The Roman Catholic church in 2022.
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I Timothy 2:5-6 "5. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6. who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time,"
And like I said the Church isn't getting between you and Jesus. You can disagree with the Church. I personally disagree with the Church's stance that priests must be who you confess to before God forgives sin. That may change one day, as Church doctrine does.
It IS however the only earthly authority Jesus said can speak for Him. You can't ignore that scripture.
I recognize the importance and authority of the apostles in establishing the transcendent church (spirtitual not material) of Jesus Christ, I simply don't believe that authority is held by the catholic church or even anybody alive today.
Nobody knows exactly what Jesus meant by Matthew 16:18-19. Anyone that says they do is lying. It's open to interpretation.
The Catholic Church is the dead husk of the old establishment. Almost all of their doctrines and traditions were created to solidify their power and influence over society. Of course they would claim Matthew 16:18-19 is referring to them.
If you spend enough time in scripture, it's clear the "church" -- the body of Christ -- is referring to the body of believers, not some human institution which is prone to corruption by human influence.
C.S. Lewis nailed it in Ch. 2 of The Screwtape Letters
"One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do riot mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans."
This is always such a bizarre take because the early church was getting slaughtered and crucified for their beliefs and doctrines. It was not a ploy to rule society. The early church won over the people through their actions, martyrdom, people believing them, and their passion.
The Catholic Church has been around for nearly two-thousand years. If you have to go back that far to find an example where the church wasn't in a position of power and influence, you're more or less making my point.
That aside, the Catholic Church has little in common with the early church.
The early church were pockets of believers that rose up organically throughout Mediterranean world via the ministry of the apostles and their disciples. This early church didn't have an organizational structure with doctrines and a hierarchy determined by church politics. Most of this came later with the "Romanization" of Christianity, which only increased exponentially with Constantine's legalization of Christianity following the persecution of the first three centuries.
In many respects the early church had far more in common with modern Evangelicals, with their small in-home church groups and narrow focus on Jesus and the Bible, than the modern Catholic Church which has centuries worth of doctrines and traditions that have little-to-nothing to do with Christianity in it's original form.