Pjs2ejs,
I almost forgot, I like your approach. You said, “I have at times been challenged with something that the Catholic church said or did from the past. Rather than brushing it off as “No Catholic I know believes…”, I do my research. I mean I really do the research, because it would bother me very much. But, the history is amazing, and I am still Catholic.”
If I want to know something about the Catholic faith, I ask one of my Catholic friends or pull out the Catechism (I bought a copy so I could learn what the Catholic church REALLY teaches and believes).
Similarly, and particularly, where The God Makers is concerned, I would encourage everyone to take a similar approach. When a person wants to know something about a particular faith, it is best to go to someone of that faith or a source that is recognized as authoritative. For LDS that is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, D&C, and the Pearl of Great Price. Anything from any other source might be correct but it might not. I think Joseph Fielding Smith put it best when he said:
"It makes no difference what is written or what anyone has said, if what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside. My words, and the teachings of any other member of the Church, high or low, if they do not square with the revelations, we need not accept them. Let us have this matter clear. We have accepted the four standard works as the measuring yardsticks, or balances, by which we measure every man’s doctrine. You cannot accept the books written by the authorities of the Church as standards in doctrine, only in so far as they accord with the revealed word in the standard works.
Every man who writes is responsible, not the Church, for what he writes. if Joseph Fielding Smith writes something which is out of harmony with the revelations, then every member of the Church is duty bound to reject it. If he writes that which is in perfect harmony with the revealed word of the Lord, then it should be accepted (Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.3, pp.203-04).
I see this as being very much the same as the idea of papal infallibility. My understanding of papal infallibility is that the Pope is infallible when declaring dogmatic teaching on faith and morals and that it does not mean the Pope is incapable of error or that every word that proceeds from his mouth is as if it were coming from God on a direct conduit. Help me out my Catholic friends. Am I right?