College of Bishops

College of Bishops is a term used in the Catholic Church to denote the collection of those bishops who are in communion with the Pope. Under Canon Law, a college is a collection (Latin collegium) of persons united together for a common object so as to form one body. The Bishop of Rome (the Pope) is the head of the college.

In Roman Catholic teaching, the college of bishops is the successor to the college of the apostles. While the individual members of the college of bishops are each directly responsible for the pastoral care and governance in their own particular Church, the college as whole has full supreme power over the entire church:

The college of bishops, whose head is the Supreme Pontiff [the Bishop of Rome] and whose members are bishops by virtue of sacramental consecration and hierarchical communion with the head and never without this head, is [also] the subject of supreme and full power over the universal church.

The college exercises this supreme and full power in a solemn manner in an ecumenical council, but also through united action even when not gathered together in one place.

By present-day canon law it is for the Pope to select and promote the ways in which the bishops are to act collegially, such as in an ecumenical council, and it is for him to convoke, preside over (personally or by his delegates), transfer, suspend, or dissolve such a council, and approve its decrees. The Catholic Church teaches that the college of bishops, gathered in council or represented by the Pope, may teach some revealed truth as requiring to be held absolutely and definitively (infallibly).

The Second Vatican Council enunciated the doctrine of the collegiality o the bishops as follows:

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