I don’t know where to begin. The anti-Catholic syndrome is live and well is all I can say. When you get a chance you might want to check out these two popular Catholic apologists. Both used to be fire and brimestone Protestants. But they finally realised the truth and fullness of the Christian faith is in the Catholic Church.
“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant”
~John Henry Cardinal Newman, famous Protestant convert
to Catholicism
Tim Staples
Tim Staples was your typical enthusiastic Protestant, on fire for his faith—until he met the “wrong” Marine: a Catholic man who was both willing and able to defend his faith.
How did Tim Staples, an extremely anti-Catholic man, get started on the path to Rome?
What happened to cause the little boy who wanted to be a preacher just like Billy Graham to grow up and become a well-known Catholic apologetics speaker instead?
How did the man Tim set out to “save” end up saving him?
How can a Protestant Bible school be the place where the gift of Catholic faith is forged? Let Tim tell you his story . . .
How could a man who was bound and determined to prove the Catholic Church wrong ever be persuaded otherwise?
Why was Tim defending the Catholic Church during his time at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College? Find out how this school expedited the process of Tim becoming Catholic!
Why did Tim feel so alone on the cusp of becoming a Catholic? The heart-breaking decision Tim had to make while on the verge of conversion
Listen to Tim Staples as he tells you the incredible story of his conversion—it’s a story you won’t soon forget.
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/jimmy-swaggart-made-me-catholic/sku/7555
What Roman Catholics fail to begin with is that what they call anti-Catholicism is a reaction to her elitist anti-Protestantism, in which she exalts herself as the one true Church®, infallibly declaring she is the uniquely assured infallible Church, and who persecuted and sometimes even killed Protestants and theological enemies for centuries, and today she still refuses to recognize the most manifestly regenerate class of them as being churches. And while she condescendingly refers to all Protestants as being “deficient in grace, her pastors lust to gain evangelical converts to enliven her pews.
But when the arrogation of Roman exclusivity and supremacy and its claims are is countered by Scripture and other evidence then they often are marginalized as anti-Catholic bigots, and while some may be, this ad-hominem argumentation is too often the response when faced with objective analysis and substantiated refutation. It is certain that both sides engage in this, but the main point is that when you are the one exalting yourself as the OTC then you can hardly complain when that is challenged by others, and or marginalize all such as being bigots.
I am aware of the apologists mentioned, but there are far more who have swam the Tiber to the other side, and your responses have evidenced that you are not aware of how the standard Roman Catholic polemics do not establish what they assert of Rome, and have been refuted over the years as doing so, even though Roman Catholics continue to reiterate them. In addition, the argumentation Staples says he used as a Protestant against the Roman Catholic who converted him was “call no man father” and statutes in churches, which i do not consider worthy or substantial arguments, with the real issue being that of authority.
In this regard the “we gave you the Bible = submit to us” does not work, nor does assured authenticity by formal decent, nor their extrapolative attempts to use Scripture, especially since it is not the supreme authority for RCs nor do they hold it as able to provide real certitude. Ultimately Roman Catholic argumentation is that of assertions, Rome's foundational claim effectively resting upon her own self-proclamation, and then demanding we submit to her. And which disallows seeking the Scriptures with a heart for God that is willing to go wherever the truth may lead.
Included in her vain argumentation is that, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant,” as not only do Roman Catholic apologetics fail of the unanimous consent of the fathers,” as these were seldom in unison, nor were they settled in their theology or writers of Divine Writ, or necessarily superior in understanding (some thought sexual relations in marriage had to engage in sinful desire, etc.) to born again commentators in of later centuries, but “unanimous” as well as Tradition, history and Scripture teach only can mean what Rome says they mean, which is not necessarily what objective analysis will support, as some of her own theologians now confess. There was a reason why no less a theologian-apologist as Manning asserted,
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
And that "The intolerance of the Church toward error, the natural position of one who is the custodian of truth, her only reasonable attitude makes her forbid her children to read or to listen to heretical controversy, or to endeavor to discover religious truths by examining both sides of the question. This places the Catholic in a position whereby he must stand aloof from all manner of doctrinal teaching other than that delivered by his Church through her accredited ministers." — John H. Stapleton, Explanation of Catholic Morals, Chapter XIX, XXIII. the consistent believer (1904); Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor Librorum. Imprimatur, John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
“All that we do [as must be patent enough now] is to submit our judgment and conform our beliefs to the authority Almighty God has set up on earth to teach us; this, and nothing else.”
“The Vicar of Christ is the Vicar of God; to us the voice of the Pope is the voice of God. This, too, is why Catholics would never dream of calling in question the utterance of a priest in expounding Christian doctrine according to the teaching of the Church;”
“He is as sure of a truth when declared by the Catholic Church as he would be if he saw Jesus Christ standing before him and heard Him declaring it with His Own Divine lips.”—“Henry G. Graham, "What Faith Really Means", (Nihil Obstat:C. SCHUT, S. T.D., Censor Deputatus, Imprimatur: EDM. CANONICUS SURMONT, D.D.,Vicarius Generalis. WESTMONASTERII, Die 30 Septembris, 1914 )]
This refers to what Rome has officially taught, but while Roman Catholic apologists attack us as having no assuredly infallible interpreter of our supreme authority, they themselves have not only made a fallible decision to submit to Rome, but engage in fallible interpretation in discerning which and how many statements are infallible out of potentially multitudes, this being subject to some degree of interpretation, as well as aspects of their meaning, and more so of non-infallible teaching (that being the bulk). Even as corncern Vatican Two, one RC will contend that Lumen Gentium means Prots must convert to Rome to be saved (such as one with a web site which i have been exchanging emails with), and another will call us brethren. And some marginalize the authority of Vatican Two (not without reason in the light of historical Rome, with its manifest errors).
In addition, they have no problem using their own private interpretation to wrest texts to support teaching which are really based on “Tradition” (including ones which the EOs disagree with based on their interpretation of Tradition), and insisting they mean what they say they mean, even if Rome does not do so (such as 1Cor. 3 actually referring to purgatory).
And despite the profession of certitude and unity based on the magisterium, yet due to its lack of clarity, depth and comprehensiveness, or emphasis on doctrine or Scripture, then thee is substantial confusion and differences in Roman Catholicism, though they all share a common bond as Catholics.
Both Catholics (Latin and Eastern) and evangelical Protestants have faith in their respective, assured infallible supreme sources, and both can concur on core truths while differing to various degrees on others, the differences being a matter of degrees, while the unity of the Spirit — which is the most essential unity that Christ prayed for for (Jn. 17:21) Christ in them and they in Christ — happens in regeneration, (Gal. 4:6) and is the source of a historical evangelical unity which is greater than their differences, versus a unity based on identification with a particular church.
Finally, while it is actually lay apologists who engage in most of the encounters with evangelical converts today, at one time that was forbidden to them. But in response to RC advocation of the polemics of the former here are just a few worthy sites which engage them, most of which you can post to:
http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com
http://www.aomin.org/Roman.html
http://www.christiantruth.com/articles_roman_catholicism.php
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/
Sorry for the length.