My experience has been it's pointless to argue with Catholics, as they are worlds apart from the Bible believing on what, to us, is a most important matter of truth: sola scriptura. They even mock the sufficiency of the Bible gospel of our very Lord Jesus and His apostles, who were there!
You will never see eye-to-eye with those who believe the faith is scripture plus anything else that creates a tradition of man the Pope and other Catholics can whip up and claim is truth, and Catholics adhere to these new "truths," regardless being refuted in the Holy Bible. This is an insurmountable barrier between what we believe. If you like being a gerbil on a tread wheel, trying to reason with men who say their authority is higher than yours, because the Pope has a secret decoder ring and the Catechism is inspired, well, good luck. And there's no such thing as luck.
Yes, Catholics do not believe what their own Bibles say when it goes against the Catholic beliefs. You said something that I talked somewhat about in my last post here. You said,
"My experience has been it's pointless to argue with Catholics." The Bible says that Christians are to be discerning. To 'discern' means 'to judge, choose, distinguish between things, make a distinction, etc.' I want to point this out and hopefully show why Jesus made the Christian's ability to discern so important.
"It's pointless to argue with Catholics." Argument implies that two sides are tangled in a struggle of some kind. However, the Christian's struggle is not against human beings or Catholics but against evil ruling angels of various levels of authority who work through human beings. If one person is shouting and one person is responding in a normal tone, it is not an argument. Argument, again, implies two people struggling or wrestling together. I presented something I found about the Catholic church and even presented it with goodwill; but Catholics began to attack me even very personally to the extent that at least one of them has met enough qualifications in his tirades and personal attacks against me to be banned from this site. That is not two people wrestling; it is one person attacking another.
I grew up Catholic and had a Catholic aunt who swore that she would basically 'steal me away from God' and bring me back into the Catholic church. Catholic beliefs often take precedence over sensibility and common sense (to the extent that they do not live according to much that is in their own Bibles). But Christians are to be discerning, not ruled by fear and uncertainty and inaction. In 1Kin. 3:16-38, we see an instance when God's discernment worked through a human being for the benefit of all: two prostitutes bore baby boys three days apart. During the night, one boy died, and his mom switched her dead son with the other prostitute's living son. The real mother brought the case before Solomon. Instead of employing human wisdom (which would award the living child to the wrong mother since she seemed so convincing), Solomon waited for God's wisdom and then proceeded: he said that they should cut the baby in half, one half for each mother. The impostor mom agreed, but the real child's mom said that Solomon should give the child to the impostor mom and not kill it. Solomon said, "Give the first woman (the compassionate one) the living child, and by no means kill him;
she is his mother."
Why did I relate the above story? Because knowing how to 'judge the smallest matters' is foundational for a Christian to learn discernment. If Solomon was able in the OT to operate under a word of wisdom (or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit), Christians today are much more often to operate in God's wisdom. We must learn to discern things, even things that seem to be 'small' so that when we see 'an argument, a fight, a form of unity, etc.', we don't make decisions based on what we think or our experiences but wait on God's wisdom (discernment) to see what is really going on. (Isa. 11:3-4). By the simple practice of substituting God's wisdom for his, Solomon left a deep and positive impression on all Israel: "And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered; and they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice" (1Kin. 3:28). Christians must learn to discern 'the smallest matters' (such as 'who is right or wrong' in a fight or argument or dispute) because the greater levels or measures of discernment that God wants to give begin there. If a Christian cannot discern or perceive who is right or wrong in a dispute, they have not yet begun preschool in spiritual discernment which God counts
extremely valuable and indispensable. Now read through this thread again and see if you can find 'an argument' or a one-sided attack; then decide what is good or bad, right or wrong.
