Petrine Ministry, Collegiality and Synodality in the Light of the Communion Ecclesiology of the second Vatican Council

Abstract

The Second Vatican Council reestablished the ecclesiology of communion and today it has become the official ecclesiology of the Catholic Church. In accordance with this ecclesiology the Catholic Church is a communion of particular Churches (dioceses or eparchies) and individual Churches (like patriarchal or major archiepiscopal Churches). The ecclesiology of communion has its repercussions on collegiality, synodality and primacy. Through episcopal consecration, a bishop becomes the head of a diocese or eparchy, the bishop of an individual Church and of the universal Church, as he is a member of the episcopal college. He thus exercises the office of bishop at three levels of the ecclesial communion: the particular Church, the individual Church and the universal Church. The Bishop of Rome, successor of St Peter, exercises the Petrine ministry in the universal Church as a service to the communion.