Pope: Vatican II "defined no dogma at all"

In 1988, addressing the Chilean bishops, Cardinal Ratzinger stated: "The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of 'superdogma' which takes away the importance of all the rest."

Two interesting, related articles on this:

• Côme Prévigny, "Tectonic shifts: For the Roman Curia, the end of the 'super-Council'" (Rorate Caeli, September 17, 2011)
• Fr. Z, "CNS makes the same “Copernican Revolution” error about the CDF’s “Doctrinal Preamble” for the SSPX" (WDTPRS, September 23, 2011)

In short, it should not be assumed that Rome has changed her position on what is de fide (definitive Church teachings that all Catholics are bound to accept), simply because the CDF has suggested that concerns raised by the SSPX should not be regarded as grounds for their exclusion from the Church. The Church has always distinguished what is de fide from what is not, as she has distinguished what is doctrinal from what is disciplinary; and it is nothing new that the Second Vatican Council was called a "pastoral council."

If there is anything new in the last sixty years, it has been the widespread opinion promoted by liberal dissenters that Vatican II -- or, more precisely, "the spirit of Vatican II" -- represents some new sort of "litmus test" of politically correct thinking to which all right-thinking Catholics must conform their thinking. This has never been true. Vatican II was a pastoral council whose stated aim was to address the vision and task of the Church in the modern world. Good Catholics can disagree over how well this aim was realized, since, as the former Cardinal Ratzinger declared, the Council "defined no dogma at all."