Voice of the Faithful has a Long Island chapter in case anyone cares. I occasionally check out their website to see if there is anything of interest. The minutes of their November 15th regional meeting (held at a Universalist Unitarian place) had an interesting sentence that caught my eye. The guest speaker was a writer named Thomas Cahill who wrote "Mysteries of the Middle Ages The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe". The minutes list some good things he says about the Middle Ages and I am glad to read that yet another author is attempting to correct the record of this age as the "dark ages". I don't know if the minutes accurately reflect what he said but the VOTF minute taker records:

"With regard to the structure of our Church, he reminded us that Jesus did not ordain anyone. It is safe to assume that neither did He envision the pyramidal organization as we have today. " [emphasis mine]