[T]hey are in collegiality or in union with the pope to the precise degree they interpret, teach, and preach Catholic doctrine correctly.There’s also a relationship between the phrase 'People of God' and another conciliar phrase, 'Sense of the Faithful' (sensus fidelium). Taken out of context, both terms can lend themselves to the utterly false notion of internal polls defining magisterial teaching. In the sense that the Council used them, both terms presuppose 'thinking with the Church.'
In turn, these two phrases are related to the concept of collegiality in the very sense you suggest; that is, in order for the bishops in union with the pope to correctly interpret, teach, and preach Catholic doctrine, they, too, must think with the Church.
IOW, all three expressions -- People of God, Sense of the Faithful, Collegiality -- presume thinking with the Church, and it is only in the absence of that presumption that these expressions are so popularly misconstrued.
What was it John Kerry said? Something like "Pope Pius XXIII" had given him a "liberty of conscience" in Vatican II to dissent from church teachings. Perhaps he was just confused. Or maybe he really did not know there has never been a "Pope Pius XXIII." The guy appears never to have been educated to an adult Catholic level of understanding. Yet, with some smugness and bold condescension, he invoked sophisticated-sounding liberal arguments for a weird style of modernist heresy. Sad. At one point, apparently, "Father" Robert Drinan was giving him advice. And Cardinal McCarrick appears to have condoned Kerry's public disobedience.
It is just this kind of morbid silliness that goes back to goofy and ambiguous confusions surrounding the meaning of conciliar documents and language. Church documents were never intended to be interpreted through the lense of DNC spin or talking points. Or liberal psychobabble.
There’s also a relationship between the phrase 'People of God' and another conciliar phrase, 'Sense of the Faithful' (sensus fidelium). Taken out of context, both terms can lend themselves to the utterly false notion of internal polls defining magisterial teaching. In the sense that the Council used them, both terms presuppose 'thinking with the Church.'
You're right. And I've noticed from many of these threads that there is a reflexive defense of treating the definition of magisterial teaching in such a way. No one ever calls it polling or would admit to such an influence, instead they call it Living, much as those who call our Constitution living, with the same, predictable results. I think that's what is most worrisome: traditional catholics who state that even if the Magisterium teaches against what it has always taught, right is right, and wrong is right. They pledge allegiance to both fallibility and infalliblity.