"Unlike the state, the church was established from above, so to speak, by God’s action in Christ, who gave special powers to Peter and the Twelve. The church began to pulse with life when the Holy Spirit descended upon the church as a whole at Pentecost"
I agree 100% with this.
"Only subsequently, as the faith spread to Antioch, Rome, Alexandria and other cities, was it necessary to set up local authorities in charge of particular churches. The particular churches were, as Vatican II puts it, "fashioned after the model of the universal church," which is therefore antecedent to them, even though it in certain respects depends on them ("Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," No. 23)."
I disagree with this. The history of the early church does not show this. The universal church existed from Pentecost, but the particular churches, say of Smyrna or Corinth or Magnesia were in absolute fact THE universal church in each of these areas, not "ecclesias" "fashioned after the model of the universal church". I think it is completely wrong and distorted ecclesiology to think that the structures of these particular churches was some sort of administrative necessity.
Perhaps, but would you argue with the premise that the historical development of the Church was:
universal church => local churches => grouping of local churches into regional patriarchates
This is not to question the importance or place of the local churches in relation to the universal church, just the historical order of their formation.
In addition to the question of historical formation, would you object to the statement that the local churches flow ontologically from the universal church?
Besides which it begs for focus on institutionalizing of the church. And that, imho, leads further and logically to clericalism and perhaps even legalism.