Well, I do have a hard time coming down too hard on the rank & file congregants. You see, I was raised Baptist, and then switched to CoC, and just like almost any mainstream "Christian", I spent the better part of my life believing (trusting the teachings of) what the people whom I thought SHOULD know, told me were the truths of the Scriptures they read to us from the pulpit.
It has only been in the last six or seven years I have been doing what I call "virgin reading" of the Bible. (Nothing to do with The Virgin Mary) I am staggered by the overwhelming number of doctrines and dogmas I have found that many of us right here on this forum would honestly DIE for, that I am beginning to see as largely superstitious folly that has simply been passed down, and passed down, and passed down, until it is almost considered blasphemy to dare to actually read it for yourself, and come to ANY conclusion but that which you were indoctrinated with. And, I am talking "Protestant" stuff, here.
If I could have been so mistaken and blindly "led" by the interpretations of others for most of my life, how can I justify vilifying simple Catholic church goers who are doing nothing less than I was doing for 50 or 60 years? They are, truly, doing just exactly what most of us do. They are following what they were taught by their parents and teachers and preachers, (in their case, "priests"), who were also taught by others, is an honest and reverent religion. We do the same. Oh, "Yes we do!"
Even when the vast majority of us read the Bible, we really only read it as meaning what we were taught it is supposed to be saying in any given instance. That "virgin reading" I mentioned is not normal for us, and it took me a few years to use that method, without automatically reverting back to inculcated rhetoric.
