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In Christianity, no one can get into the body/church unless they first go thru the Head of the body, Jesus Christ...

The Church is the means on earth that Christ gave us to preserve and teach the Good News revealed in His Word -- and ALL those who comprise His adopted Children comprise His Mystical Body. That is exactly what the article says, and it is absolutely correct. If you have a problem with that, take it up with St. Paul. He taught it.

But if every Christian is part of the Mystical Body, why do they all have differences of opinion on doctrine? They cannot all be right. There can only be one Truth. And so, as the Church accurate teaches, not all Christians are in FULL communion with the Mystical Body of Christ. Those in FULL communion are those whose beliefs and practices are one with the Word of God in the Bible and the infallible teachings of those Scriptures by the Magisterium of the Church. Every heresy that claims it is inspired by the Holy Spirit cannot logically be, and of course, are not each right.

If you look at the history of the early Church, you will see that it continually struggled against heresies and those who promited them. We also see the Church responding to those threats again and again by convening councils and turning to Rome to settle disputes in matters of doctrine and discipline. For example, Pope Clement intervened in a controversy in the Church at Corinth at the end of the 1st century and put an end to a schism there. In the 2nd century, Pope Victor threatened to excommunicate a large portion of the Church in the East because of a dispute about when Easter should be celebrated. In the earlier part of the 3rd century, Pope Callistus pronounced the condemnation of the Sabellian heresy.

In the case of these heresies and/or conflicts in discipine that would arise, the people involved would defend their erroneous beliefs by their respective interpretations of Scripture, apart from Sacred Tradition and the teaching Magisterium of the Church. A good illustration of this point is the case of Arius, the 4th-century priest who declared that the Son of God was a creature and was not co-equal with the Father.

Arius and those who followed him quoted verses from the Bible to "prove" their claims. The disputes and controversies which arose over his teachings became so great that the first Ecumenical Council was convened in Nicaea in 325 A.D. to settle them. The Council, under the authority of the Pope, declared Arius' teachings to be heretical and made some decisive declarations about the person of Christ, and it did so based on what Sacred Tradition had to say regarding the Scripture verses in question.

Here we see the teaching authority of the Church being used as the final say in an extremely important doctrinal matter. If there had been no teaching authority to appeal to, then Arius' error could have overtaken the Church. As it is, a majority of the bishops at that time fell for the Arian heresy. Even though Arius had based his arguments on the Bible and probably "compared Scripture with Scripture," the fact is that he arrived at an heretical conclusion. It was the teaching authority of the Church--hierarchically constituted--which stepped in and declared he was wrong.

I hope you do not believe Arius was correct in his belief that the Son was created. Do you? Of course not. So let me emphasize again: Arius presumably "compared Scripture with Scripture," but nonetheless arrived at an erroneous conclusion. If this was true for Arius, what guarantee do you, or does ANY Protestant have, that this is not also true for your (their) interpretation of a given Bible passage? If you know for certain that Arius' interpretations were heretical, this implies that an objectively true or "right" interpretation exists for the Biblical passages he used.

The issue, then, becomes a question of how we can know what that true interpretation is. The only possible answer is that there must be, out of necessity, an infallible authority to tell us. That infallible authority, the Catholic Church, declared Arius heretical. Had the Catholic Church not been both infallible and authoritative in its declaration, then believers would have had no reason whatsoever to reject Arius' teachings, and the whole of Christianity today might have been comprised of modern-day Arians.

It is evident, then, that using the Bible alone is not a guarantee of arriving at a doctrinal truth -- and so even your claims to base your authority solely in Jesus are based on the Bible, and assume a doctrinal truth that comes from your particular Protestant tradition. But there are THOUSANDS of them, all with conflicting claims on doctrinal matters. If this is the "church," it is not the "pillar and ground of truth" promised to us by Christ, and Christ is not a liar -- a claim that would truly Satanic.

There is ONE Truth and Christ gave the Catholic Church, and ONLY the Catholic Church, the authority to teach it infallibly. BUT remember, the Mystical Body of Christ includes ALL Christian believers, whether or not they are in full communion with the Church. Christ comes into the world through anyone who sincerely loves and serves the Lord -- but without full communion in the Church, they lack the special grace the Church's teaching provides in helping to preserve them from falling into heresy -- a pathway that could potential endanger their souls because it can eventually lead them to grave violations of morality.

The issue, then, becomes a question of how we can know what that true interpretation is.

Read it as it's written, just as with the Constitution. It means what it says.

Will people misinterpret? Of course they will. They are human, after all. Both within and outside of the Catholic church.

I hope you do not believe Arius was correct in his belief that the Son was created. Do you? Of course not. So let me emphasize again: Arius presumably "compared Scripture with Scripture," but nonetheless arrived at an erroneous conclusion. If this was true for Arius, what guarantee do you, or does ANY Protestant have, that this is not also true for your (their) interpretation of a given Bible passage? If you know for certain that Arius' interpretations were heretical, this implies that an objectively true or "right" interpretation exists for the Biblical passages he used.

No matter how far off Arius may have been, he wouldn't have been within miles of your religion's private and error laden interpretations of scripture...