Does 1 Clement Prove that the Corinthian Church appealed to the Church of Rome?

Commenting on the ecclesiology of the late first/early second centuries of the Christian era, Michael Kruger wrote that:

[T]here are no indications that any one bishop/church was in a position of authority over another bishop/church in a different locale. For example, while the author of 1 Clement makes his appeal to the church at Corinth regarding the improper removal of presbyters, there is no indication that the church has any jurisdictional authority over the latter. 1 Clement is not crafted as a directive but instead is designed to persuade—a common reason why letters were written between churches in this period. As Chadwick observes: ‘while each local church felt itself to be self-sufficient . . . yet the independence and autonomy of this local community is limited by the mutual care of the local churches must have for each other’ (H. Chadwick, ‘The Role of the Christian Bishop in Ancient Society’, Protocol of the Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture 35 [1980], 1-14, at 1). (Michael J. Kruger, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church [London: SPCK, 2017], 92)

This contradicts popular Catholic apologetic works that point to 1 Clement as “proof” of the ultimate jurisdiction of the Church of Rome over other churches at the end of the first century. The argument goes is that the church in Corinth wrote to Rome for a definitive answer to the issues they were facing.

While still attempting to maintain the historical basis of the Roman Catholic papacy, as dogmatically defined in 1870 during Vatican I, Catholic apologist Steve Ray admits that there is no evidence that the church in Corinth wrote to Rome requesting an authoritative answer to their problems:

There is no evidence of an appeal by the Corinthian Church to Rome for help. (Steve Ray, Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999], 125 n. 23)

For a solid historical analysis of 1 Clement and how it refutes, not supports, Roman Catholic dogmatic teachings on the papacy, see:

Edward Denny on 1 Clement

In this post, I reproduce Denny’s discussion of this epistle from his magisterial volume, Papalism: A treatise on the claims of the papacy as set forth in the encyclical Satis Cognitum (1912)