The Synod on Synodality has raised the question of the role and authority of bishops’ conferences. In 1998, another moment when the question gained prominence, a leading authority on ecclesiology weighed in.

Pope Benedict XVI is often considered to favor a “hermeneutics of continuity” in his interpretation of Vatican II, and careless commentators have used that term to describe his view. Instead, he calls it the “hermeneutics of reform.”

In the summer of 1961 I asked the proprietor of a Catholic bookstore in Paris whether he had a copy of Yves Congar rsquo s True and False Reform in the Church After looking around he took me into a back office and from a bottom drawer pulled out a copy of the book Only later did I learn the moti