Did you ever quiet yourself enough you could hear what He may have tried to convey to you, back? If you said "yes", I'd find that hard to believe without something further to counter what I'm so far detecting to the contrary.
Yet I would need to write up several book length replies to counter the nonsense you are sending me off into? I've had about enough of that from FRomans, on this forum. You have no clear idea who you are talking to...I've been at this for many years -- and have seen/investigated (in general, and in close details, too) most any argument you may care to make.
After these many days since I last posted comment to which you eventually gave reply, you go through a laundry list, and in the middle of it is Steve Ray?
YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING.
That guy? I've already seen some of his counter-arguments on the particular subject, and as usual, it fails, so I won't even bother wasting my time further with the "detailed replies" of persons such as Steve Ray. He's full of [unprintable on this forum]. The only way his arguments could possibly work -- is to fulfill the a priori assumption and assertion of the Church of Rome -- arguments which nobody else countenances (including the various Orthodox) other than those who have been successfully brow-beaten into not rocking Rome's boat in interest of having peace among various churches.
I'm interested in TRUTH foremost. Regarding claims it makes for itself (alone, as it were) truth is not much found among the Church of Rome -- other than having been tortured into submission to it's own self-interests.
Nothing Steve Ray would have to say at this point would convince me that singular papacy as known to Rome was how the church initially was organized. There is far too much undeniable evidence to the contrary.
To simplify --- if singular papacy, as known to Rome --- was how the earliest Church had been duly arranged, it would not have taken many centuries for it to eventually develop, and one would not have to seek out the likes of the Steve Rays of this world for blathering explanation of how what can be found within historical record does not indicate what it obviously enough DOES indicate.
Then, in this note you send -- after how many days(?) you end with obscurities, like mention of articles written in German, allegedly asserting prayers among Jews TO the dead were common (rather than marginal if at all, and a thing borrowed from pagans) to then end with the special pleading worthlessness of catacomb "evidence"?
That last is prime example of Catholics reading into what is there -- what they want to see, instead of what is more actually there.
Then there remains the huge problem of prayers for, and regarding the dead having been common enough from the beginnings of Christianity, which can be proved through earliest records, but (and his is crucial) which LACK elements of prayer being directed TO the dead (as in --- requesting assistance directly from the departed) although prayers to the dead rather than more merely "about" and concerning them did come eventually to pass, first, as expansion of cult of the martyrs.
Whatever the argument in support of the practice --- prayers TO the dead are not biblical, and even counter-biblical.
Jesus instructed us how to pray. He provided the template. Matthew 23
Jesus also made a point of saying, in context of "religious" teachers, and those whom would seek to lord it over others in "religious" context ---call no man Father.
Who should be believed? Jesus himself, who was Immanuel, God among us -- or those who follow the template/model of the very Pharisaical practice Jesus was warning His disciples about?