Davem,
I think your post at 2:58pm yesterday sums it up. We all have our viewpoints, and no one can say for sure exactly what happened to Frodo (except the author).
I concede now that Frodo thought of himself as a failure, as Tolikien says so in Letters, but as I've said before, this does not mean he failed, he just thinks in his own opinion (wrongly!) that he has failed. As I alluded to in a previous post, this makes his leaving Middle-earth even sadder.
Just one final point,
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execpt for the 'Grace of God', the intervention of The Authority, Frodo could have been responsible for doing that to the whole of Middle Earth.
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I don't see the Gollum episode as the Grace of God, or intervention by the Authority. It was because of Frodo's Mercy that it was inevitable that something like this would happen at the Sammath Naur. I do not see this as Providence, I see this as Redemption for Frodo and Middle-earth because of his (and Sam's at the end) kindness towards Gollum.
PS 'Authority' - did you get this term from Phillip Pullman?