ABSTRACT
The actual word "collegiality" seems to have a modern history of less than fifteen years, so thoroughly has the idea been forgotten in the Latin Church. Pope Paul VI had said that the document on the Church is the pre-eminent concern of the Council; the doctrine of co-responsibility is the heart of that document. To restore the co-responsibility of bishops for the universal Church would be to modify the recent system of government in the Church. The appointment of bishops by the Pope is not according to a law of God, but is a contingent fact of the Western Church and should not be made a rule of law for the entire world. The God protects His Church and guarantees her passage through the vicissitudes of history. The Curia owes its existence to the Council of Trent, in 1588; since then, the meetings of the Consistory which had long been the Pope's "senate" have been abandoned.
