catholicsphere

¹⁷And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. ¹⁹I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 

[Revised Standard Version]

There are various arguments made against the Catholic position on this passage - that it refers to the establishment off the primacy of Peter among the Apostles, and of his successors - known today as the office of the Pope.

Objection:
Peter is not the rock, Christ is the Rock; nor is he the head of the Church, as only Christ Jesus is the Head.

Reply: Catholics cannot and should not dismiss this argument out of hand
because there is biblical truth to it.  Christ Jesus is absolutely and solely the Rock of our salvation as Scripture attests to - Catholic and Protestants should come together in agreement on this.  But, where the object is relates to Peter (and his successors) being subordinate “rock(s)”.

Let’s look at Matthew 16:17-19, with the question, “is Simon the ‘rock’ spoken of in Mt 16:18″? Catholics answer, “yes”, of course.  There are a number of factors that can act as witness to this position.

Numerous References Directly to Peter

First,Jesus is making specific reference to Simon throughout the passage, referring to him either by his name or by pronoun.  He makes 8-9 references (depending on your count).  It would make the flow of conversation very strange if, in the middle of making all these references to Simon, Jesus shifted the focus onto Himself and then back to Simon.  Moreover, is the fact that Jesus is praising Simon for his “confession of faith” and bestowing numerous blessings on him.  The same awkwardness appears if we remove Simon from being blessed with a prime “office” in Christ’s Church.  We would, if we accepted such an interpretation, have to
say the passage works out as follows:

Blessed are you, Simon, son of John, for My Father in heaven has seen fit to give you this knowledge.  From now on you shall be called Peter (rock), but upon Me shall I build my church.  And I’ll even bless you with the keys to the kingdom (which is authority to bind and loose).

This just doesn’t fit well at all.  We see this even better when we look at the next point.

Simon Becomes Peter: Biblical Significance of Name Changes

A name change occurs here, whereby Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter.  A name change in Scripture always denotes a change in status (i.e. Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Saul to Paul).  Here, with Simon, we see his name changed to Peter, which means “rock”.

Peter Means “Rock”

Some take issue with the statement that Peter means “rock”.  Those who object do so on the grounds that the word, Petros, appears as Peter’s name in the Greek; whereby, they say, petros means “stone”.  This is not wholly untrue, but requires us to look deeper.

In other places, we find Simon referred to as Cephas.  John 1:42 states that Cephas means “rock”.  [NOTE: The KJV makes the translation of Jn 1:42 say "which is interpreted as stone".  However, when we look even to Strong's Concordance, we find that the word transliterated is of Aramaic origin from the word "kepha" or "kefa", which means "rock" or "boulder".)  So, we see that Simon's name was changed to "rock".

The Greek "petra versus petros" argument is one of feminine and masculine nouns.  When "rock" (petra) was made to be a masculine name (petros) for Simon (the language rules call for the dropping of the -a ending and replacing it with -os) it became a pre-existing word in Greek for "stone", but the Aramaic uncovers the deeper meaning.

Word Games?

Some others might say that we are simply playing word games in order to fit Catholic doctrine into Scripture.  This is a really silly argument, for what reason would the Church have, in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd centuries, to "make up" this interpretation.  Against the Protestants?  None existed.  Against the Jews?  The could care less about Jesus or Christians (except maybe that they were making converts of many Jews).  Yet, Church Father after Church Father cites this passage as support for Peter as head of the Church (in subordination to Christ Jesus.

Peter's Statement An Example For History

I think that something else worthy of note is that most often the popes speak merely what has been taught and understood throughout the history of Christianity.  But, at times, the popes speak with great clarity on an issue that has, to that point, been rather vague.  On should see Peter doing something quite similar to this in the sequence/exchange - for Jesus exclaims "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." 
The Spirit, acting in and through Peter, just as the Church teaches of the popes throughout history (as well as the whole of the bishops in communion with him, and the whole body of the Church together, as well).  [This says nothing of their character personally, which can be covered in another article.]

So, by what’s been offered above, we see that the objection fails.  For it shows that Simon was given Primacy in Christ’s Church (though still subordinate to Christ) and Christ, by the Spirit, acts in and through him and his successors, in a similar way, but uniquely, to the rest of the
Apostles and bishops (and the whole body of believers collectively).