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If the Church is a corporation, with its rituals of belonging, it can also be envisaged as a field. Within this field, the geography of power is structured according to unevenly distributed forms of capital. Within the dominant stratum of Catholicism, one finds of course the power of the Pope and, more and more often in modern times, the power of the Curia, even though it is only an administration at the service of the Pope. Councils are major events that bring together the bishops of the entire Catholic world and upset this distribution of power for at least two reasons. First, the bishops united in a college become aware of their precedence over the Curia, and discharge their function in a manner that is always specific. Second, to the extent that they act with the assistance of their experts, the bishops implement for the duration of the council new processes of legitimation of the truth. The analysis of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) makes it possible to point out the structuring role of the “field effects” generated by the intellectual clerics within the transnational framework of the council. Finally, this research report raises afresh the issue of the articulation between corporate bodies and fields: in the case under scrutiny, an international corporate identity seems to be the condition for the emergence of a transnational field.