Does Vatican II’s Collegiality Conflict with Vatican I’s Papal Supremacy?

The First Vatican Council (1870) said that the pope has supreme authority in the Church (Pastor Aeternus 3.2). The Second Vatican Council (1965) said that the college of bishops also exercises a supreme authority in the Church, through “collegiality” (Lumen Gentium 22).

Marcel Lefebvre concluded:

The contradiction is flagrant. Peter, in that case, has no more than the greatest share of power – a proposition condemned by Vatican I. (A Bishop Speaks, 1979)

Is Vatican II really contradicting Vatican I?

1. Conciliarism

One of the ideas rejected by Vatican I was Conciliarism. This is the idea that a council of bishops can be supreme to a pope.

The high-water mark of Conciliarism occurred during the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), when there were three people claiming to be pope. The Council of Pisa (1409) tried to end the initial schism between two rival “popes,”  by firing them both and electing a new pope. This made matters worse, as the first two claimants rejected the Council’s power to dismiss a pope, and so there were now three people claiming to be pope.

Matters were ultimately resolved by the Council of Constance (1414–1418). It secured the voluntary resignation of two of the papal claimants, and the third individual was marginalized into irrelevance. A new pope was elected and order was restored.

The Council of Constance did a great service to the Church. But it also asserted rights and powers over popes that generated new problems. If councils could override popes, then it was possible for national governments to assemble a council of bishops and thus, effectively, to take over aspects of the Church.

Politicians of various nations did indeed try to do precisely that. Their actions were variously condemned as Febronianism, Gallicanism and Josephinism.

By the nineteenth century it was clear to the Vatican that Conciliarism was a major threat to the Church’s freedom, especially when national governments were hostile.

2. Vatican I

When Vatican I met in 1870, the Church was once again under threat from national governments. The Vatican Council even had to assert the pope’s right to be able to correspond with bishops, without national governments interfering with his letters (see Pastor Aeternus 3.7).

This meant that in 1870 the Vatican felt that it needed a strong (anti-Conciliarist) statement of papal powers. So, the Council declared:

The Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church… Both clergy and faithful… are bound to submit to this power… and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world. (Pastor Aeternus 3.2)

On the surface this looks like a declaration of absolutist papal powers. It looks as if bishops are being defined as just “branch secretaries,” whose roles were merely to obey and implement the pope’s directives.

But Vatican I rejected that view, insisting instead that:

This power of the supreme pontiff by no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which bishops… tend and govern individually the particular flocks which have been assigned to them. (Pastor Aeternus 3.5)

What is this “power of episcopal jurisdiction,” and how can it be “not detracted from” by Papal Supremacy? Surely, either the pope is supreme, like paragraph 3.2 says; or he isn’t, if there are other powers that Papal Supremacy cannot detract from, like paragraph 3.5 says.

The bishops of Vatican I intended to discuss and clarify these issues, but war broke out. Military action, culminating in the 1870 Capture of Rome, meant that the bishops had to flee Rome, and Vatican I was brought to an abrupt and unexpected closure.

3. Unfinished Business

The unexpected closure of Vatican I meant that the Council was not able to finish its work in clarifying the different powers of popes and bishops. Ever since that unexpected closure, there have been discussions in the Vatican about the need to reconvene the Council in order to complete its work.

Initially the political situation in Italy made it impossible to contemplate another council, as the Pope was effectively a “prisoner in the Vatican.” However, we know that Pope Pius XI considered “the reassembling of the Ecumenical Council which Pius IX… called” as he says so in his 1922 encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (51).

There is also evidence in the Papal Archives that Pope Pius XII considered calling a general council. Preparatory documents were drawn up between 1949 and 1951. It is unclear why the council never took place, but austerities in the years immediately after World War II may have been a factor.

When Pope John XXIII announced Vatican II in 1959, it was not a random idea, or a “bolt out of the blue.”

The fact that three popes, in three consecutive pontificates, all contemplated calling a general council shows that there was a general recognition that there was unfinished business from Vatican I which still needed resolving.

4. Vatican II and Collegiality

When Vatican II tried to pick up from where Vatican I left off, there were logically three ways in which the relationship between a pope and bishops could be explained.

1. Delegacy: bishops have no powers themselves, as they are just delegates of a supreme pope.
2. Independence: bishops have powers which are independent of the pope.
3. Inter-relationship: the bishops are neither delegates nor independent of the pope, as papal and episcopal powers are (to some extent) intertwined.

The wording of Vatican I ruled out a model of delegacy, as it said that bishops had powers which Papal Supremacy could not detract from. The Council had also ruled out a model of independence, as it had said that papal powers could intervene anywhere in the Church, and that all clergy and laity were obliged to accept and obey such an intervention. (See Section 2 above.)

So, logically, all that Vatican II could conclude was that the relationship between the pope and bishops was an “inter-relationship” of powers, which it called Collegiality. Commenting on what it meant, Vatican II stated:

The Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power. The order of bishops… is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. (Lumen Gentium 22)

According to Vatican II, the pope has a supreme power, and the bishops have a supreme power. But the pope’s supreme power is also “slightly more supreme,” as it can be exercised without the bishops, whilst the bishops’ power cannot be exercised without the pope.

Critics of Collegiality claim:

This doctrine of double supremacy is… contrary to the definitions of Vatican Council I. (Marcel Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics, 1985)

But is it really contrary to Vatican I?

Vatican I left an unresolved theological question about Supremacy. In Pastor Aeternus it said that there is a Papal Supremacy (paragraph 3.2) and there is a separate set of episcopal powers, which it does not detract from (paragraph 3.5).

What Papal Supremacy does not detract from, would seem to have a supremacy of its own. So a doctrine of double supremacy seems an unavoidable implication of Vatican I. Far from double supremacy contradicting Vatican I, it seems to be one of the few ways of avoiding a contradiction.

5. Collegiality as Democracy?

Critics of Collegiality viewed Vatican II’s declaration of the idea, as not only doctrinally wrong, but as also constituting an ill-motivated attempt to impose the French Revolution’s “equality” and “democracy” upon the Church. (See Marcel Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council, 1998.)

Has a doctrine of Collegiality led to democracy in the Church? Has Vatican II led to modern popes’ powers being curtailed by the democratic will of bishops’ collegiality? Or, are bishops (still) subject to a centralized authority of the pope, just as they were at the time of Vatican I, in 1870?

Pope Francis’ 2021 Traditionis Custodes provides an informative answer to that question. In that document Pope Francis asserts the authority of bishops to decide what liturgies should take place in their dioceses (article 2). But the Pope then immediately insists that bishops are not allowed to authorize the celebration of the Tridentine Rite in parochial churches (article 3.2).

His words echo Vatican I. On the one hand bishops have powers to decide for themselves on liturgical matters in their dioceses. But, on the other hand, the Pope’s supreme power nevertheless bans a specific liturgical practice in their dioceses. Individual or collective views of bishops are irrelevant, as the Pope has used his supreme authority to command obedience across the whole Church.

In an interview in 1976, Marcel Lefebvre lamented:

The idea of “collegiality…” is in the process of breaking the unity of the Church by constituting national Churches through the disappearance of the exercise of personal authority by the pope… contrary to the divine constitution of the church. (A Bishop Speaks, 1979).

Traditionis Custodes shows such worries to be wrong. Vatican II’s doctrine of Collegiality has not made the Church democratic. Traditionis Custodes is a clear example in 2021, of Vatican I’s Papal Supremacy operating independently of, and in no way undermined by, Vatican II’s doctrine of Collegiality.

6. Bishop Bureaucracy

If Collegiality has not changed much, then what was the point of Vatican II’s talking about it?

Collegiality hasn’t conflicted with Vatican I, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t also led to a newer mindset, which has contributed to the development of Episcopal Conferences, and Synods.

Arguably, a Collegiality mindset has been important to resolving (or making less bad) a problem within Church bureaucracy.

At the time of Vatican I there were just over 1000 bishops in the Church. By the time of Vatican II, there were almost 3000 bishops. In 2020 the Church had around 5,600 bishops.

This increasing number of bishops represents a growing management problem for the Pope. Even with archbishops, cardinals, and Vatican bureaucracies to help, there is still an inevitable management workload implication for the Pope. And between Vatican I and Vatican II, the workload implications of managing bishops tripled.

Even though the Church had traditionally viewed itself as a divinely instituted monarchical society, its earthly operation is still subject to the same principles of effectiveness, which govern any organization containing human beings. Management studies regularly show that as organizations grow, they need to ensure decision making is taken at lower levels, otherwise organizational effectiveness becomes undermined.

What does it mean for the Church to get more decision making taken at a lower level? It means ensuring that the bishops are empowered to make more decisions, themselves, in a regional capacity. And creating that approach is precisely what Collegiality is all about.

7. Conclusion

There is no contradiction between Vatican I’s declaration of Papal Supremacy and Vatican II’s teaching on Collegiality. On the contrary, Vatican II looks as if it is expressing itself extremely carefully, precisely to avoid a contradiction.

Nor is Collegiality a revolutionary attempt to turn the Church’s constitutional monarchy into a democracy. As recently as 2021 we can see a pope proving that the Church can still function in precisely the monarchical way envisaged by Vatican I.

Rather than seeing Collegiality as a theological problem, there are reasons to see it as a practical necessity, implementing a mindset which has enabled a growing Church to deal with the bureaucratic and management problems that growth causes all organizations.

Instead of rejecting Vatican II’s Collegiality for doctrinal or practical reasons, there is a case to be made that Collegiality represents an important doctrinal explanation of the logical implications of Vatican I, as well as a (potentially) beneficial practical contribution to Church governance.