To paraphrase Jesus Christ:
"I declare, Simon, that you are the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and it will last until the end of time."
If that isn't the establishment of an absolute, monarchical form of church "government," then I don't know what it is. In specifically elevating ONE of his closest disciples (and not his "favorite" one in a personal sense) above the other twelve, Jesus established a monarchy, not a senate.
Matthew 16: 13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" 14 They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17 Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." 20 Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
However, check this out and see who the ROCK actually is:
1 Corinthians 1 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that ROCK was CHRIST.
Peter/Cephas means "little rock," much like Christian means "little Christ." Peter, is not "THE ROCK," but a rock. Jesus did not build his Church on a man! Plus, Jesus never specified a continual organization along the lines that Catholics maintain. Christ is the head of the Church, and always has been. The Church is certainly not the exclusive preserve of the Catholic Church, the fallible men who are running it, despite their protests to the contrary.....