One netfriend wrote:

Boy am I glad we don’t have bishops (or rectors) in the UCA!! Too much power in one imperfect, fragile pair of hands….

Another responded:

Don’t get too excited about conciliar forms of church government. Ever tried holding people accountable when a group of people makes a decision? I’ve always enjoyed that paraphrase of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee!”

Power is a very subtle phenomenon, and some people are very skilled at exploiting appearances. I call to mind a fundamentalist woman I once knew who insisted that her husband was the head of the house. She was a very domineering person and was the one who really pulled the strings. What her stance meant in practice was that she pulled the strings – she had all the power, but he had the responsibility. In reality, it was power without responsibility. Sometimes it is the faceless people behind the scenes who make the real decisions and the people in the positions are the ones who get their strings pulled.

Well I did say “sometimes”. For every example going one way it is probably possible to cite a counter-example. It’s just that I don’t think the conciliar movement necessarily gave us the answer.