[paladinan]

Now, against that you have what? Matt 16:16 setting up Peter as the Infallible Leader of the Church? Not hardly!

Oh, come, now! If you're going to toss around terms like "infallible", you might at least study what they mean. If you can find any authoritative Catholic text (the Catechism would do nicely, but feel free to use any official Church document) which claims that the Pope is "always and everywhere without error, about everything", then I'll happily apologize, and abandon Catholicism.

"Infallibility" is restricted to the "negative" protection given, by the Holy Spirit, to the Church (and to the Holy Father, when he binds the universal Church with a formal teaching, on pain of heresy), when She (the Church) defines something as being (already) revealed by God. It can't "invent" new doctrines, and it doesn't apply to the Pope's ability to pick lottery numbers, play a perfect game of golf, or even avoid foolishness or sin. It prevents the Pope from saying anything FALSE when articulating the formal dogma revealed by Christ.

With a bit of research (rather than knee-jerk, bigoted, straw-man, "gotcha-style" attacks), you could easily have found that out. Irrational prejudice is truly a darkener of the intellect.

And if you're so fascinated by holding St. Paul up at St. Peter's expense, perhaps you might ponder this?

Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:2)

Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4)

...compared to this:

Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

Oops?

This is not to disrespect St. Paul; it's to point out, in one of dozens of ways, that your synthetic "St. Paul repudiated St. Peter, so that settles the matter of so-called 'infallibility'" idea is pure, self-serving bunkum.

[Mr Rogers]

I know what the doctrine of papal infallibility means. And when Peter gave in to the folks who said circumcision was a requirement for salvation, and stayed away from the Gentiles, he erred on a central issue of salvation.

Here was the issue before Peter:

” 15We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

Was it “Faith + obeying the Law”, or faith alone that saves us? And Peter screwed up, in public, and was rebuked by Paul.

Was Paul willing to have someone circumcised so they could better spread the Gospel? Yes. There is no harm in that. There is great harm in making it a requirement for salvation, as Peter was willing to allow...until rebuked by Paul.

And please do not pretend that the Catholic Church doesn’t allow new doctrine. That is a part of its teaching - that Sacred Tradition reveals new truths, not because they are new, but because they were not understood to be true until the doctors of the church and people came to believe them.

You won’t find transubstantiation as doctrine in 500 AD.