Precisely! And that's exactly the problem with the article.
You seem like a curious, open-minded person, who wants to know when and why such an idea can take root in the Church. Well, the only way to answer that question is to study history. Christian history specifically. We need to go back to the earliest generations of Christians, read what they wrote, and trace the development of their ideas down the centuries. In other words, you have to study Patristics. The Church Fathers.
Now here's the problem that many people, including the author of this article, run up against.
When you read the Church Fathers, you find something that is, to many people including myself, rather surprising. You very often see distinctively Catholic idea *right from the beginning*. So you'll read, for instance, Irenaeus of Lyons writing already in the 160s-170s that it was a matter of necessity--necessity--that every Church be in agreement with the Church of Rome because of its foundation by Peter and Paul and because it preserved the Apostolic doctrine in its purity from the very beginning. You read Clement of Rome in the 90s writing to the Corinthians taking an unusually authoritative tone with them. You see Ignatius of Antioch writing with authority to all these different sees until he writes to Rome, where he suddenly becomes deferential. You read in Eusebius that Victor, bishop of Rome in the 190s was threatening to excommunicate the East for its Quartodeciman observance of Easter date.
And this is all way before Constantine. Way before Christianity was even legalized in the Empire. This was the time of the catacombs, of the persecutions.
Basically, most people who read these writings find that they show a much more "Catholic" Church than they might expect. And there's a range of responses to that. Some people adopt a little more of a tolerant attitude and respect toward the Catholic distinctives (I think C.S. Lewis is in this class). Others actually convert. What the author of this article has done, however, I think is a little goofy. He looks at these early Christian writings saying these things that he finds a little too "Catholic" and he says..."Well...they are obviously heretics! We shouldn't listen to them!"
That's what's wrong with the article. Instead of revisiting his own assumptions about what the early Church was like, he just labels these folks heretics. Which begs the question--if all these guys were heretics, then who back then was orthodox?
So if you think it would indeed be helpful to find out when all these Roman Catholic ideas originated, I would advise you to do what others have done who have looked into this question and read the Church Fathers yourself. I can't know of course what your response will be to what you read. But not a few people, myself included, who have done so have come to the conclusion that these ideas were contained in the Church from the very beginning.
Also, technically, we hold that revelation stopped when the last Apostle shuffled off the mortal coil. So the writers assertion:
The teaching of the “church fathers” does not contain one jot or tittle of divine revelation.is a yawner for us. We never said it did.
Then he suggests a meaning of "Church Fathers" which is nonsense to us -- and argues against it.
Similarly, mostly the disagreements are disagreements of emphasis, and the persistent problem of the what I am coming to think of as the protestant binary view, an insistence on a simple-minded interpretation and evaluation of a proposition. E.G.: He suggests we teach the false doctrine that Martyrdom provides forgiveness. Now, IF that means that we think the martyr has no need of faith in Christ, of the Holy Spirit in his life, or of Christ's once for all redeeming sacrifice, then it is inaccurate.
But he will be able to find instances of our asserting that we can be confident that, say, Polycarp is in heaven because of his martyrdom. He will spin that one way, while we hear something quite different.
His citing (without references) Tertullian gives an example of the problem of the sledge-hammer approach. Why doesn't he mention that while we look at Tertullian's earlier works as a picture of Xtian thought in his time, we also think that Tertullian became a heretic? It is dishonest to fail to mention that, or to suggest that we teach that "there was a time when the Son of God did not exist."
So he starts this rant by arguing against something we do not think or teach, and then presents evidence for his argument. The entire thing is built on a shaky foundation.
If I were to start an argument against you by saying "There is NO evidence that The apostle Paul was a red-headed parrot," and then provided reams of evidence that Paul was NOT a red-headed parrot, would you take me seriously? That is more or less what this guy does, and that's why I'm laughing.