Since these posts are getting long I'm going to shorten my answers and that'll make things easier for both of us.
Trusting the original writers but not the compiler is useless if the compiler doesn't deem the books inspired.
I trust that God led them to compile the correct documents, because I've read all those documents and they are inspired. This doesn't necessitate that they're right about everything else- especially if they had the misguided belief that bread turns into flesh at every Eucharist.
It is easy for you now because you might not have read other writings.
I have read other writings- books written by saints, the Qur'an, and soon I intend to read the books that were removed by protestants from the original Catholic canon; one day I may even read the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Hebrews... but as with all things I'm not going to blindly trust in someone in order to come to my conclusions. God can, will guide me as he always has.
Even in this NT canon, we have strange texts: the virgin birth of Jesus---as if influenced by pagan myths, Jesus cursing a fig tree, Paul returning the slave Onesimus to his owner, and the whole book of Revelation---
There's nothing strange about any of them. They make perfect sense.
Once it is easy to say that the Church fell away at one point, it is easy to say that God sent another prophet to correct it. And that was Muhammad. In fact, if the Church were already in error, all the more the Qur'an was more credible.
And they teach good things, prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Seek forgiveness when you sin, etc. Again, notwithstanding the corruption of the current muslims, we too, can actually simply follow the Qur'an if we believe the Church has erred.
ie. "If you don't believe the church, why not just believe Islam!"
Because I've read the Qur'an and studied the hadith and already come to my conclusions on them. They have every sign of being human, not divine. Whether the Catholic church believes them or not isn't relevant to me.
Even the 7 churches that he condemned were precisely condemned not as THE Church, but as churches which have failed in one way or another.
In that case, you understand my views perfectly. I do not reject the Church, I simply reject particular churches. The Catholic Church is not the Church, it is many individual churches sharing the same or similar doctrine. Even a non-member of any church can be part of The Church.
If this is how you view the world and the situation of Christianity today, what a sad one!
Yes.
The wolf has truly scattered the sheep.
Yes.
Gone is the visible presence of Christ in the world that is the Church
Yes. (The world is not the church, the world and The Church are opposed, but yes.)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
For with knowledge comes sorrow- the more knowledge, the more grief. (Ecc 1:18)