ii of vi: Could Protestants be wrong?

Father, in Your breathed Word, You told Peter that he was the rock You would build on. What did this mean? Did it in fact mean You wanted Him to assume spiritual authority on this earth and for the Church to be built upon him? After Peter was martyred, Linus was asked to assume authority. Eventually this action led to the office of Pope, and the line of the papacy has continued until this day from Linus. Is it not true the Catholic Church is the true lineage handed down after Peter’s martyrdom? But a percentage of Protestants say it is not based on Your Words that they are interpreting. They say that is not what You meant when You said that to Peter, but how are they to really know? They were not there when You said it. I wonder if Peter even really knew what You meant.

And now the confusion, as in anything with human involvement, begins. I wonder if Satan has a hand in all this? And I wonder again why, if this is true, would You allow Satan to deceive? And then I quickly realize once again I have to let go of the need to know.

And yet, I think back to the beginning. There was no New Testament, there was no Catechism, there was an awful lot of confusion even to the point Paul and others had to continually go to churches to correct those in the midst of the false teaching. And this was not long after Your death. So Father within years after Your Son’s death there was already factions, and false teaching, and false doctrine, even though Your Son’s blood was still fresh in a manner of speaking. How do we have any hope of getting You right 2000 years removed when we could not even get You right 10 years removed? Oh Father how much easier it would be if You just stood before us and told us exactly what You meant by Your breathed Words. Instead, amazingly, all of us can read the same Words and come up with different interpretations. This reminds me of the exercise where everyone is in a circle and one person passes a saying on to the next person but then by the time it comes around to the person who first uttered the saying, it is no longer the same words.