I think it's not a matter of log vs. speck but rather the Roman Catholic Church is the only church that claims to be the one, only, true church Christ established on earth. Therefore, the many, many vile incidents that are reported against the Catholic Church - where most are valid and provable and where there has been so much cover up by those in the upper echelons and transferring of predators continues - should be reported.
I have never heard of the Southern Baptist church making claims that no one can be saved unless they join the SBC, have you? Neither have the Presbyterians or the Methodists or the Episcopalians, etc. What can you expect when you place a human institution, run by fallible humans, as the only way to Heaven?
Rather, Jesus set up a body of believers - a spiritual and universal body - built around the truth of the gospel that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of mankind and we are saved by the grace of God through faith in the sacrifice Jesus made for us. All those who come to Christ by faith are born again into the family of God and become a member of this spiritual body. It encompasses ALL true believers and no one denomination can claim exclusivity of the body. Sorry, you cannot. That is why we can know that the "gates of Hell" cannot - and will not - prevail against this body of Christ.
The Apostles and the other disciples were all pretty corporal beings, as Peter found when he tried to walk on water. All of the twelve except John suffered bloody deaths. None of the major Reformers conceived of the Church as a ghostly institution. Luther was indeed trying to reform the visible Church, and led a revolution against the papacy and the empire that succeeded only because he had the helps of the German princes. Calvin was the inspiration of the Huguenot movement in his native France who was to convert the kingdom by converting the king. Calivin was in correspondance with Archbishop Cranmer and with evangelical Poles, stipulating that he had nothing against bishops so long as they had the right theology. Calvin was at one anti-Catholic and catholic. He actually thought that his teachings were an expression of true Christianity, the ones that should be taught everywhere. He was familiar with the teachings of the Church Fathers, Augustine above all, and did not deny a materiallength with the early church. He just rejected the authority of the papacy and the espiscopate as We Catholic understand it. The Church is a human as well as a divine institution. The only spiritual Church consists of the souls of the faithful departed.
I'm afraid that, once again, the classics comix view of Catholic doctrine is driving out the real deal.
In the 13th - 14th century it was acknowledged that 'the Greeks' who were not in Communion with the Holy See had a church with valid sacraments. That simply could not coexist with a teaching that only Catholics (those in communion with the Holy See) could get into heaven.
Again,the conceptual hurdle which it seems some have difficulty jumping is that we really think there is One Church. So when we speak of the Catholic Church, we do not view it as one denomination among many,except that it's the correct one and all those others are in deep doo-doo.
Neither do we think that all those others are "just as good as" the group in communion with the Holy See.
The truncated or eviscerated history which so many of us learn in school and the limited vision of our teachers who think that Plato, Aristotle etc could have no REAL relevance to the way we moderns think really has done the devil's work. Conversation becomes almost impossible because the variety of ways to approach a difference has been unnaturally limited.
Now try this. PLEASE, you may consider that it is wrong or even offensive, but try to hold the emotions back long enough to grasp the concept itself.
What is bread? In one sense it is something you have when you mix wheat flour and water( and yeast) and then bake the resulting paste.
Is it bread if oil and honey are added? Ditto with, say raisins and orange peel? Clearly if too much of those things is added, it is no longer bread, but some do not affect its "breadness" though they compromise or alter it.
Is it bread if sawdust is added? Again, a little sawdust won't make it impossible for the product to nourish. But it will compromise it, while too much sawdust will make it no longer bread in any meaningful sense.
So, you could say that we feelthy papists view those in Communion with the Holy See to be bread of pure wheat and all the rest. But other ecclesial assemblies are like bread in which some edible but non-nutritious substance has been mixed. It' still bread, it will contribute to the maintenance of life. Its breadness has been compromised, you might even say diluted, but you will not die if you eat it, and it will even help you live.
We see an important difference between the 16th century and other times when a BIG part of the motivation of becoming a non-Catholic was the idea that the Catholic Church was in no way a true church, and the motivationforbeing a Protestant these days. Cranmer and Henry VIII were not cradle Anglicans, Luther was not a cradle Lutheran, nor was Calvina cradle Calvinist.
The place where they "learned Christ" was not a building and community associated with a "denomination" in the modern sense. So the moral "object" is schism is not a part of one's being a Baptist or Mennonite or whatever. There is not anything that could be reasonably be construed as a choice to "leave the Church"in 99 44/100ths of such folks.
So we hold them to be eating a kind of bread, and to be nourished. They have not intentionally rejected pure bread for adulterated bread,which is perverse. And, at least by Baptism, if nothing else, they are indeed part of the One, Holy, Catholic,and Apostolic Church. That is why on Easter we did not baptize anyone with good evidence that he had been baptized with water and a Trinitarian formula.
So,IMHO,we cannot fairly be construed as saying that one has to join the Catholic Church in the modern sense of joining the "denomination".
I pinged some Catholics not to have them jump on you, but to have them jump on ME if my account is wrong.