The Only True Church

1. "You always come back to the claim that yours is the one and only Church"

    Not the one and only Church....there are hundreds of churches.
    Rather that the Catholic Church claims to be the only true Church.

2. "How can your Church be the only true Church, when Christ Himself was a non-Catholic?"

    As the Founder of the Catholic Church He could not possibly be a non-Catholic.
    You will admit, surely, that Christ established a Church.
    We have it recorded that He definitely said:
"I will build my Church." Matt. 26:18.
    He so identified Himself with that Church that when St. Paul was persecuting that Church before his conversion, Christ appeared to him 3 years AFTER His Assumption, directly, and said: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14.

    Now comes the question:
    Q. "Which of the Churches today is identical with that Church with which Christ identified Himself?"
HINT: there is only one.
    A. The only possible answer, whether from Holy Scripture, or from history, or from reason, is the Catholic Church.
    It cannot be said therefore that Christ was a non-Catholic. Approaching the subject from the opposite angle, we could ask, "What was Christ then, if He WAS a non-Catholic?"
    Any effort to identify Him with present-day non-Catholic Churches would be in vain.

3. "Christ did not tabulate His Church, calling it the Catholic Church."

    I am glad that you recognize His Church as one, united, individual organization.
    Now, it is true that Christ Himself did not use the word Catholic, as far as we know. He could not because, again, as far as we have knowledge, it was not in use then.
    But He clearly declared that His Church would be all that the word means. The word "Catholic" means "universal." And Christ made it quite evident that He meant His Church to remain one and the same Church, persisting as such through all the ages till the end of time, ever aiming at the teaching of all nations in all places, and teaching all that Christ had made known to the Apostles!
    So what about that word, "catholic?"
    St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Christians at Smyrna about the year 110 A.D., was the first we know of to use the Greek-equivalent word, "Catholic," meaning "all", "the whole," or "universal," as a description of the Church Christ founded. But that is the first written use that we know of. There is every reason to think it was already in use before that. 

4. In Mark 9:37, we read that John the Apostle said to Jesus, "Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name and we forbade him because he followeth not with us."
Was not John a bigot, forbidding the man to do good in the name of Christ merely because he was not orthodox and did not belong to the true Church?

    There is no evidence whatsoever in the passage that the man was not orthodox and did not belong to the true Church.
    Christ, who was most insistent on belief in the truth HE taught, could not even indirectly sanction a departure from it. He demanded orthodox belief in all things whatsoever He taught.
    Besides, it is dreaming to think there was any rival Church calling itself "Christian," to which any professed believers in Christ could belong.
There was only ONE Christian Church at the time, the ONE which our Lord was then establishing.
    The truth is that St. John, together with the other chosen Apostles, had been expressly commissioned and empowered by Christ to cast out devils. Yet here was a supposed disciple of Christ, not a member of the apostolic twelve. He may have been orthodox in faith, and maybe belonged to the Church,...we don't know. But he was exercising a function St. John thought delegated to the Apostles only.
    His concern was that the laity of the Church might usurp what he thought was proper to the hierarchy. He had to learn that, whilst authority in the Church might, of necessity, be limited to officials, doing good even miraculously, in the name of Christ, is not restricted to any particular class in the Church.

5. Jesus said: "Forbid him not," showing that He was tolerant towards different denominations, but not towards bigotry and bitterness between denominations.

    You are hiding behind credulity. At the time our Lord spoke, there were no different denominations into which those who claimed to be His followers were divided.
    And far from being tolerant towards denominations, you are way off. He taught that His Church must be ONE fold, under ONE shepherd, and prayed that all His followers might be as ONE and undivided amongst themselves as He and His Father ever enjoyed perfect unity.
    Therefore, different and conflicting denominations, or sects, are directly opposed to both the teaching and the prayer of Christ. Bigotry and bitterness also, of course, are opposed to the teaching of Christ. But we cannot say that He objected only to ill-feelings, but also to the existence of 'denominations' as such.
    The Reformation planted an ugly seed with the false notion that all "denominations" are seen as equals, to Christ.
    But He did NOT establish a whole lot of distinct and conflicting Churches, at variance in belief, worship and discipline, calling them all good.
    Quite the opposite, He established His ONE true Church, and the Catholic Church can, and does, trace its origins to Christ Himself - it IS His ONE true Church.

6. Christ said: "Other sheep I have who are not of this fold."

    Thank you for this opportunity to point out the folly of cherry-picking verses out of context, an erroneous, even dangerous, practice much loved by Protestants.
    This fragment you offer occurs in Jn.10:16, but you either deliberately, or misguidedly, omitted the second half of the text, which continues...

    "...Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be ONE fold under ONE shepherd."
    So the Catholic Church, the ONE true fold, ever appeals to non-Catholics to join her and become members of that fold -  according to the will of Christ.

7. "I do not feel that at Judgement a person will be questioned as to whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant."

    Are you willing to stake your soul on that?
    I admit there is a sense in which that seems true, but a sense also in which it is not true. Unfortunately, far too many people make the sense which feels true their excuse for ignoring the sense which it is not. They use it as a drug, if you like, against all further effort or inquiry.
    So lets examine it.
    First off, in what sense is it true?
    It is true that a good Protestant who, through no fault of his own, has never suspected the truth of the Catholic Church and has remained a Protestant in quite good faith. It is likely that he will not be blamed by God for having lived as a Protestant instead of as a Catholic.
    But it is not true that a Protestant will equally escape responsibility if he has had the truth of the Catholic Church brought to his notice..., yet he deliberately turned away from it, neglecting to inquire into the matter lest he should find it to be true... a conclusion which, for selfish reasons, he does not want to reach.
    Such a man does not love the Truth, but his contrived notions.
    If he is not a Catholic after learning of the things being clarified here, it is his own fault, and he will certainly be questioned by God about that fault at his judgment.
    If nothing else stirs you to investigate, it is the obvious difference between Catholic teaching and that of the Protestant Churches. Both sets of teachings cannot be right; Jesus was not ambivalent about the full scope of His teaching... and it is the full scope one must take in context, not cherry-picked fragments used to support arguments.
    The bottom line is this: one who loves God as the Truth wants to know which way is right, and feels a great sense of responsibility in the matter.

8. "If the Catholic Church is the one true Church, why is it that early believers did not join it"?

    Forgive me for a moment, but where did you get that crazy idea?
    Scholars estimate 250,000 or so Christians existed by the end of the second Century. That seems small, but populations were small then, compared to now, and they were thinly spread across a vast region. Christianity was primarily an urban religion, centered around the six or so leading cities of the Roman Empire: Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Ephesus, and Antioch.
    By the year 300, Christianity would explode to become the dominant religion across the  whole of the vast Roman Empire. So much for the idea that people didn't join it back then.
    Even your own Protestant Authorized Version will read of the first Christians, that, "the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved."
Acts 2:47.
    But once more, lets ask the same question you seem to dodge around:
    "To what Church were they added?"
    It was not to a Protestant church, of that we can be certain. Instead it was to a Church which was then present, and which remained ONE and the same everywhere, in whatever places it was established in its rapid growth; that is, it was the Catholic Church by its very nature.
    The Christians at Jerusalem were ONE with the Christians at Antioch and with all those to whom St. Paul addressed his epistles contained in the New Testament: Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, and even those of far off Rome.
    All had become members of ONE and the same Church...the Catholic Church.
    Advertising this fact, St. Ignatius of Antioch, about the year 107 A.D., first made written use of the word, "Catholic" as a description of the Church... and we expect it was already in wide use before he wrote it.
    The word did not make the Church Catholic, however, because it was what the Church already WAS that suggested the word.
    And the true Church of Christ has remained what it was from the very beginning, the Catholic Church, to this present day. As it was the ONE true Church then, so it is the ONE true Church now.

9. "Half of Christendom today refuses to accept the claim that yours is the one true Church."

    Hopefully not to their dismay, come Judgement Day.
But as they say, "Just because the crowd does a thing does not make it correct." We might also add that,..."the right and just man finds out the truth, despite what the crowd is doing."
    However, your statement is somewhat true. According to the Pew Research center, Roman Catholicism accounts for about 50.1% of Christian populations globally, while all the Protestant sects, totaled, got 36.7%, Eastern Orthodox came in at 11.9%, and "other Christian" got 1.3%
 We can make a case, if we wish, for Orthodox Christianity being at least co-aligned with Roman Catholicism, bringing the total to 62%    
    However, let us suppose that half of Christendom DOES reject the claims of the Catholic Church, whilst half accept. From the viewpoint of numbers, it would be an even split.
    We must, therefore, look elsewhere for a solution to the problem.
    In doing so, we must keep in mind the fact that those who reject the Catholic claims are the descendants of those who fractured and broke away from the Catholic Church to establish Churches of their own prideful making, far too late on the scene to make any claim to Christ as their Founder.
    That they are not agreed even as to the very nature of the Church, and that they are divided as to what its doctrines should be, does not help matters for them.
    In other words, the non-Catholic section consists of hundreds of different denominations as opposed to each other as they are opposed to the Catholic Church. Surely there is no need to stress the significance of this, is there?

10. "There is no reason to believe that non-Catholic Christendom ever will accept the Catholic position."

    You are likely right. But that is credulity, and is absolutely no argument against the veracity of the Catholic position.
    Indeed, to solve that problem it would be necessary to compare the reasons non-Catholics reject Catholic claims, with the reasons Catholics can produce on behalf of them.
    I maintain that the Catholic position is the only sound one in the light of Scripture, history and reason. For the rest, I agree that there will never be a time when there will not be various sects opposed to the Catholic Church.
    In one way or another every age will see verified the words of Christ that there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
    But as sects come and go, the Catholic Church will continue even till the end of the world, just as she has persisted throughout the past 2,000 years from the time of her foundation by Christ.

11. "By stressing the idea that yours is the one true Church, you imply that all others are wrong!"

    It pains me a bit to say it, but if the shoe fits, wear it.
    I am not the least interested in mollifying people where their souls are at stake.
    When it comes to the problem of the ONE true Church, I naturally say that the genuine Church of Christ is the Catholic Church. What else would you expect me to do?
    Should I throw around nothing but harmless platitudes in order to make people feel warm and fuzzy about themselves?
    What real good would that accomplish?
    That would only confirm the erroneous idea that Christianity is only a form of mild and gentle behavior, and that "anything goes" in its practice, as long as one avoids the ONE true Church of Christ - the Catholic Church.
    As a matter of fact, you can not have the genuine religion of Christ without the Church He established, and that Church happens to be the Catholic Church.
    The less people realize that, the more it needs to be said.

12. "You do not seem to understand how little such a claim appeals to the modern mind."

    Thank goodness I do not. Are you suggesting that I should wave the flag of modernism where Christs teachings and expectations are concerned?
    The problem is not whether the modern mind is happy with the truth, but whether it is true... and that they should hear it.
    If the claim be true, and the modern mind is fuddled over it, then the modern mind must adjust itself to the Catholic religion.
    Or would you prefer that the Catholic Church threw up its hands and follow the jilted modern mind into its many, many errors? That would be to renounce the correctness of the Catholic Church for the incorrectness of the horde of muddled thinkers, just because they happen to be many, and claim to be "modern."
    But a thing is not true merely because a lot of people happen to think it, or because it happens to be a recent phase of thought. Truth is truth, however few the people who hold it and however long ago they held it.

13. "Not one of the Protestant Churches is so arrogant as to claim that it is the one true Church."

    At least they get that one thing right.
    But what you really mean, without realizing it, is that they are not absolutely certain they are the right Church. That's why so many Protestants like their little religious corner of the world, but are also ready to say that all other religions are okay - except for the Catholics, of course.
    But if a Church is so inconclusive of its own position, why belong to it? The Catholic Church is not stricken by waffling.

- She claims to be the ONE true Church. 
- She speaks with a verifiable certainty and definiteness which contrasts remarkably with the hesitancy of others.

    Really, to complain of her being firm in her dogma is like complaining to a doctor that he seems to know his business.
    Do you say to a doctor: "I don't like your air of assurance. If you were more hazy about things, if you were not too sure whether this treatment would kill or cure me, I should gladly follow your advice to the letter.
    But since you are quite sure, and can substantiate your diagnosis..., well, you make me mad. I think you are intolerant of other possibilities, so I lack confidence in you. In fact, I am going to seek a doctor who does not profess to know for certain what he is doing."

14. "If the truth of the Catholic claim is so clear, why do so many intelligent non-Catholics fail to become converts to your Church."

    I hate to break it to you, but your limitless credulity fails you once more - and badly.
    Here is a VERY short list, in no particular order, of intelligent people who were not afraid of the truth when they found it, and converted to the Catholic faith...

Mortimer Adler 
Francis Beckwith 
Tony Blair 
Robert Bork 
Dave Brubeck 
Tim Conway
Gary Cooper 
Newt Gingrich 
Sir Alec Guinness 
Dean Koontz 
John Wayne 
Knute Rockne 
Gregory Peck
Gustav Mahler
Lena Horne
Jonathan Roumie
John Candy
JRR Tolkien
Josh Duhamel
Mark Wahlberg
Julia Gardiner Tyler
Kimberly Hahn
Kirsten Powers
Kobe Bean Bryant (Kobe Bryant
Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta)
Lana Del Ray
Laura Anne Ingraham...

    Shall I go on? I think not. You can do this research as easily as I...if you want the truth.

    Since so many intelligent people DO become converts to the Catholic Church, we cannot account for those who who refuse by their intelligence..., or rather, their lack of it.
    What, then, does account for their refusal?
    There are several reasons.
    Many otherwise intelligent non-Catholics employ their intelligence in almost every other field except that of religion. As a result, despite their intelligence, they have no intelligent grasp of the religious problem.
    Again, even the most intelligent of men may be affected by inherited and subconscious prejudices and falsehoods where religion is concerned.
    Also, many of them are so religiously indifferent that they never bother about prayer, to their detriment; and prayer for the grace of God is absolutely necessary if one is to apprehend spiritual, supernatural and revealed truth.
    Finally, man is not intelligence only, and the Catholic religion is not a matter of doctrine only. Man has a will of his own, and the Catholic religion includes a code of conduct. Unfortunately, the man of average worth may regard this code as too exacting. Basically, he doesn't have the moral courage for such codes.
    However much the Catholic religion may appeal to the intelligence of such a man, he may experience an insuperable interior reaction against embracing it, because of the demands it would make upon his way of living.

15. "Why should Catholics be privileged to possess the one true religion whilst so many others are left without it?"

    Actually, they are not exclusively privileged, which is what your question drives at. ANYONE can undertake a study of the Catholic truths and be a member of Christs ONE true Church, as we saw above in #14. That door is always open. 
    However, we are dealing with God's providence. Thus, our demand for explanations as to why God does this, or permits that, may not always be fully satisfied..., even if we had the right to drag God down to the bar of human judgment.
    Nor does our inability to understand His reasons alter facts or justify our denying them.
    And the fact is, the Catholic religion is the ONE true religion of God, made available through Jesus Christ, and those who belong to it are indeed highly privileged to be a part of it.
    Again - lets remember that the Catholic religion is not a "closed shop." It is not meant to be the exclusive preserve of a few. It was - and it is - meant for all. And all can have it.
    But if people will not open their minds enough to look into it, will not pray for the light of truth, and will not have the Catholic religion at any price, they exclude themselves from it.
    God cannot be blamed for that.

16. "We Protestants believe that it is an insult to God to say that He is partial to one particular religion."

    Since you'll admit that God is Truth itself, He must be partial to the ONE true religion. Any love of truth demands rejection of the false.
    As a Protestant, you could not admit that Christianity and, say, Shintoism are equally pleasing to God, and so must admit that God is partial to the religion taught by His only-begotten Son.
    And He must be partial to the full and complete doctrine of Christ, as opposed to a deliberately incomplete presentation of it, one blended with various errors.
    This being so, God must be partial to the Catholic religion, for other Churches claiming to be Christian are built upon such fragments of Christian doctrine as appealed to their different human founders, blended with various peculiar personal opinions at variance with the Gospel.
    God could not sanction any churches separated from the Catholic Church, however pleasing their sincere but mistaken adherents may be to Him personally.
    And He wills that all men, as soon as they learn of its truth, should join that Church which alone is really His - the Catholic Church.

17. "How do you account for so many good people being content with one or other of the different forms of Protestantism?

    Deliberate blind pride. And when I say that, I mean two separate qualities, blindness and pride, married
together, on purpose. There are maybe no two factors that account for such "contentment" as you describe.
    It cannot be accounted for by the truth of the particular form of Protestantism they accept. For why should the form they accept be more true than one of the other forms they do not accept? 
    For example, some good people are content with Methodism, others are content with Anglicanism. Yet if Methodism is the true form of the Christian religion, that means Anglicanism cannot be.
    We must look for the reason, then, not in the forms of Protestantism they profess, but in themselves.
    Firstly, the average Protestant takes for granted what he has been taught, and does not think of looking more deeply into the subject.
    Secondly, the elements of good which his form of Protestantism has retained so absorb his attention, that he does not consider its deficiencies and errors from other points of view.
    Thirdly, most Protestants have the idea that they would be disloyal to their parents or ancestors if they forsook the religion of their birth for any other. On a related note, it is strange how little guilt or disloyalty to their lineage they may feel when they drop their religion in everyday practice,.. but boy, do they feel guilty if they change to another religion!
    Also, there are the factors of inherited prejudice, belief in falsehoods masquerading as fact, and social/peer conventions.
    Combined, all these factors discourage inquiry, or render impartial inquiry difficult and rare. It is so much easier to assume your brand of Protestantism is the only right one, aka, deliberate Pride.
    That leads one to take for granted and be content with the form of Protestantism in which one finds himself, ignoring the problem as to where the full and complete Christian truth is to be found - enter deliberate Blindness.
    Those who do face that problem, however, and have the courage of their convictions, end by becoming Catholics.

18, "From your own point of view, would you rather see a person an atheist, than a Protestant?

    Not hardly!
    Please, I identify errors among the Protestant sects which are not in keeping with Christs teachings for His own Church, and I call them out.
    But I would not wish such a thing on any of my separated Christian brothers and sisters.
    A Protestant, if he does nothing else, acknowledges and honors God, whilst the atheist flatly denies Him. How could I wish to see anyone deny the honor owing to God and whatever graces accrue by that honor, by abandoning it in favor of nothing?
    If a Protestant cannot see his way to move forwards to Catholicism, we at least can assign cause as to why, as seen in the last section, #17. BUT, I do not want him to move backwards towards complete unbelief... and possibly much worse.
    So long as a Protestant is sincere in his religion, such truth as it does contain will be a big help to him; whilst its mistakes and errors, accepted in good faith, do not render him culpable before God.
    If he is truly sincere of keeping within Christs dictates, of course, he would abandon those mistakes the moment he discovered them.

19. "Elsewhere you advised a young Protestant man, who wanted to marry a Catholic girl, to receive instruction in the Catholic religion and see whether or not he could acquire a sincere belief in it.

    I have given such advice.... and solid advice it is

20. "That seemed to me very one-sided advice."

    I agree that it probably did seem like one-sided advice. From your point of view it could not have seemed anything but one-sided.

21. "Would not the difficulty be equally well solved if you told the girl to receive instruction in the Protestant religion and see whether she could not believe in that.

    It is true that if she did, there would no longer be a difference of religion between the two parties.
    But since we are talking about points of view, no such advice could be lawfully given to a Catholic, nor lawfully acted upon. Bear in mind, I am not speaking of civil law, but of the moral law binding upon one's conscience before God.
    On his own principle, a Protestant is like a willow, and he may very well consider the possibility of becoming a Catholic. He normally holds that one Church is just as good as another, and neither does he hold that any particular Protestant Church is the one true Church. We saw that in section 13.
    But one who has the Catholic Faith does NOT believe that. The Catholic is well aware that the Catholic Church is the ONE true Church which Jesus Christ created for us, and is not free in conscience to entertain the thought of leaving it.

22. "Would it not have been fairer to suggest both alternatives?"

    Not at all.
    I was not suggesting that the Protestant should violate his conscience, since he holds no clear loyalty in conscience to religion. He has one, yes, but he also is willing to accept that one is as good as another.... just as you are.
    But if I suggested to a Catholic to consider the possibility of becoming a Protestant, I would be advising a violation of conscience. For I would be advising such a Catholic to entertain doubts about the truth of the Church she knows quite well to have been founded and guaranteed by Christ Himself. That would be disloyalty to Christ, personally, and certainly not fair to her.
    In giving advice, a Catholic must do so from the viewpoint of one who does believe in the truth of the Catholic religion, not from the viewpoint of one who does not believe it, or who thinks others are okay.
    One may advise a person with the wrong religion to consider the possibility of changing to the right religion.
    But one may not advise a person with the right religion to consider changing to the wrong one.
    That is bound to seem strange to you, I realize. It will probably even make you angry. But the only way you can make sense of it is to honestly see it from the Catholic viewpoint. You must be willing to say that, if Catholics are assured through all of history and Scripture that their Church is the ONE true Church of God through Christ on earth, then they could not consistently adopt any other attitude.

23. "Did not the early Fathers, such as Jerome, Augustine, and Clement of Alexandria, see so much good even in the pagan philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, that they said they regarded them as Christians?

    No - they did not regard them as Christians in the literal sense of of the word.
    Their thinking was that, since God had planned from the very beginning to send Christ to give mankind the true religion, any who contribute towards the realization of the designs of Providence were to that extent, "honorary Christians..." even though they could not be Christian, in reality, and did not know it.
    The Greek philosophers, by promoting the search for Knowledge and Truth, inspiring a desire of Virtue, and purifying the crude religious notions that then prevailed, helped set the stage for the Gentile world's conversion to Christianity.
    Aquinas, for example, was writing in the high Middle Ages, and the works of Aristotle had just been reintroduced to the West. 
    Aquinas thought we must synthesize the logic we get from people like Aristotle with the revelation that we get from Christian scripture, the Church fathers, and tradition. "How do these things work together?" he asked.
    But no approval for the work of pagan Greek philosophers made St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Clement of Alexandria less conscious of the need of converting people to the Catholic Church. For that they worked and prayed, despite any good thought they found outside the Church.

24. "Why, then, won't you recognize people who are good Christians today, even though not Roman Catholics, as belonging to the true Church?"

    Because they do not.
    It is impossible to recognize the Church of any non-Catholic as the true Church, however good he may be and however sincere in trying to live a good life.
    The Catholic Church, as a Church, is quite different from all other churches. For the Catholic Church is not an institution planned, interpreted, and founded by men, as were the others. Rather, it was planned and founded by Christ Himself, with all His divine authority.
    That is why Catholics are not free to recognize other Churches as being, "just as good" as the Catholic Church, even though they may find great personal goodness within certain individuals belonging to those other Churches.

25. Although a Protestant, I say that by my baptism I became member of the one true Church. Rome has no exclusive claim to be that one true Church.

    Unfortunately, you are working from credulity and a half-truth, not on the full truth.
    Christ founded ONE Church, and one Church only.
He instituted baptism as the Sacrament by which people could become members of the ONE Church He founded. That Church was and is, the Catholic Church.
    If, then, baptism is validly administered, it makes the recipient a member of the Catholic Church which Christ founded, and of no other.
    So far, I seem to support your notions of being baptized in the one true church, right? But there is more to it than that.
    Christ founded a visible Church, for the organization of which He chose the twelve Apostles. And He promised that that Church would last all days till the end of the world. After 16 centuries, as we know, certain groups abandoned the visible Catholic Church, decided they knew best what God wanted, and set up independent, fractious, and different Churches known as the various Protestant sects.
    Those Churches are not part of the Catholic Church and no logical man believes they are.
    Now granted that you were validly baptized, your baptism would make you a member of the Catholic Church, not of any other. However, through no fault of your own, you were brought up in a mistaken form of religion separated from the ONE genuine and visible Catholic Church in this world.
    To say that you are a "Protestant" is to say that you are a "non-Catholic," and belong to a non-Catholic sect. That's really the long and short of it.
    So long as people in such a position do not realize their mistake, God does not hold them responsible for it.
    But an intelligent man, seeing the external divisions of so many conflicting Churches, is certainly obliged to ask himself which of them is the true Church; and if he discovers that it is the Church which is in communion with the Bishop of Rome, he is obliged to become a member of that Church in the external order, as he was meant to be by his baptism in the first place.

26. "Whatever we say, you are obviously not going to make concessions in regard to the exclusive claim of your Church to be the one true Church.'

    Concessions mean compromise, and on this one thing, there is none. A sincere regard for the truth, and loyalty to Christ Himself, forbid the making of any such concessions.

27. "We can only conclude that Roman Catholics insist on Christians being regimented into one single organization throughout the world."

    Now you are forcing your opinion as argument. 
The term "regimented" is yours, but it does not fit the situation. You are using it deliberately, falsely, to suggest drafting people by conscription...which the Church does not do.
    What the Catholic Church insists upon is the truth that Christ willed His Church to be ONE Church, and that all His followers should preserve amongst themselves that unity of belief, worship and discipline which a single religion requires.
    No one can be forced to join the Catholic Church, but those who come to realize its truth have the moral obligation to join it.

28. "The Protestant reformers gave us freedom by breaking with the idea that we should all be tied to a single organization."

    And look what that, "freedom" has gotten us: more dissent, more fractures, more animosity between groups. Is that the freedom Christ envisioned that we should possess?
    He established ONE Church, gave that Church spiritual authority to act in His name, and insisted that we should be subject to that authority.
    It is by accepting the teaching-authority of the Catholic Church that we attain the fullness of the truth, of which Christ said: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Jn. 8:32.
    For it is by the teaching-authority of the Catholic Church that we are set free from a thousand uncertainties, and from the danger of falling into serious errors. And it is by means of the Sacraments which she puts at our disposal that we are set free from our sins and frailties; free in the end from that greatest of disasters, the loss of our souls for which, according to Christ Himself, not the gaining of the whole world would be sufficient compensation. Matt. 16:26.

28. "From time to time we hear of Catholics themselves leaving your exclusively true Church and joining some Protestant Church, to benefit by the freedom gained for us by the reformers."

    Of course. People make all kinds of mistakes.
    A person may lose his faith in his Catholic religion, or as often happens be talked out of it. In most cases where this happens, he abandons religion altogether.
    But where he does not, one thing is certain: an ex-Catholic that joins some Protestant Church, will not exhibit a faith in that Church similar to the faith he once had in the Catholic Church and disastrously lost.
    For the faith of a Catholic in the Catholic Church as the one true Church of Christ is a divine and supernatural faith, on the same level as his faith in every other article in the Apostles' Creed. As he believes in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the Holy Ghost, so he believes in the communion of saints, and the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church; and knows that the Church to which he belongs is that Church.
    He may devote his affections to, and attend service at, other churches. He may agree to talk himself into thinking he has the answers. But, never can he have the same supernatural conviction of the truth in any but the Catholic Church.

29. "Why would a Catholic abandon what he knew to be the true Church in order to join a Protestant Church he knew to be wrong?

    You impose the idea that men always live up to their convictions and their conscience; but even God will not compel them to do so. After all, Judas sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver.
    Not infrequently, an ill-instructed Catholic man, weak in his faith, will be coerced for many reasons to move into others religions.
    Perhaps he wants to marry a Protestant girl. Thanks to the urges of men, he might become a Methodist, Episcopalian, or anything else, if it happened to be her particular religion. I know, I did it once. 
    Where marriage is not the motive, business, social or other reasons at times account for them. Often he becomes disgruntled with one aspect or another of the Church, and then becomes an easy mark for coercive Protestants intent on prying him loose from the ONE true Church: "crossing him over," they like to call it.
    After all, few things in Protestantism earn you brownie points among your peers like getting a tithe-paying Catholic to jump ship.
    But to think that pure and sincere religious conviction accounts for their move, I earnestly deny.
I am speaking, of course, of people who are otherwise sane, not of those who are the unhappy victims of some form of mental aberration.
    People with religious mania outside of lucid thought can be convinced that they are pursuing a right course, though normal people realize that they are subject to an obsession for which they are not responsible.

References
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/how-many-christians-were-there-in-200-a-d/

Political Principles for Catholic Voters, Belmont Abbey College

Radioreplies.org