If I understand you correctly, the Pope is chief bishop among all bishops. Most bishops are given autonomy over their local jurisdiction. "Cardinals" are titles given to bishops who represent their larger areas (including other bishops) and confer with the pope.

The "college of cardinals" (and Magisterium) and the Pope have authority over the whole Church to discuss both religious disciplines (recommendations and mandates of how we live the faith) and doctrines (more formal, solidified teachings that clarify points of belief).

Disciplines can be changed, and doctrines can be developed.

The Pope oversees as the sort of final say (a sort of Moses figure among his elders, or Peter among the Apostles).

It doesn't always need to reach him in order for something to happen, but he is entrusted with that authority if need be. On the other hand, not everything he says is necessarily authoritative/binding. Even he has to operate under what is called Canon Law, which is a sort of codified wisdom of thing practical and theological.

Sorry if it's not more clear, but it's complicated, much like the streets of Rome.

I'm sure there's some complicated genetics going through your head, but sometimes there's no point in over-complicating something.

Jesus breathed on His Apostles, symbolic of the life God breathed into the world, and said, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained."

God instituted sacrifices for the repentance of sins, baptism, and even gave his disciples the authority to forgive sins, but no Catholic forgives sins by their own merit--only God can forgive-- but rather as Paul says, "It is not I who live by Christ who lives in me."

We share in the life of Christ as members of His Body, and thus we are capable of forgiving sins, sacrificing at the mass for the forgiveness of the world's sins, and forgiving others from our heart as Christ commanded.

The kissing of hands, while not as prevalent any more, is not so much to the honor of any given man, though some may feel that way. It's a respect for the office or what someone, for example a priest or bishop, may represent -- i.e., the hands that offer the sacrifice of the mass.

Not often. I do have it and occasionally if I'm completely unfamiliar with the topic at hand I'll look to it.

It can influence my answers, but I've done a deeper dive into the theology of many things beyond the catechism. To me it's like a dictionary or encyclopedia that's worthwhile to reference whenever your stuck.

It's a bit of a long argument, but it dates back to the Septuigint and Hebrew Scriptures.

The Jews never felt a strong need to codify their Scriptures formally until Christianity, when they decided on a date (I forget specifically) and that it must be in Hebrew.

This eliminated in their eyes the Greek books of Scripture that Catholics also accept. While we did not codify the cannon of Scripture until Protestants protested it, we do have literature going back to the 1st and 2nd centuries which mostly agree with Catholic Canon.

Our criteria is that Scripture of the New Testament was exclusive to the Apostles and their immediate communities, and that all Scriptural revelation was limited to the Apostles themselves.

Protestants, for all their looking into the early Church to find justification for the books of Scripture, use the Post-Christian Jewish council to exclude the Catholic canon (e.g., Wisdom, Maccabees); Luther did this especially on what is now outdated scholarship. Just interesting to me.

I'm not really in the business of promoting offense for the sake of revenge.