The protestant position is often presented as "sola scriptura" - the Bible alone as the Word of God. At an extreme, every word of the Bible is asserted by some protestants to be true, with all the intellectual contortions accepting this requires.
A more credible response is that the Bible is a reflection of the Word of God, not itself the Word of God. Rather the Bible is written by fallible men, translated with mistakes and obfuscations, the books selected through a less than convincing process, and we all understand it imperfectly. This is presumably what is meant by the statement in Corinthians XIII that now we see through a glass, darkly. The Bible is imperfect, as it itself says. Many protestants do in effect accept this though often not in quite these words - indeed most protestants end a Bible reading in church with the phrase "this is the Word of God".
Mystical Christianity takes account of a personal experience of God as guiding each one to understand God - and to understand what is right and wrong action. There's a lot of overlap with New Age ideas, with other religions, with humanism, with many of the values of the C21st. A view of the Bible which sees it as an imperfect reflection really needs the mystical dimension of a direct communion with God - in protestant terms the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.
Roman Catholic belief asserts the central role of church tradition and therefore of the papacy. In a way this does answer the issue of imperfections within the Bible - ultimately the pope has infalibility in matters of dotrine and can solve them. But the RC church is in effect a political structure - and for much of the last two-thousand years Europe has had a balance between the political power of the temporal princes and the political power of the RC spiritual princes. Ideologically the present EU project and a resurgent RC church go hand in hand.
I have enormous concerns about a RC church which as an institution decided to permit the rape of hundreds of children rather than embarass itself and some of its priests by identifying them as paedophiles. The actions of individual priests are just their individual wrong acts. Similarly the actions of individuals in positions of responsibility who covered up for the priests are again just actions of individual wrong doing. But the action of the whole RC church including the then pope in covering up such morally abhorrent and criminal activity is shocking beyond belief. We have to take on board that many senior RC churchmen - the pope, many cardinals, many bishops - thought it was acceptable to allow the continuation of child rape in order to protect priests and respect for the priesthood. I cannot square this view with the legal system of any western country, with any moral code, with Christianity. Of course the protestant view as set out in the "Westminster Confession" is that the pope is not Christian (and for that matter not Catholic). Maybe this is correct. The RC church has disgraced itself utterly.
Other threads on this board look for example at the world entering into a new age (is it 2012?) and at the growing power of the EU. Lots of issues seem to tend towards the idea of an imminent crisis. Maybe we are looking at a mystical Christianity emerging from the mess - in part as a reaction against the "Holy Crimes" of the RC church. Do we look to an internet-age English speaking mystical belief that finds Christianity and New Age Spirituality are actually much the same and the RC church exactly as the Westminster Confession sets out?
