4. How do we participate in the life of God? Has it ever occurred to you that it might be by following His rules for a start?
5. The early Church was fraught with schisms and heresies until it became more centralised. Democracy was obviously found to be responsible for everyone doing their own thing and rightly abandoned. When one reads what the polls say about the views of today's American Catholics one can imagine how much more of a chaotic state the U.S. Church would be in than it is already if U.S. Catholics were allowed to elect their bishops.