You seem to be hung up on the word pope. We have documents from the first century written by the bishop of Rome on behalf of the Church (the Letter of Clement). Was Clement called the pope? No. Was he the bishop of Rome, successor to Peter? Yes. So, everywhere you see pope used to mean the Roman pope, substitute "bishop of Rome" and you should have no problem.
You seem to be hung up on the Letter(s) of Clement. Could those letters be the known Clementine forgeries?
Catholic Encyclopedia - Clementines (Excerpt)
Another popular theory based upon the Clementines has been that it was the Epistle of Clement to James which originated the notion that St. Peter was the first Bishop of Rome. This has been asserted by no lesser authorities than Lightfoot, Salmon, and Bright, and it has been made an important point in the controversial work of the Rev. F. W. Puller, "Primitive Saints and the Roman See". It is acknowledged that in St. Cyprian's time (c. 250) it was universally believed that St. Peter was Bishop of Rome, and that he was looked upon as the type and origin of episcopacy.
Modern criticism has long since put the letter of Clement too tate to allow this theory to be tenable, and now Waitz places it after 220, and Harnack after 260. We shall presently see that it probably belongs to the fourth century.
The "Old Catholic" Professor Langen in 1890 elaborated a new theory. Until the destruction of Jerusalem in 135, he says, that city was the centre of the Christian Church. A new pivot was then needed. The Church of the capital made a bold bid for the vacant post of pre-eminence. Shortly after 135 was published the original form of the Clementine romance. It was a Roman forgery, claiming for the Church of Peter the succession to a part of the headship of the Church of James. James indeed had been "bishop of bishops", and Peter's successor could not claim to be more than Peter was among the Apostles, primus inter pares. The Roman attempt was eventually successful, but not without a struggle. Cæsarea, the metropolis of Palestine. also claimed the succession to Jerusalem. The monument of this claim is H., a recension of the Roman work made at Cæsarea before the end of the second century in order to fight Rome with her own weapons. (The intention must be admitted to have been closely veiled.) In the beginning of the third century the metropolis of the Orient, Antioch, produced a new edition, R., claiming for that city the vacant primacy. Langen's view has found no adherents.
Catholic Encyclopedia - The Clementines
Don't take my word for it. Read the full article. Better yet, do some research on the Clementine forgeries. Read both critics and apologists and then tell me you accept this "proof".
Are you all talking about I Clement? My edition of Lightfoot sais that it is one of the earliest--if not the earliest--extant Christian docyments outsaide the New Testament. "It was written about the time that John was composing Revelations on the island of Patmos? " The editor's view, however, is that Clement may not have been THE bishop of the Church of Rome, but the recording secretary or the leading bishop, since the office of monarchial bishop did not exist at that time. The editor, however, does not however give a source for his speculation except for a choice of pronouns in the text. It is intersting, by the way, that each time that Clement tells his listeners to "search the Scripture." he then alludes to a passage from the Jewish Scriptures. He does quote Christian scriptures, but more or less, aking the lines of " "As our Lord said. ..." by way of illustration.
By the way, it is rather ridiculous to think that Rome had to invent some reason why it should be the center of the Christian Church after the destruction of Jerusalem. Rome was the "Big Apple." Until the founding of New Rome in 330, it had no natural rival. Neither Antioch nor Alexandria could compete. And as an article I presented aboves notes, Those cities, which could also claim to be Apostolic Sees, fell under "barbarian" control, leaving only Rome as an independent religious center.
You seem to be hung up on the Letter(s) of Clement. Could those letters be the known Clementine forgeries?
I am aware of the forgeries; however, the First Letter of Clement is not a forgery.
History of I Clement. The epistle known as I Clement was addressed to the Church at Corinth from the Church at Rome ("The Church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the Church of God sojourning at Corinth," 1Clem 1) to intervene in a dispute over episcopal authority.
Everyone in the ancient Church was familiar with I Clement. It was revered as part of Scripture and read at the Liturgy of the Word for centuries. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, it was still being read at the time he wrote his
History of the Church (early fourth century). Athanasius quotes I Clement, as do Augustine, Ambrose and Origen. Eusebius takes it for granted that his readers have read it, and relying on his understanding of Hegesippus (who Eusebius places in the first half of the second century), writes that it was written by Clement while he was bishop of Rome (Clement was bishop between ca. 91 and 99). (Eusebius,
History of the Church, Book 3, no. 16.)
By the Middle Ages, all copies of I Clement had disappeared. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople found a copy of it in 1627, and sent a portion of it as an Easter gift to Charles I of England. Charles tendered it to his archivist/librarian (Young), who recognized its importance and identified it through Eusebius. Young simply adopted Eusebius' dating. Other portions of I Clement were discovered in the late 17th century and the 19th century. We have versions of I Clement in Greek, Latin and Syriac; some are fourth century, some are 12th century.
By 1875, I Clement was reassembled from a variety of translations and manuscripts for the first time since about the fourth century.
Certainly, some of the writers of Scripture outlived Mary and would have reported the miracle of her Bodily Assumption. No???
There is no explicit reference to the Assumption in Sacred Scripture. None. Furthermore, a Slovakian patristics scholar and priest whose lectures I help edit assures me that there is absolutely no evidence even among the apostolic fathers concerning the Assumption, although there is evidence in the apocrypha, which Catholics accept. That's what I was trying to get at with my earlier posts -- that we don't have any historical evidence of the Marian privileges, which include the Assumption, until the Marian meditations were explicitly joined with the parallel meditations on the Church, which is a fourth-century development.
So why do Catholics believe the Assumption to be part of the deposit of faith handed down from the apostles? There is a principle regarding the truths of our faith that I haven’t seen mentioned yet known as the “hierarchy of truths.” This hierarchy of truths is mentioned in the Cathechism @ 90, with a footnote that references its use in a document from Vatican II,
Unitatis redintegratio, at paragraph 11. I also found a helpful explanation of the hierarchy of truths as it relates to the Assumption in
Catholic and Christian by Alan Schreck (Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, 1984). Please forgive the length:
As explained in the prologue, Catholics believe that there is a “hierarchy” or order of Christian truths. In other words, not all Christian truths are equally central to the basic Gospel message.... This principle has its foundation in the Bible. For example, in all the New Testament letters attributed to Paul, Mary is mentioned only once, and not even by name (Gal4:4). This certainly does not prove that Paul never poke about Mary, but it does indicate that the basic gospel could be proclaimed without focusing on Mary.
******** The principle of the “hierarchy” of truths points out two extremes that must be avoided in Christian teaching about Mary. On the one hand, Marian doctrine must not be presented as equal in importance to the fundamental Christian truths about the nature of God and redemption. Mary must never be exalted to the status of a “goddess” deserving the worship and adoration due only to God. On the other hand, Mary’s role in God’s plan of salvation must not be ignored nor neglected.
******** The [Second Vaticn] Council briefly mentions here (in Lumen Gentium, no. 67] the key principle for understanding doctrines about Mary: they must always be related to Jesus Christ, who is “the source of all truth, sanctity, and piety.”
******** Many Christians who honor Mary as a woman of faith and as a model disciple have difficulty understanding why the Catholic Church teaches certain other beliefs about Mary — that she was conceived without sin, for example, or that she was assumed into heaven at the end of her life on earth. Where did these teachings come from? They are not explicitly taught in scripture, and it is not even historically clear that they were handed down from the preaching of the original apostles. Rather, these beliefs emerged over time as Christians reflected on what the Bible says about Jesus and his mother.
******** As the teaching authorities of the Catholic Church discerned which beliefs about Mary were to be considered the authentic beliefs of the church, two principles of discernment guided their judgment. First, no Christian belief can contradict anything in the Bible or in the genuine tradition handed down from the apostles. All further understandings of Mary’s role had to be tested against the canon of revealed truth. Secondly, any insight that develops from reflection on the Christian revelation must be shown to have won acceptance from God’s people over a long period of time.
******** The Catholic belief in the “Assumption” of Mary into heaven is in some ways connected to her Immaculate Conception.... The concept of the Immaculate Conception explains how Mary was saved from sin by Jesus in a unique way; Mary’s Assumption shows the result of this freedom from sin — the immediate union of her whole being with God at the end of her life.
The book of Genesis implies that if Mary was preserved from sin by the free gift of God, she would not be bound to experience the consequences of sin — death — in the same way we do. Her assumption into heaven might be understood of what might have happened at the end of all of our lives had Adam and Eve not sinned.
Again, my apologies for the length of my post.