How do Christians justify not being catholic?

[Pyrrho]

What the title says. Didn't Jesus pretty explicitly state that

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

and wouldn't that entail that only the Roman church is the the rightful successor of Jesus? I'm just interested in the rationale of evangelical/protestant Christians behind rejecting this claim.

You are believing Catholic propaganda about the origin of their church.  They tell you that they have an unbroken succession going back to Jesus, but try to find actual evidence that supports that claim and you will see a problem with believing them.

You will also want to research the question of when, and why, the books of the Bible are what they are.  Who picked them, and when they were selected (as well as looking at differences between different versions of the same books of the Bible).  You will want to think about some of the books that were rejected as well.  An interesting book on some of the early history of Christianity is The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, though it is not a complete history of early Christianity.  But it does convey very well the idea that early Christians were far from uniform, and were arguably more diverse in their beliefs than Christians today.


But for something easy, take a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...dox_Church

The Catholics are not the only ones who claim an unbroken succession from Jesus.  You may as well ask, How do Christians justify not being orthodox?


It is also worth mentioning that having an unbroken succession does not mean that everyone selected along the way was properly selected.  If Jesus picked a good church leader, that does not mean the successor of the successor of Jesus was properly selected.  If you believe that that is contradicted by your verse, please explain to us how one can reconcile the verses in which Jesus predicted his second coming would be before everyone alive in his time died, and the other problematic claims in Christianity.


Edited to add:

A snappy Protestant reply to the original question is:

Some Christians do not wish to belong to an international ring of pedophiles.  Which leads naturally to the question, How do Christians justify being Catholic?