In a way, maybe we are living all together as baptized Christians in the synodal process in the same way that the council fathers at Vatican II experienced collegiality in their role as bishops.

Like St. John Paul II, Pope Francis takes seriously that the restoration of the liturgy was the result of the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote an essay for America on the universal church.

Retired Pope Benedict XVI wrote that Vatican II was both meaningful and necessary for the post-war Church, in a letter to a conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

We experience now a church where the laity matter—where, for example, a New York Times columnist without any church title can have a voice.

To act like there are no open questions about the council’s relationship to the state of the church is an act of denialism and pearl-clutching.