Power Loss light is coming on in a 1986 Plymouth Reliant K 2.2L TBI

I was give a 1986 Plymouth Reliant K 2.2L TBI vehicle. I only has 71,558 original miles. All of following happened in two days. I went to dmv in my other car to get title in my name and 3 day pass. Went to emissions in Plymouth. It passed emissions with flying colors. Drove to dmv to get registration and plate. Driving fine. Seemed like it had the right amount of power for a four cylinder. I got home. I was looking at engine and saw it has a distributor cap. Took cap off and noticed that one of the spades was not sticking thru the cap and another was only about 1/4 of way compared to the two that were all the way down. I thought they had broken off so I decided to go to AutoZone and buy a cap & rotor. As I was pulling into AZ, the power loss came on and car lost power. Went in and bought cap and rotor. Opened both inside store. When I saw the cap did not have any metal pieces molded into the cap, I realized the problem. Bought cap and rotor. On way home, the car was running like crud. Power loss light kept going on and off. Car would not idle. Did not want to cross a major intersection like this, so I pulled into a store on the corner. Since I realized the plug wires could be pulled out of the cap, I did that. I spread out the spade end so that when I reinserted into the cap, they would not pull out. Now all four cylinders should be firing. Start up car, still runs like crud. I did not want to cross major intersection like this so I kept making right turns. Did not make it home. Pulled into a YMCA parking lot. Looked underneath the car and the catalytic converter was glowind red. Apparently, raw gas was being fed into the cat conv during the time the plug wires were not correctly inserted into cap. However, I drove about 2 miles with all plug wires correctly inserted in cap. Would cat conv still be glowing red after driving that distance with all four cylinders firing? (Assuming they were.) Remember car still running like crud, however the cat could have been clogged up because of raw gas going into it. Car never would run right. It would start up, just not idle very good and power loss light going on and off.

Left car in parking lot overnight. Had car towed home next night. Still runs like crud. I cut the exhaust pipe behind cat converter. Took exhaust pipe off at exhaust manifold. I can see the back end of cat conv looks fine. A light brown color. Can see into the honeycomb of cat conv. The front of cat conv was black. Looked like it was clogged up. I knocked out cat conv insides. (I was not going to buy a new cat until I know the cat is the problem.) I put back on and still runs like crud. Won't idle good. Have to rev to keep running. Power loss light keeps going on and off as your reving it. What could be the problem? Was somthing else damaged when all four cylinders were not firing?