I think a Catholic might quibble with you on this.
The text is not a magisterial document
You are 100% correct and in fact its my sneaking suspicion that the church was "having its cake and eating it too" since it got to release a very inclusive sounding statement without having it be binding church teaching.
Unlike many Christian traditions that can be misrepresented unintentionally Romans are probably the easiest to check on yourself due to their top down nature.
As a catholic, obviously I agree (even as a politically libertarian catholic who distrust top heavy governments). I honestly have lots of respect for the dialog Protestantism has created. The dialog and pushback has been a net-benefit to the catholic church thru the ages (I only wish it was possible to achieve that without the splintering).
I feel that prot-cath dialog 95+% of the time winds up just being semantics and fundamentally we have no real issues between us....the one real "defect" I see with Protestantism is that there are now something like 35000 denominations? Every guy who can revamp an old KFC can make a church and he becomes his own local pope. Without a central authority to rule on teaching it becomes a real mess....I saw billboards on trip to Florida last year claiming that "Jesus is NOT God" (basically "christians" refuting his divine nature.....we're talking about sects now rejecting Council of Nicaea (300AD)).
The real issue is the modern western merging of nation with state. Even if you hold a dispensational view of the Bible, does the state of Israel seem like a God fearing government?
So true, in the Bible Israel != A Political Entity. Yet thats what the modern state of Israel is...
You are 100% correct and in fact its my sneaking suspicion that the church was "having its cake and eating it too" since it got to release a very inclusive sounding statement without having it be binding church teaching.
As a catholic, obviously I agree (even as a politically libertarian catholic who distrust top heavy governments). I honestly have lots of respect for the dialog Protestantism has created. The dialog and pushback has been a net-benefit to the catholic church thru the ages (I only wish it was possible to achieve that without the splintering).
I feel that prot-cath dialog 95+% of the time winds up just being semantics and fundamentally we have no real issues between us....the one real "defect" I see with Protestantism is that there are now something like 35000 denominations? Every guy who can revamp an old KFC can make a church and he becomes his own local pope. Without a central authority to rule on teaching it becomes a real mess....I saw billboards on trip to Florida last year claiming that "Jesus is NOT God" (basically "christians" refuting his divine nature.....we're talking about sects now rejecting Council of Nicaea (300AD)).
So true, in the Bible Israel != A Political Entity. Yet thats what the modern state of Israel is...