ZUR KOLLEGIALITÄT DES BISCHOFSAMTES IM LICHTE DER COMMUNIO-EKK LESIOLOGIE DES ZWEITEN VATIKANISCHEN KONZILS

Abstract

The collegiality of the episcopate was a particular concern of the Second Vatican Council. Consequently, ordination always integrates the individual bishop into the college of bishops, so that the episcopal authority conferred on him personally can only be exercised as a member of this college. Through the exercise of the collegiality of the bishops, the synodality of the churches is also expressed. In this context, it can be stated that for centuries the universal Church understood itself as a community of the many local churches of equal theological rank, which were in communion with one another. In the first three centuries, the primacy of Rome in the communion was much more strongly connected with the entire Roman community and not with a person or an office. In the West, a new form of ecclesiastical self-understanding and self-realization established itself in the fifth century, in which the bishop of Rome with his office increasingly detached himself from his own church. This ultimately led to the development of a centralised papal church, which was predominant in the second millennium. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Pope has once again been seen primarily as the bishop of a local church, and only from there as the bearer of primacy, and therefore he remains visibly and concretely inserted into the collegiality of the bishops in the service of the synodality of the churches.