group of conservatives. Because they did not have the votes to prevent final approval, their only recourse was to lobby Pope Paul to prevent their adoption in their present form. The pressure on the Pope was unrelenting, and eventually he gave in. Religious Freedom The schema on Religious Freedom that the bishops were to vote on had been considerably amended since the earlier debate at the beginning of the current session. The opponents now raised a procedural point: the text was substantially different from the one discussed earlier, and Council Regulations required that there be a new debate on this amended text rather than simply proceed to a vote. The Pope was lobbied by both groups, the reformers insisting the vote should go ahead, the conservatives that it should not. He finally sided with the conservatives, and the Council Fathers were told the schema on Religious Freedom would be postponed until the Fourth Session. While many Council Fathers were furious at the time, in retrospect his decision now seems reasonable. Ecumenism As the earlier votes on each of its chapters had shown, the schema on Ecumenism had overwhelming support. But some conservatives had convinced the Pope that some of the wording was dangerous. On November 19, two days before the end of the session, Pope Paul sent the Council Fathers 19 changes he insisted be made to the schema before he would agree to promulgate it. The changes had little effect on the substance of the schema, but seemed to many people to be petty. Some of them offended the Protestant observers: for instance, in the section listing the positive features of Protestantism, the passage that said Protestants “found” Christ in the Scriptures had to be changed to say they “sought” Christ in the Scriptures. Faced with this ultimatum, the Council Fathers agreed to the changes and the final vote on the schema was again a landslide: 2,054 to 64. The Church The most important intervention by Pope Paul concerned chapter 3 of the schema on the Church, the chapter dealing with collegiality. Opponents of the schema argued that it diminished the Pope's powers, and Pope Paul came to be convinced of this. So he insisted that a Nota explicativa praevia (“Preliminary Explanatory Note”) be added to the schema, saying collegiality did not diminish the Church's traditional teaching about the primacy of the Pope. The conservatives were satisfied this note