best way to do it. I’ve thought about writing a counter-apologetic book. I wonder if I were to complete that project, if it would release me from this hate. I don’t want to be a hater, I really don’t. I don’t want to be an ugly hater, who looks at headlines of closing parishes and thinks “good!” Isn’t that ugly? It’s awful and sinful, and I need to move on.

I guess I could try forgiveness. Whom do I forgive? It’s such an amorphous group, and the perpetrators are so spread out in time and space. Should I forgive Augustine? Should I forgive the Council of Trent? Pope Pius IX? The problem is that I don’t just hate because of the harm done to me or my family, but to the entire world. I hate on behalf of the millions spiritually and psychologically harmed. I realize that many priests/bishops/nuns are not perpetrators but victims who have suffered far more than the average person. It’s not like I can go to a bishop and have a good argument then move on. I see them as the worst suffering victims of all (besides the children they’ve harmed of course). I don’t want any aspect of my spiritual life to be consumed by hate anymore. Thanks for helping me.

 

[OneSheep]

A thing that is unknown is not the same as a thing known to be false. Nowhere in the Old Testament does it stipulate that the Messiah (Moschiach) would be a divine person or that God is a trinity, or that the Messiah would found a new religious organization based in Rome, or that…well basically most of it! All of those things were “unknowns.” That doesn’t mean that they were things known to be false right?

Nowhere in the New Testament does it definitely declare that Mary was sinless, or a perpetual virgin, that God is a trinity, that the elements of communion change substance, or many other things. If it did, the history of Christianity wouldn’t have been such a bloody and contentious battle over the essential doctrines of the faith right? I mean, millions of protestants are reading an essentially similar text and coming to wildly divergent conclusions.** Is that a characteristic of a clear and unambiguous text**?

How to reconcile this while maintaining that the true Catholic faith existed whole and entire since the time of the apostles? Well, it seems you have to resort to the argument that a group of people can have a religious belief of which they are unconscious temporarily. Therefore, I do not think it would be so far-fetched to have a belief like the quadrality defended by the same means.

Several people have already admitted that if a pope declared it to be so, it would be so. Therefore, my suspicion that Catholic beliefs are based on a circular reasoning or pure religious authority seems to be demonstrated. It goes like this:

Church teaching is taken as a given, and then apologists reason to what the facts must have been. Just like a kangaroo court, where the defendant has already been found guilty and the lawyers fabricate or “interpret” the facts to prove guilt.

I cannot abide this epistemology, I can’t be sure that it points me in the direction of the truth. This isn’t philosophy or science, but sophistry and rhetoric in the employ of authority. There are no seekers after wisdom in apologetics (in my view), but those who seek to justify their biases and dogmatic commitments.

Here’s the curious thing though: all of you in this thread see my illogic, unfounded assumptions, baseless suppositions, and pure silliness in the claim of quadrality. You are using reason and historical analysis to deny my conclusions. You start from the facts, and reason to the conclusion.

My question is: why do you not do this with everything? Why do you exempt Catholic claims from this process? By arguing with me, you have proven that you do want to believe the truth, but there appears to be a double standard. Why do you not apply the same rigor to all claims of this nature?

Hi Pumpkin Cookie,

Still playing?

Bro, I didn’t get your response to this the last time I posted this, so I’ll give it another shot:

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel: ‘When He shall come, the Spirit of truth, shall guide you into all the truth.’ Paul does not say to the Athenians: ‘This is the encyclopedia of truth. Study this and you have the truth, the truth.’ No! The truth does not enter into an encyclopedia. The truth is an encounter - it is a meeting with Supreme Truth: Jesus, the great truth. No one owns the truth. The we receive the truth when we meet [it]

Pope Francis

To address the bolded questions, faith cannot be proven by reason, doctrine, prophesy, infallible statements, philosophical assertions, logic, or any other such head-centered human constructs. Faith rests on the encounter within and without, through prayer, through following Love and living love. Faith begins with the wonder of a small flower or the smile of an infant.

Jesus, in his lifetime, “grew in wisdom”. Would we dare be so rigid that we cannot believe that the Church does the same? Revelation “unfolds”. Doctrine, even guided by the Spirit, is the best attempt we can endeavor to make sense of this amazing encounter/relationship we have with the divine.

So, if you can come up with a better way to make sense of the mystery of it all, feel free! In the mean time, there are plenty of people whose faith is highly dependent on reason, doctrine, prophesy, etc., and that is okay, we can accept and understand people from where they are, right? As long as no harm is being done, we can “live and let live”.

This may go back to an earlier discussion, but do you see some harm being done? Or, do you see that faith truly leads to “life at its fullest”? Are you thinking the former?

If so, this thread is more than play, it is an attempt to steer people away from what you see as a problem, right?

Peace

 

[inocente]

http://muchsarcasm.com/pics/quadrality.jpg

I do plan on taking a trip to Ireland and using the four-leaf clover to teach the truth of Quadrality

What you have there is a satire on legalism, on the emptiness of following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law, which Jesus also preached against.

 

[inocente]

Please don’t take this personally. I am not trying to mock any of you as human beings. You all deserve absolute respect. I am mocking a certain set of ideas that I think are false. The mockery exposes the issues in a new way, it gets us out of the rut of rehearsed answers and ho-hum apologetic arguments.

As a Baptist I’ve no dogma to defend, other than the principle that everyone should be free to follow their own conscience. Which means you cannot mock beliefs without also mocking those who in good conscience believe them. So of course it’s personal. Suggest you try making your argument while consciously avoiding any attempt at mocking.

 

[JerryZ]

Why don’t you find me a quote where Jesus precisely lays out the doctrine of the trinity.

If he did do that, why would Arianism have spread so far and become so common? Why would most of the bishops have been Arians at one time? Why was the council of Nicaea necessary, if the trinity is so obvious in the text?

I go by the Gregorian/Julian calendar like most of the western world LOL. I am not a Jewish person, my ancestors are all Italians. Happy New Year to you too!

(Matthew Chapter 28
18 And Jesus, drawing near, spoke to them, saying: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go forth and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

There are other verses that support the Trinity but this one is explicit.

…

 

[Gorgias]

A thing that is unknown is not the same as a thing known to be false.

Agreed. Yet, you’re about to step in it, big time. Watch out…

Nowhere in the Old Testament does it stipulate that the Messiah (Moschiach) would be a divine person or that God is a trinity, or that the Messiah would found a new religious organization based in Rome, or that…well basically most of it! All of those things were “unknowns.” That doesn’t mean that they were things known to be false right?

And… there you go.

No, at the time the OT was written, these things weren’t known. Yet, as Christians, we believe that at that time, Divine Revelation was not yet complete. Rather, we believe that public revelation ceased at the death of the last apostle.

This has disastrous consequences for your little thought experiment. Your whole case hinges on an implicit assumption that you’re making: since things weren’t fully revealed in the OT, then it’s possible that they weren’t fully revealed in the NT. To a Christian, that dog just don’t hunt. We believe that God revealed himself not only in the OT, but in the words of Christ (and in the teachings of His apostles).

You cannot make a case here that will satisfy a Catholic, since your case explicitly requires that we assent that doctrine is created wholecloth by a pope or the magisterium. Moreover, it requires that we buy into the notion that the revelation in the NT is somehow less important than that in the OT.

(Now, I understand that you personally don’t believe in the NT, but you can’t make your case on a belief that only you hold and we do not. Your insistence that your case holds speaks volumes about the blinders that you’re wearing, as well as your misunderstandings of what we’re saying.)

Nowhere in the New Testament does it definitely declare that Mary was sinless

The implication of “Χαῖρε κεχαριτωμένη” is precisely so.

, or a perpetual virgin

The interpretation of Mt 1:25 – in particular, the “ἕως οὗ” part of “οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὗ ἔτεκεν υἱόν” – says that this is so.

, that God is a trinity,

as you’ve pointed out, Jesus himself used the language of ‘Trinity’, even if He did not use the term itself.

that the elements of communion change substance

The explanation of ‘transubstantiation’ is an explanation of what Jesus meant in the Bread of Life discourse, as well as in the Institution Narratives.

So, yeah… Divine Revelation does tell us these things. Where we need explanations, we turn to those whom Jesus promised would be able to teach us (doctrine) without error – the Church, as protected by the Advocate (i.e., the Holy Spirit).

(Again, you may not personally believe this to be so, but this belief isn’t sufficient to act as proof against our claims.)

If it did, the history of Christianity wouldn’t have been such a bloody and contentious battle over the essential doctrines of the faith right? I mean, millions of protestants are reading an essentially similar text and coming to wildly divergent conclusions. Is that a characteristic of a clear and unambiguous text?

No… that’s a characteristic of a humanity that chooses its own interpretation above that which has been given by God. If you can find a verse that says that Scripture is “clear and unambiguous text”, as promised by God, I’d love to see it…

How to reconcile this while maintaining that the true Catholic faith existed whole and entire since the time of the apostles?

What are you quoting here? This seems to be the root of your argument, and therefore, the root of your misunderstanding. Can you quote to me, please, what you’re citing here?

I’ll stop here and continue responding in another post. This question I’ve just asked is important enough for me to hope you’ll respond to it…