The "Historical Gap" Argument

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This was, for me, what got me settled firmly on Orthodoxy as opposed to Catholicism. You simply can't refute it. The Historical Gap Argument says that the Catholic Church's notion of the Early Church as being a single, corporate structure united under the authoritarian totalitarian leadership of the Pope of Rome as Christ's Vicar on Earth doesn't hold weight simply because no one from the Early Church mentions it. We see this version of Christianity first referred too really in the sixth century, and only really beginning to take off in the seventh. Up until then, there are only a couple-dozen references from the same guys about the Church looking like this, quotes that Catholics love to float about, but that simply don't erase the hundreds of thousands of writings we have from then that DON'T mention it. This would not have been a minor issue to be glossed over. This would not have been just the talk of the day. It would have defined Christianity at its core, as a very religion. And yet, it simply doesn't seem to pop up, except for in a couple dozen or so isolated references that you'll find Catholics shouting everywhere. What we DO seem to find plastered everywhere is the notion of the Church as a disorganized, locally-focused religion united under the tutorship of the Local Bishop, equal to all other Bishops, which is the structure of the Orthodox Church right up until the present day. When presented with this argument, the Catholic will usually simply claim that there was no point in pointing out the obvious, that it was so obvious that the Church was like that that no one ever felt the need to notice it - an argument, in other words, that amounts to a steaming pile of horseshit. If not, they'll say that it actually WAS the way The Orthodox claim it was, but "Jesus didn't intend it to be like that" in other words an even oozier pile of horseshit. If you really do believe that the Early Church looked like that, please tell me why I can't read about it.