. James may have been the "bishop" of the Church in Jerusalem, but there is no doubt that Peter is the Peter is the "star" of the first fifteen chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. Rather abruptly, the attention passes to Paul, which means.....? Cerrtainly not that Peter was somehow superceded by Paul, whgo is, as Both James and First Peter imply, somewhat suspect in the Church, and as Paul admits, required to justify himself by reference not only to his encounter with Jesus but his meetings with the elders of the Church, including Cephas and James. Thematically, Acts creditrs Peter with the "opening" the Church to Gentiles by a special revelation. Paul and his companins take up their mission to the Gentiles from that point. Peter only passes "offstage" not into oblivion. Do we doubt that Paul had a career after Acts ends?
We've been through this many times before. You yourself have participated in many of the threads about St. Peter's authority. So, if you are serious in your questions, let's cut to the chase, and for the Catholic side of the argument regarding Petrine "firsts" and "superlatives," I direct your attention to the following thread: "How Tradition Gave Us the Bible" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1573001/posts In particular, please see the excellent posts 212, 230 and 327. Please provide some evidence that you read them if you want further discussion, so we both can stop wasting so much time.
In the meantime, I'd like to address your points about St. Peter's participation in the Council of Jerusalem and St. Paul's rebuke of St. Peter's hypocrisy.
St. James was not the leader of the entire Church. As leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem, he was host to the council convened there by the Apostles. No one would deny this. That he has the "last word" recorded in Acts 15 on the issue is not much of a surprise for the same reason; as host, he would have a last-word summation of the meeting. This sort of thing happens all the time in conferences today.
But let's get back to St. Peter. Verse 6: "And after there had been much debate, Peter rose and said to them..." St. Peter continues his discourse on why circumcision should no longer be required of converts right to the end of verse 11. When he was done, verse 12 tells us "And all the assembly kept silence." In other words, discussion was ended. No vote was taken; the matter was settled. In the second half of verse 12 (after the semicolon in the RSV translation), St. Barnabas and St. Paul begin talking on another subject: the success of their missionary campaign. ONLY THEN does St. James pipe-up, at the very end of the meeting, recapitulating and elaborating on aspects of what St. Peter already said, by way of ratification of his words.
PETER, not James, spoke definitively. St. James gave his input. After all, he was an Apostle, too. But this whole affair was nothing more than a blueprint for the later Ecumenical Councils. Popes at these councils did NOT act unilaterally; the whole point to these assemblies of bishops was to get their input, guaranteed to be Spirit-led when they were acting in unison as a collective body. As God doesn't habitually hand-down ready-made decisions from on high, it was the *deliberations* that were guided by the Spirit. The deliberations were a vital and required ingredient to the process. The popes may or may not have given their personal input during deliberation, but they had the final, definitive say by virtue of their endorsement of the conciliar proceedings.
As for St. Paul's rebuke of St. Peter in Galatians 2, if it proves anything, it proves St. Peter's primacy. Think of this situation as if you were there in the place of St. Paul. If you had to rebuke the mail-room guy at work for something, would you make a point of making a big deal of it when writing a subsequent letter, talking about "opposing him to his face"? No. I sincerely doubt that you would. You'd just tell him off, and probably not even mention the incident. If you did, you wouldn't couch it in terms of having to "stand up to him," would you? However, if you, a mid-level manager, had to rebuke the CEO of the company for something, would you THEN possibly make much of it later, to show that even the CEO is not above reproach? If you had any zeal for truth or justice, then you probably would. Read Galatians 2:11-14 in that context. St. Peter was, as St. Paul said, acting hypocritically. In short, he was acting sinfully, at least to the extent that he was giving scandal. St. Paul rightly called him on this, and "opposed him to his face" about it. At no time was St. Peter (or any of his successors) EVER endowed with impeccability. He was still liable to sin, and did, in fact, sin in this instance. But he was STILL in-charge, and St. Paul needed to set him straight precisely *because* he was in charge. And he needed, psychologically, to gird his loins to do so, "opposing him to his face" in spite of St. Peter's outranking him.
The plain words of the passage, combined with an understanding of human nature, should not make this difficult to understand.