[Iscool]

You're edging perilously close to a Mormon argument ... "the church fell apart when the last apostle died, and had to be restored in the 1840's by a God-anointed prophet from upstate New York".

One difference is I never suggested the church fell apart...

The only apostle who would have been a legitimate candidate (alive, not too old, whereabouts known with some certainty)

Apparently 80 isn't too old for you guys...And Paul was right there in Rome when Peter died...

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

So where was the Church until Luther? Are you rehasing the tired old argument that an underground Church of true believers existed that was hunted and persecuted by the Catholic Church. That Cathars, Lollards, Hussites and then Protestants are visible examples of that Church?

[Campion]

One difference is I never suggested the church fell apart...

You're right, you didn't "suggest" it. You said it categorically, and have said it multiple times.

Don't you begin to see how incomprehensible it is that you're proposing that the church apostatized under a man who (a) was selected by the Roman church to be bishop; (b) knew the Apostles, or at least Peter and Paul, personally; (c) wrote an epistle that was treated as Scripture by a significant number of Christian believers for the next couple of centuries; and (d) died as a martyr for the faith ... while the possibility that you, Iscool, not Clement, might be the one who's really apostate never enters into your head?

And Paul was right there in Rome when Peter died...

There's no definitive proof that Paul's head was still connected to his shoulders by then, as far as I know. In fact, I can show you a couple of Bible verses which seem to indicate it probably wasn't.