Authority and the Church
The question of authority and the Church is both extremely complex and yet, fundamentally, simple. Every generation has struggled with the limits, the uses, and the abuses of such authority. In the past, there has been those who have professed a hyper papalism (known as ultramontanism), seeing the pope as having all power, to be exercised essentially in an autocratic manner, with little real communion with, or authority over, the worldwide college of bishops. Then, there are those who would seek to democratize the Church so that bishops and laity are simply reduced to a vote per person in a process by which doctrines have little permanency, but are liable to be determined by a plurality of votes.
