Hahahaha. You wish.
Everyone responding to this thread who was
actually Roman Catholic for years and has read and previously owned a copy of the Catechism, raise your hand!
*raises hand*
Anyone else? Any Mormon posters, maybe?
Also, way to cite something that totally contradicts the point you're trying to make when you actually read it in context, where
the very next paragraph explains what it is talking about. Let's read it together, shall we? Here, I'll put them in sequence as they are in the Catechism, with the headings as they appear at
the Vatican's website:
860 In the office of the apostles there is one aspect that cannot be transmitted: to be the chosen witnesses of the Lord's Resurrection and so the foundation stones of the Church. But their office also has a permanent aspect. Christ promised to remain with them always. The divine mission entrusted by Jesus to them "will continue to the end of time, since the Gospel they handed on is the lasting source of all life for the Church. Therefore, . . . the apostles took care to appoint successors."
The bishops - successors of the apostles
861 "In order that the mission entrusted to them might be continued after their death, [the apostles] consigned, by will and testament, as it were, to their immediate collaborators the duty of completing and consolidating the work they had begun, urging them to tend to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit had appointed them to shepherd the Church of God. They accordingly designated such men and then made the ruling that likewise on their death other proven men should take over their ministry."
862 "Just as the office which the Lord confided to Peter alone, as first of the apostles, destined to be transmitted to his successors, is a permanent one, so also endures the office, which the apostles received, of shepherding the Church, a charge destined to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops." Hence the Church teaches that "the bishops have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church, in such wise that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ."
The apostolate
863 The whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of faith and life with her origin: and in that she is "sent out" into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways. "The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well." Indeed, we call an apostolate "every activity of the Mystical Body" that aims "to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth."
864 "Christ, sent by the Father, is the source of the Church's whole apostolate"; thus the fruitfulness of apostolate for ordained ministers as well as for lay people clearly depends on their vital union with Christ. In keeping with their vocations, the demands of the times and the various gifts of the Holy Spirit, the apostolate assumes the most varied forms. But charity, drawn from the Eucharist above all, is always "as it were, the soul of the whole apostolate."
I included the last two paragraphs about the apostolate because we had talked about that earlier, and that puts it better than I could in paragraph 863.
Anyway, the point is that it literally says that it is the bishops who are the successors to the apostles. That's why the RCC has bishops and not 'apostles' as the ecclesiastical highest rank in their Church. (Outside of the Roman Pope, since he is above the bishops in their conception of the Church, following some of the declarations made in Vatican I.)
So it's
still the case that "Apostle" is not an office in the Christian Church, and never has been. The successors to the apostles are the bishops. No one is elected or raised to some nonexistent 'Office of Apostle'. Even Rome, which obviously uses that kind of language, still doesn't have that
as an actual office (they've got a pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, deacons, etc., but no 'head apostles' or whatever; again, they already have bishops who are the successors of the apostles, so such a thing would be at best redundant). But nice try with your 'game, set, and match'. Hahahahahaha. Thanks for that. I needed the laugh.