Of course it's established...It's established in the scriptures...
Apostles and others died during the course of the writing of scripture...The Apostle John never hinted that he or we should pray to any of these dead 'saints'...John also told us that everything we need to know for salvation was revealed to us in the scriptures...
We are told to go right to the throne of Grace, the throne of Jesus for our prayers and requests...No dead saints or Mary...
We are not to think of men above what has been written...There are no saints in heaven who are any closer to God than we are right now...
There is no Catholic Mass in the New Testament Church...The bible teaches against those in your religion who wear long robes who you people call 'father' (just to name a couple of things)...
There is no special priesthood class in the New Testament church...There aren't even any priests...
There is NO RECORD of any dissension in the Church over the “invention” of the Mass, the introduction of images, the veneration of the martyrs and other saints.
Well not in your Church...Why would there be??? But in the church of the bible, there were plenty of cases...All those countless peoples and towns that your religion tortured and murdered for centuries for refusing to bow down to your popes, refusing to eat your wafers, refusing to pray to Mary, etc., etc...
You are trying to get me to believe that MASSIVE changes in the Christian religion, the introduction of idolatry, the hierarchy, etc., and NOBODY CONDEMNED it as heresy until the SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
The centuries we are talking about saw the major Christological and Trinitarian heresies, and their condemnation. But NO CONDEMNATIONS of the “idolatry” and “paganism” you complain about.
That is according to YOUR CATHOLIC history...That doesn't mean there's any truth to it...
You continue to ignore the 1500-YEAR SILENCE.
Let's see...Your religion started with Constantine with the pagans and the armies that controlled the known world at the time...It murdered the saints, burned their bibles, destroyed their churches and towns...
One can only wonder how much was written by them that we'll never know...And one might wonder how many of their 'church fathers' had written records that were destroyed by your religion and were martyred in the process...
Never know how much of that could be revealed in the secret archives of the Vatican...