Your foundational scripture is built on the presumption that Christ came to pass some sort of royalty to a vast artificial entity to oversee the spiritual condition of men and judge who should come to Him, and who should not.
The rock upon which Christ's church was founded is the individual link with the Father and His guidance, inspiration and motivation. And Jesus lauded Peter for using that relationship to receive the revelation the Jesus was the Son of God.
For, that is a rock.
You can take millions of atoms out of a rock and it still is the foundation of a rock, because all the others bear up the whole weight equally.
If you build salvation of all on a one atom rock, like one all powerful church with exclusive keys to the Kingdom, when that one atom is taken out so does what it holds up crash down.
Of the two rocks, it is the former that the gates of hell shall not prevail against.
Individuals, not corporate entities, please.
Christ came to pass some sort of royalty to a vast artificial entity to oversee the spiritual condition of men and judge who should come to Him, and who should not. Exactly so. Christ is king and the pope is His vicar on earth. But why is it "artificial"? Few things are more natural that royalty. As to judging, the commandment is to "preach the gospel to all creation"; however, the key to the kindgom is indeed, the scripture tells us in the hand of the successor of St. Peter.
The rock upon which Christ's church was founded is the individual link with the Father and His guidance, inspiration and motivation
I recognize this as a Protestant spin, but where is this in the Scripture? There is one Peter, one set of keys and one body of Christ His Church. There is nothing in that passage to indicate that the other apostles standing nearby receive their keys, or are also rocks.