Mass Confusion

When I became confused about my Christian faith, I decided the best thing to do was to go back to square one.  I wanted to know what the early church looked like, how they worshipped, what they did when Christ left it in the hands of His apostles.

The problem is, once Revelation ends there isn't much telling us about the first Christians attending established churches.

I grew up learning that Catholicism and Orthodoxy aren't right.  They were some early medieval bastardization based on economy and control and government than God.

I also learned that their Mass was wrong.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that the Catholic and Orthodox churches trace their history back so far and so close to the end of the Bible.

I looked into other very early church denominations and I learned that pretty much all of them follow the same practices of Mass, Mary as the Mother of God, the intercession of Saints, the Eucharist....

Churches such as the one the Ethiopian Eunuch who spoke with Christ, Himself apparently started is quite similar.

So, that makes me confused.  If the Roman Catholic church practices and dogma are so wrong, then why do pretty much all the earliest of church denominations practice and believe pretty much the same thing?  That can't be ignored.

Protestants believe that since the veil was torn and Christ established his New Covenant, all this ritual and "legalism" isn't needed.

The Mass and rituals of the Catholic and Orthodox churches mirror that of Judaism of old, though!  If God established Judaism with its ornate tabernacles, specific rules and rituals, it's calendar (liturgy), it's priests (rabbis), etc, then why is it so far-fetched to think He wouldn't have established similar with the New Covenant?