Two words sum up two distinct approaches among the cardinals of the Catholic Church as they prepared to enter the conclave to elect a new Pope: continuity, and collegiality. The former represents the conservative view that nothing needs to change, and that the late Pope John Paul II took the Church exactly in the direction the Holy Spirit wanted. The second contains an implicit criticism ? awkward to make in the afterglow of such a dazzling papacy as the last ? that a fundamental imbalance is upsetting the relationship between the universal Church and the local church. The view that that is the case seems so widespread as to amount to a consensus among the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, a fair selection of whom gave their opinions to The Tablet along these lines this week. Their candour is refreshing.

Collegiality is the principle of church governance that was underlined by the Second Vatican Council, in an effort to counter-balance the emphasis on papal power and jurisdiction that followed the First Vatican Council. The principle was well summarised in an address by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Connor last November, as ?the bishops governing the Church with and under the Pope - the Pope in communion with the bishops. Never Peter without the eleven; never the eleven without Peter.? It was clear that was not how he saw things now. To that extent, therefore, the major reform called for by the Second Vatican Council remains largely unfulfilled.

Just as collegiality expresses the communion between bishops, including the one who sits on the throne of Peter, so a similar principle expresses the relationship between the bishop and the local church. Collegiality focuses attention on two failings of all the papacies since the Second Vatican Council: the inadequacy of international institutions and procedures to allow bishops around the world to share responsibility for the government of the universal Church; and excessive intervention by the universal Church, as represented by the Vatican and its Curia, in matters that the local church is competent to deal with. It also draws attention to the unfulfilled vision of the council that bishop, clergy and laity should find ways of sharing responsibility and of working together in the local dioceses. Collegiality is not just for bishops. Indeed, in Cardinal Murphy-O?Connor?s view, the participation of the laity extends to the formulation and development of church teaching, and he even cited Cardinal Newman?s seminal and most radical work, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.

The clear impression has been given that the Vatican and its Curia have an institutional distrust for local churches, and fears allowing them greater freedom and greater local control. And in that climate, allowing lay people to participate in the development of doctrine is quite out of the question. Pope John Paul II did not counteract this attitude. Indeed, his many visits abroad may have been taken as a signal that he thought local churches needed better leadership which only Rome could supply; and the laity?s job was simply to listen and learn. Whether the cardinals have the wisdom to realise that this approach has done considerable harm as well as good, and the courage to take steps to prevent it recurring, is the great question of the moment.