> The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time

What does this even mean? That the Catholic Church has some special authority by dint of having been around a long time? Also, what does it even mean if the Catholic Church has been around for a long time when so much about it (including the line of Popes) has been interrupted? Feels a bit like Theseus's ship.

> BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.

By what metric? Catholicism added _a whole lot_ onto traditional Christian teaching (Saints, the pseudo-divinity of mary, the infallibility of the papacy, relics, purgatory, etc) that many protestant denominations have stripped away. One could easily argue (and many do) that these protestant denominations are closer.

I'm not sure we can find an objective answer, or that finding one is even useful beyond ego stroking.