Oh I get it. It’s like saying, “If no one is God, then everyone is God.” If we deny that there’s no “Pope”, the supposed successor to the Apostle Peter, then everyone is “Pope”. Since that would be wrong and everyone can’t be “Pope” or “Papa”, then there must be legitimate a Pope in Rome. Hey, I have an idea. What if I deny the premise and refuse to accept that everyone must be “Pope” if I den that there’s to be a Pope in Christianity. Or better yet, What the only true “Papa” is the Father in Heaven and what if I don’t deny Him at all! Then I wouldn’t be making myself Pope and everyone wouldn’t be Pope. Folks, the article shows the convoluted thinking of the Catholic Church. It’s how they make Mary a perpetual virgin. It’s how they make Mary’s own conception a miracle to spare her the hereditary sin of her parents. It’s how they decide babies are sinners and for centuries taught babies who died without Catholic baptism were in “limbo”. It’s how they justify the need for a multitude of saints to pray to. Catholicism “jumped the shark” a long time ago when they got in bed with the Roman Caesars.
Have a little snark for breakfast this morning, didya?
The RC polemic you respond to here relies on miscontruance of both the RC and SS position. The RC simply argues "a visible pope in claiming the anointing of the Holy Spirit and thus the ability to properly interpret Scripture," thus anyone else who claims to be able to properly interpret Scripture is a pope.
However, this means no one can properly interpret Scripture except the pope, which even for Rome is an untenable position. Instead what the RC is asserting is the assured veracity based upon conferred personal anointing, therefore no one's interpretation can contradict such a one, which is not what an SS adherent is claiming.
For what Rome has presumed to infallibly declare is that she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
In contrast, the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture, and inheritors of promises of Divine guidance, presence and perpetuation. (Lv. 10:11; Dt. 4:31; 17:8-13; Is. 41:10, Ps. 89:33,34)
And instead they followed an itinerant Preacher whom the magisterium rejected, and whom the Messiah reproved by Scripture as being supreme, (Mk. 7:2-16) and established His Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, as did the early church as it began upon this basis. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)
Unity under this means is much harder than under the cultic means of sola ecclesia, but superior in quality, as it requires establishing Truth claims upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, and continually manifesting that the church is that of the living God, being grounded in and supporting the Truth, which Scripture uniquely assuredly is.