[Uncle Chip]

If you look at the writings of the Early Church Fathers, you will see references to the Apostolic Succession, (10) to the bishops as guardians of the Deposit of Faith, (11) and to the primacy and the authority of Rome. (12) The collective weight of these references makes clear the fact that the early Church understood itself has having a hierarchy which was central to maintaining the integrity of the Faith.

Baloney.

The one single authority to which all the early church fathers deferred was Scripture. They didn't quote each other as if they were all equally authoritative [Tradition], nor did they appeal to their offices [if they held any] as if people should listen to them as some kind of Magisterial supremes because of the garments they wore, but they all with few exceptions cited Scripture as that single Authority for the things that they wrote.

You guys are living in a fantasy of your own making and breathing in too much of that Vatican thin hot air.

[AnAmericanMother]

"Where the bishop is, there is the Church."

- Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr ca. 50 A.D. - 98 A.D.

Ignatius and St. Polycarp knew the Apostle John personally.