Catholics must adhere to following the Pope, or they are heretics.
>>Roman Catholic theology tells their adherents they must go through Mary to get to Christ,
>>Catholics must adhere to following the Pope, or they are heretics.
Wrong, and wrong again...
Everyone must obey the authentic Papal Magisterium: what was taught by all of the present pope's 265 successors going back to St. Peter and even to Our Blessed Lord. Even the pope is subject to this chain of transmission, because he is to conserve and hand on the "Deposit of Faith": he is one who safeguards the doctrine and passes it on: a servant, not a master, of true doctrine.
Listen: if the present Pope deviates from the Papal Magisterium --- not handing on to us what was handed on to him --- then who/what do you suppose we must we obey: the Magisterium, or the Pope?
We Catholics should know better than to make an idol of a derelict pope.
That is mythical, but for when Pope speaks from the Chair of Peter.
No ramblings of any Pope are adhered to, ever, particularly his political opinions, or goofy interviews and newser quotes.
This popester has actually never uttered or even claimed to utter a single word from the Chair. There in, is the work of the Holy Spirit and St Michael the Archangel forbidding it.
Now the False Prophet or the Anti Christ may try it, by claiming it, but no Holy Father will so do.
It marks the true Church that Satan must enter her and possess her. I’m proud and humbled to be Roman Catholic, inside the ark, the Barque of Peter, Holy Mother Church.