There is a number of substantive issues that divide Catholic opinion today, and which have been brought to the fore by the forthright statements of Pope John Paul II – clerical celibacy, for example, and the ordination of women. But the all-important, primary, basic issue that has to be discussed and fought about in the Church today is not a substantive one but, in a sense, a procedural one: how, where and by whom should such substantive issues be decided? The all-important question, in other words, is the question of authority: what is the nature of authority in the Church of God, and where does it reside? At a profounder level you could say it is a question of ecclesiology: what is the nature of the Church? Here I shall only touch on that question by implication.

On the subject of authority there are, as there have been for centuries, two rival points of view, two conflicting parties in the Catholic Church. In the middle ages there were the papalists against the conciliarists; in the 19th century the names, and to a slight extent the precise issues at stake had changed, and there were the Roman ultramontanes (direct heirs of the medieval papalists) against the cisalpines and the gallicans.