Based on your description, and from what I’ve read of some of the IFB churches mentioned on this forum, I wouldn’t see much delineation between the two.
There have been some notoriously authoritarian popes and bishops, but it's not exactly a hallmark of the modern Roman Catholic church, which tends more toward liberalism. Pope Francis is no Boniface III or Leo X, say.
Christianity as a whole is exclusivist, so I wouldn't count it against Roman Catholicism that they are exclusivist. That's assuming they were; again, I tend to think the modern church tends toward pluralism.
Wouldn't seem to apply. The Roman Catholics are very much involved in world affairs and have a long tradition of engaging with the big ideas intellectually and involving themselves in education. Probably 1/3 of my degree came from a Roman Catholic college affiliated with my university, and I'm probably the better for it.
Pursuant to the note on education above, the church is in favour of academic freedom in its institutions. Contrary to the popular view of the Galileo affair 500 years ago as a battle between science and faith, Pope Urban VIII was a friend of Galileo's and open to his writing a book evaluating heliocentrism and geocentrism. But Galileo put Urban's opinions (he was a geocentrist) in the mouth of a simpleton and placed himself against the church.
Doubtful. The bishops can't even stop prominent, pro-abortion politicians from receiving the Eucharist or calling themselves "devout" Catholics.
If you ever get an opportunity to visit a Catholic Church in Latin America and then compare it to your local Catholic Church in Anytown USA, you might reconsider your opinion. Catholic churches in Central/South America are a whole different ball of wax, and in some respects, remind me of a combination of Catholic and pagan Satanism mixed in one. It becomes very eerie very quickly when you enter.
Try talking to a member of the Legion of Mary. They are vehement about worshipping her.
That's an example of the pluralism I mentioned earlier. The admixture of Catholicism and indigenous religion was instrumental in the conversion of the Aztecs. Latin American and Caribbean Catholicism are extremely syncretistic, as you noted. But that's kind of the opposite of exclusivism.
I’ve only visited a couple of Catholic churches in Central/South America as a tourist, but it’s literally like stepping into a dark, pagan building. I’ve also been to some Catholic churches (actual services) in the Southeast and found them not much different than your run-of-the-mill neighborhood Protestant church.
When I was engaged the second time back in 1979, I was attending a RCC church with my then-fiance. They later went to a Greek Orthodox church. Neither one of them seemed "cultish" to me. They seemed to have a very distorted view of Christianity, but I knew several who gave clear testimonies of salvation in both churches.