Originally Posted by Zoetrope

I do have to agree with the witholding of the cup, and the calling of another man as 'Father'. I cannot reason my way out of any of those. However, I think whoever wrote this mostly has a big thing against the Pope, and there are many things which are written off as 'because the Pope said so', that were in fact reinterpretations and not denials of the word of Christ. In Matthew 18:2-3, the word commands that children are models, living paths to God's will, but we cannot deny original sin, either. All of Judaism and Christianity is based on a denial of some aspect of our nature, and none are innocent of this. A child is a better model, not perfection, for perfection is God, and noting the child as a sinner is an important way of distinguishing the child's ideal humanity from the ultimate, unachievable ideal of God's grace.
The repetition of the beads is a tough one, because in its conception Jesus advised against it, but there is not only declaration in these acts, but internal preparation, a focusing of worship. Jesus is rejecting the idea of cheapening God into terms of 'how many prayers'. Most importantly, I want to indicate that in Timothy 2, it is not Christ forbidding intermediaries, but an intermediary for Christ. This is, to me, confounding, and perhaps you have an explanation. However, it does make perfect sense if we establish the idea that Jesus is the only physical intermediary, the transposed being of God. The idea is that we cannot accept another man's word and being for God's truth and will, and this includes Timothy 2 (read a little further for sexist enforcements). There are many paths to Christ, and his teachings reflect this, subjective but of a developed technical peace. Catholicism is at its heart separate from the Papal authority as we see today, because admittedly the legitimate lineage preserving the witness of Christ has long drowned in the sea of man (look only to popes of the 10th and 11th century to see how men cheated the position and lost the gift of the Apostles). Catholicism is simply a play on Christ's mercy, defying and forgiving their own falterings in the material practice, at the expense of stern misconceptions, to simply defy and simply forgive the small falterings in the spiritual practice, like clowns of God.