Assertions on Catholic Unity

The always-brave “anonymous” commenter had this to say on the Matatics post:

“Riiiight. One in 700 million people who profess Catholocism reject the Holy See and this compares with the fact that you're lucky to find any Protestant congregation of 40 or more where half of them agree on any half-dozen salvation-critical doctrines. Wonderful argument there.”

“go to 100 Catholic Churches, gather 500 people at random and ask them what are the roles of scripture, clergy, grace and the sacraments, then do the same with 100 Reformed Baptist churches and see what happens. There isn't a person reading this that does not know that the former group would be nearly homogeneous compared with the latter which would sport as many theories as a 9/11 Truther symposium.”

A similar assertion is made by the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"That the mark of unity which is distinctive of and essential to the true Church of Christ is to be found in none other than the Roman Catholic Church, follows naturally from what has been said... Between no two of the hundreds of nonCatholic sects is there a common bond of union; each one having a different head, a different belief, a different cult. Nay more, even between the members of any one sect there is no such thing as real unity, for their first and foremost principle is that each one is free to believe and do as he wishes. They are constantly breaking up into new sects and subdivisions of sects, showing that they have within themselves the seeds of disunion and disintegration." Source

Bold assertions? Are Catholics really that unified in their beliefs?

I have some surveys of lay Catholics which I will be posting soon that will speak to this topic of unity.