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"The authority of the Catholic church is not universally accepted."

What is your point, even the law of gravity is not universally accepted.

The ongoing issues on these threads are that, in the absence of an accepted teaching authority, each person's truth is what they choose it to be. The sincerity to which beliefs are held is not in question because personal perception can be the only reality to many who lack faith.

Each personal reality, regardless of how distorted it may appear to others, is none the less a reality. Psychologist Dr. Jerome Bruner developed a model of perception in which people go through the a process to form opinions in which the more they think they know about a subject, the less receptive they are to new ideas or different perspectives:

1. When one open to learning encounters an unfamiliar subject or idea they are open to different informational cues and want to learn more about the target.
2. In the second stage, as they collect more information about the target they begin to associate or categorize the target within what they already believe to be true or false, real or unreal.
3. It is at this stage the those who believe they already hold the truth the cues become less and less relevant and in their place we try to conform the object to a preconception and confirm the categorization of the target. At this stage we also actively ignore and even distort cues that violate our own initial perceptions. Our perception becomes more selective and we finally paint a consistent picture of the target conforming it to our perceived reality.

The unfortunate result is a population that believes that within their own reality they see the truths no one else can and is completely closed to dialog. This paradigm is negated by Christ's call to Christian unity and facilitated by Communion with the body of the Church and a reliance on the Magisterium over self as the foundation of faith.

Peace be with you.