Why Aren’t Protestants Catholics?
Abraham Lincoln said that once states start leaving the Union, there can be no end to division, and indeed the next act of secession after states left to form the Confederacy was West Virginia seceding from Virginia. A good book that I edited and published about 40 years ago was Rome Is Home: From Protestant Minister to Catholic Layman by Earl Jabay. Among his insightful comments was that Martin Luther had a right to object to abuses in the Church but didn’t have a right to start his own church. And there has been no end to further divisions. Luther left because of his dissent from Catholic doctrines and practices. Henry VIII left (and took nearly all of Britain with him) because he would not obey. Further disputes led to the enormous number of denominations and non-denominations that exist today. If, like Jabay, they said, “Rome is home,” the Catholic Church would be stronger for having them as members (Jabay said that too). However, it’s hard enough to say, “Rome is home,” when it means submission and obedience compared to running your own church your way, but the clergy sexual abuse scandal, Catholic schools sometimes teaching heresy, and other faults make it even harder for Protestants to come into the Catholic Church. (These are my opinions.)
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Friend, you make some excellent points, but the real reason according to Jesus is: Who answered and said to them: Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven: but to them it is not given.
[Matthew 13:11]
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42% And he said to them: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but to them that are without, all things are done in parables:
[[Mark 4:11]
So, they are literally prohibited from “Right Understanding”, until and unless they repent and convert: What is telling of God’s Mercy is that according to our Catechism: 1260, 846, 847, and 848, salvation remains a real possibility for them. CCC 1260/ 1260 “Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.” 63 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity." /847: 847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation." So the issue then seems to be one of culpability, which God alone can judge.