Michael, ALL of your facts here are accurate; however, you all too easily gloss over (perhaps on purpose, and that is fine) the issue that the books of Matthew, Mark, and John are complete FORGERIES. While the Church attempts to whitewash and downplay these facts by using fanciful terms like "pseudepigraphical works" to describe them, a the end of the day, the Apostle Matthew did not write the gospel book that bears his name. And neither did the Apostle Mark nor did the Apostle John write the books that bear their names.

To be quite bold and brutally honest, the Church LIED and continues to lie about the authorship of these books to the laity. I don't know what else to call the deliberate act of not telling people who the real unknown authors are.

Peter is also not the author of the books of Peter. You should have learned this in seminary. And it sounds like you did, but I don't share the view that it's okay to teach from a lying writ.