A little historical follow up
Nihil Obstat and an imprimatur mean only that the work was submitted to a bishop before publishing to ascertain that it did not contain heresy; it does mean that it represents an official statement of the Catholic version of history. That said, I’m not sure what you think is scandalous, here. A bishop (episcopus) oversees a metropolis; his authority is delegated to various pastors (presbyterus) because there are multiple parishes (ekklesiae) in a given see (metropolis). In the first century, with so few missions (ekklesiae), it was quite normal for a see and a parish to be one and the same thing, hence there was little practical division between presbyter and episcopus, other than a presbyter could be appointed by a single episcopus, rather than a minimum of three. I don’t detect any refutation of Catholic doctrine in what you seem to have surmised is a gotcha moment here. The bishop who granted a notice of Nihil Obstat certainly didn’t detect one. If you’re implying that the papal authority of Sts. Cletus, Clement and Linus is an invention of Catholic bloggers, that’s just plain absurd.
Finally, the acquiescence to the popular usage of “Roman Catholic” bears little on the objection that the modifier “Roman” is a Protestant epithet. In fact, given the emergence of fraudulent uses of the word “Catholic,” (Old Catholic Church, etc.), it’s probably a wise if unfortunate inclusion when discussing theology or identifying parishes as being in union with the pope.
By the way, were you not Catholic long enough to have heard of auxiliary bishops?
There are currently five in the Archdiocese of NY: http://archny.org/our-bishops.
There are currently seven in Rome:
http://www.vicariatusurbis.org/?page_id=379
So I’m not sure what Mr. Schultz thinks he’s proving, but there being three bishops of Rome concurrently is no skin off my nose. The old Encyclopedia even says flat out the custom is Apostolic:
“They come down to us from Apostolic times; thus Linus and Cletus were vicars, or auxiliaries, to St. Peter at Rome; Ammianus [Anianus], to St. Mark of Alexandria; Alexander, to Narcissus (aged 116 years) of Jerusalem; St. Gregory the Theologian, auxiliary in pontificals to St. Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus; St. Augustine, coadjutor of Valerius of Hippo;”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02145b.htm
You cannot disprove apostolic succession. You can argue about the primacy of the pope. But that’s an argument way way older than the doctrines of your religion. And do not say your religion is “Christian, unless of course you are a follower “Mere Christianity”.
Even if we surrender the primacy of the Pope, the tenets of “mere Catholicism” or “Mere Orthodoxy” are much more compelling than sola scriptura,
Titus 1:5-7 shows that presbuteros (senior/elder) or episkopos (superintendent/overseer) refer to one office, with the former title corresponding to the mature leadership of the person, and the latter to his function.
.the evidence both from the New Testament and from such writings as I Clement, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians and The Shepherd of Hermas favors the view that initially the presbyters in each church, as a college, possessed all the powers needed for effective ministry. This would mean that the apostles handed on what was transmissible of their mandate as an undifferentiated whole, in which the powers that would eventually be seen as episcopal were not yet distinguished from the rest. Hence, the development of the episcopate would have meant the differentiation of ministerial powers that had previously existed in an undifferentiated state and the consequent reservation to the bishop of certain of the powers previously held collegially by the presbyters. — Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops , pp. 224
"So far as i know, it was only ca. 200 that the term “priest” started to be applied to the bishop and only still later was it applied to the presbyter. This observation explains why some Protestant churches which insist on using New Testament language alone refuse to call their ministers priests. When in the post-New Testament period the language of priesthood did begin to be applied to the bishops and presbyters, it brought with it a certain Old Testament background of sacrificing Levitical priesthood. The introduction of that language was logically tied in to the development of the language for the eucharist as a sacrifice. (...I think there were sacrificial aspects in the early understanding of the eucharist, but I have no indication that the eucharist was called a sacrifice before the beginning of the second century.) When the eucharist began to be thought of as a sacrifice, the person assigned to preside at the eucharist (bishop and later presbyter) would soon be called a priest, since priests were involved with sacrifice." — Raymond Brown (Sulpician Father and a prominent Biblical scholar), Q 95 Questions and Answers on the Bible, p. 125, with Imprimatur.
Catholic writer Greg Dues in “Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide” states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."
"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice, the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist."