An organisation such as the Catholic Church primarily wants to perpetuate its own existence, so of course the official doctrine is that they are The One True Church.
An individual Catholic, on the other hand, might genuinely believe that the benefits of religion are also available from other suppliers.
But by believing that they automatically become not Catholic any more, according to the definition of Catholic given by the Catholic Boss who is also the only one with the right to make the rules. If they state that openly they are liable to be excommunicated, though of course most of the times no one will care (even in much darker times the Inquisition probably wouldn’t come after every nobody who said something blasphemous once).
Possibly similar dilemma with e.g. UK political parties, who generally have a rule that publicly supporting another party’s candidate will get you expelled.
An individual party member, on the other hand, may well support the party’s platform in general, but think that that one particular candidate is an idiot who is unfit to hold political office—but is not permitted to say so,
(There is a joke about the Whitby Goth Weekend that everyone thinks half the bands are rubbish, but there is no consensus on which half that is. Something similar seems to hold for Labour Party supporters.)
An organisation such as the Catholic Church primarily wants to perpetuate its own existence, so of course the official doctrine is that they are The One True Church.
An individual Catholic, on the other hand, might genuinely believe that the benefits of religion are also available from other suppliers.
But by believing that they automatically become not Catholic any more, according to the definition of Catholic given by the Catholic Boss who is also the only one with the right to make the rules. If they state that openly they are liable to be excommunicated, though of course most of the times no one will care (even in much darker times the Inquisition probably wouldn’t come after every nobody who said something blasphemous once).
Possibly similar dilemma with e.g. UK political parties, who generally have a rule that publicly supporting another party’s candidate will get you expelled.
An individual party member, on the other hand, may well support the party’s platform in general, but think that that one particular candidate is an idiot who is unfit to hold political office—but is not permitted to say so,
(There is a joke about the Whitby Goth Weekend that everyone thinks half the bands are rubbish, but there is no consensus on which half that is. Something similar seems to hold for Labour Party supporters.)