Collegiality

Collegiality is the relationship between colleagues. Colleagues are those explicitly united in a common purpose and respecting each other's abilities to work toward that purpose. Thus, the word collegiality can connote respect for another's commitment to the common purpose and ability to work toward it. In a narrower sense, members of the faculty of a university or college are each other's colleagues; very often the word is taken to mean that. Sometimes colleague is taken to mean a fellow member of the same profession. The word college is sometimes construed broadly to mean a group of colleagues united in a common purpose, and used in proper names, such as Electoral College, College of Cardinals, College of Pontiffs.

The term collegiality also refers to what critics call a tendency in the Roman Catholic Church for conferences of bishops (acting as a "college of bishops") to attempt to impose a real authority over their own membership. This is contrary to what critics perceive to be the Catholic belief that only the Pope has authority over other bishops. One of the major changes of the Second Vatican Council was to encourage Bishops confrences, which critics felt could potentially destroy the independence of each Bishop (by de facto forcing individual Bishops to go along with a majority vote of a conference), as well as undermine the authority of the Pope (by a confrence, synod, or council claiming to have some authority over the Pope).