The problem I have with many Catholics is they expend more energy in defending the Catholic Church instead of Christ.
All of the arguments being posed by the Catholics here are over 1000 yrs old.
It seemed to begin circa 600AD.
At that time there were three main solutions to therr theological councils debating these doctrines, sometimes known as the three C’s.
1) Canon
2) Creed
3) Church(authority of the church)
First they established a Canon. Origen and Athanasius had already established the 27 books we generally use today as the Canon of NT Scripture.
The Creed had been adjusted a bit here and there over the centuries, but is fairly well accepted today as the Athenasius Creed.
The next problem facing the Western Church at that time were the threats of Barbarian and Pagan advances into northern Rome. There was a push to unify the Church and keep one organized authority, so regardless the refinements in doctrine, the theologic position gave more importance to unifying the authority of the Church over any other theological threats.
A good example of this are the 7 Sacraments, all of which have sound theological and Scriptural underpinnings, but each had a slight extra-biblical twist, which if developed without explicit guidance by God the Holy Spirit, could easily promote heresy more than Christian faith.
In nearly each of the sacraments, the RCC position chose to promote faith in the Authority of the RCC before faith in Christ alone by faith alone. The natural consequence is for the laity to be distracted away from faith in Christ, by first placing faith in the authority of the RCC.
Faith was first placed in the RCC ritual of baptism before having faith in Christ and receiving the baptism of God the Holy Spirit prior to faith in the Church. Again, the RCC version of the sacrament focuses first upon the Church and her authority before the grace of God. In order to receive the benefit, the believer would have to place faith first on the Church, before Christ.
The retort by the Church, is that God had given them that authority and by Papal Succession, only they could administer the sacrament.
The only problem with this reasoning is that the RCC had no more qualifications than any other believer to administer such an act. So whenever encountered, such a person would be labeled an enemy of the Church.