Why Religious Authority is a Good Thing

The thing that Catholics have a hard time remembering is that we are the weirdos in the human religious community because we have a Magisterium. It's really hard for us to bear in mind that the overwhelming mass of humanity's experience of religion is conducted without a ruling body that decides "what we really believe". Consequently, we have this notion that there is some official who "speaks for" Islam or Buddhism or whatnot.

There isn't. Islam is, within very broad parameters, whatever the loudest and most powerful figures in the Muslim world say it is.

-Mark Shea of Catholic and Enjoying It!