The RCC has never been able to produce any credible evidence for this myth. Therefore, place that in the category of "sacred tradition" ... no evidence required then.
So what is the nature of the evidence you discount, and why?
For Peter being in Rome?
If a tomb holding the bones of an elderly male whose feet had been cut off, with an ancient Greek inscription on it that says "Peter is within" (along with a lot of other evidence of ancient Christian veneration of the site), as well as the testimony of every church father who had anything to say on the topic ... if that isn't "credible evidence," what is?
Ignatius (AD 107) refers to Peter and Paul in connection with the Roman church (he ought to know; he knew both Peter and Paul personally).
Irenaeus, 70 years later, speaks of the Roman see being founded by Peter. Cyprian, 70 years after that, refers to the Roman popes as successors of Peter. All of that is still 60 years before Constantine came on the scene, and the building of a basilica over the burial site that stood until its replacement by the current building in the 16th Century.
To simply discount all of that testimony from men who lived so close to the actual events is like saying that we don't really know where George Washington is buried. Oh, sure, there's a lot of people who say he's buried at Mt. Vernon in Virginia, and there's a tombstone there with his name on it, but really -- all that stuff is just a myth, probably invented by Andrew Jackson for political reasons.
Then where was Peter?
He must have been someplace.
Was he in Spain?
Libya?
Athens? Corinth? Damascus? Rhodes?
Somebody there must have known where he was.
By the same measure,
your ``The RCC has never been able to produce any credible evidence for this myth. ``
we don`t even know where Obummer was neither,
The DNC has never been able to produce any credible evidence for this myth.
Ergo, Obummer is also a myth.
Reductio ad absurdam.
The RCC has never been able to produce any credible evidence for this myth. Therefore, place that in the category of "sacred tradition" ... no evidence required then.
You apparently make a point of ignoring the Apostolic Fathers, not to mention Eusebius. I was going to point out that Peter was bishop of Antioch (per Ignatius, the second successor after him) and that he likely did not arrive in Rome until at least the middle 50's if not later. By then the church in Jerusalem was firmly planted (with James the Just as its head: this is not James the Apostle, by the way).The church in Rome, famed for centuries as the lodestone for correct understanding, was therefore not the first church planted (being first doesn't mean anything anyway).
I should also point out for those thinking 'catholic' meant 'universal' in any time period within centuries of the first one after Christ that this became the translation only when Vincent of Lerins and Augustine of Hippo used it that way in the late fourth century. Originally, the word meant 'complete' as in 'we are the catholic (hath olou) church because we have an apostolic bishop at our head, celebrate a true Eucharist and give the great Amen as one congregation, after which we communicate the most sacred Body and Blood of our Savior, exactly as He told us to do. We therefore have access to the saving grace of the kath olou (complete) Christ and the greatest likelihood of reaching salvation.
When one realizes this distinction, one easily understands what Paul means when he says 'the church in the house of [fill in the blank]' or the 'church which meets in one place at {fill in the blank]'. There is a universal (oeconomicos) catholic (kath olou) church when every church headed by a bishop holds the same understanding of the Savior they worship. So many local catholic churches add up to one universal catholic church.
Sorry if this wastes protestant reading time.