For some things there is no argument --- only facts that cannot be dismissed. Here is what even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits about Simon Magus under the section called Impostors:
"[W]e may recognize in the Simon Magus of whom we read in Acts viii 5-24, the first notorious impostor of Christian church history. He offered St. Peter money that he might have power to impart to others the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the Acts do not tell us very much more about him than that he had previously practised sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria. But Justin Martyr and other early writers inform us that he afterwards went to Rome, worked miracles there by the power of demons, and received Divine honours both in Rome and in his own country. Though much extravagant legend afterwards gathered round the name of this Simon, and in particular the story of a supposed contest in Rome between him and St. Peter, when Simon attempting to fly was brought to earth by the Apostle's word, breaking his leg in his fall, it seems nevertheless probable that there must be some foundation in fact for the account given by Justin and accepted by Eusebius. The historical Simon Magus no doubt founded some sort of religion as a counterfeit of Christianity in which he claimed to play a part analogous to that of Christ."
Isn't that the part the Pope plays: the Vicar of Christ. And didn't the Papacy, laying claim to a part analogous to that of Christ, take root at the time that the disciples of Simon Magus were pouring into the Church in Rome?
Your unstated but implied thesis is that the Catholic Church is founded on Simon Magus instead of on Peter. Here is the dilemma for that thesis: either the gates of hell prevailed over the true Church when Simon Magus took the reigns, or you are blaspheming the true Church. Which is it?
-A8