Preliminary Note
Accordingly, claims made by some, that the Council gave the Church two separate earthly heads, the College of Bishops and the Pope, were countered by the Preliminary Explanatory Note added to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium and printed at the end of the text.
This Note states:
There is no such thing as the college without its head ... and in the college the head preserves intact his function as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the universal Church. In other words it is not a distinction between the Roman Pontiff and the bishops taken together, but between the Roman Pontiff by himself and the Roman Pontiff along with the bishops.
Read more about this topic: Christus Dominus
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