The conversation has obviously moved on, but I find your post so puzzling I wanted to make a comment.

The hierarchy is a sacrament, a development of ordination. The bishops preaching is a sign of God speaking to us. That precedes the tenets and creeds that they propose. The tenets and creeds are attempts to explain how the sacraments and fellowship "work."

The sacrament, as a showing of God's action, is prior to any system that explains them. And as a part of God's action, every sacrament is a mystery that cannot be fully contained within human thought and systems.

 If you want to treat the hierarchy as a purely human structure, you can pursue that idea; it might even add to our understanding of the faith. It would be a novel idea in Catholicism.