To put it simply, Vatican Council II was all about Bishops.
Vatican Council II attempted to decentralize church governance both to make it more effective and to return to more traditional models of preaching the Good News.
The re-introduction of Episcopal shared authority, called "collegiality," was one of the crowning achievements of the Council. In this context, the local church is primary, the Bishops join together, as the Apostles once did, to share authority.
The Pope, the Bishop of Rome remains as the sign of unity among them, not the supreme and absolute monarch of recent centuries past.
Collegiality was an attempt by the Council's Bishops to unleash the firm hold the Roman Curia had on Church governance for decades, if not centuries. Such governance might have worked once, but no longer as the church had grown into a global institution.
At the heart of Vatican II debates was the central schema on the Church itself.
Within it, rests the council's support for the notion of collegiality: "Just as Peter belonged to the community of the Twelve, so the pope belongs to the college of bishops, regardless of the special role he fills, not outside but within the college."
In September 1964, during the third Council session, a two-thirds majority passed the schema.
The council viewed the local Bishop and the local faith community as primary. (The Council's document on the Office of the Bishop, Christus Dominus, would call the Bishop "the vicar of Christ" in his own diocese.)
The Council also established a mechanism for carrying out what the Bishops felt was a much needed decentralized model of church authority. In this light they created National (Regional in some cases) Conferences of Bishops. They were to administer Church matters, especially those dealing with matters effecting local communities.
The Pontificates of Pope St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were nothing short of a concerted effort to dismantle the very notion of collegiality.
In 1998, John Paul II issued the apostolic letter, Apostolos suos, which gutted the authority of all National Bishops' Conferences. From then on local Bishops surrendered any claim to local authority. From then on a National Conference opinion could only be offered if every single one of its members agreed with it.
Pope Benedict XVI likewise turned against the Council's breakthrough. He came to interpret collegiality as an attempt by the Council's Bishops to unleash the firm hold the Roman Curia had on church governance for decades, if not centuries.
Now comes Pope Francis who has made collegiality a key theme of his Pontificate.
He sees this as a return to the vision articulated, and experienced, at Vatican Council II.
Granting Bishops' Conferences throughout the world a determinative role in liturgical translations is the first salvo of the barrage upon the method and manner of Church governance that the Holy Father is committed to establishing for the future.
The Pope has his share of dissenters and detractors in this campaign to revamp the structure of Church governance.
But what these neo-conservative reactions are loathe to admit is that the concentration of decision-making in the Vatican is a recent phenomenon, a response both to the anti-religious fervor of the 19th century and to the improved means of communication available to us today.
Pope Francis vision of Church governance is that of Vatican Council II.
Make no mistake, the attempts of the Pontificates of Pope St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI to stifle or destroy Episcopal collegiality are (with respect but truthfully) as dead and moribund as they are.
In the Pontificate of Pope Francis, the collegial initiatives of Vatican Council II have been re-awakened and will serve as the road map for the present and future Church for generations to come.
Now, if only the Bishops themselves would be worthy and capable of the authority which is truly theirs to exercise
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