Can you point to an official Church document which clearly shows how Vll is to be understood in the light of clear previous Church teaching?
Read what Pope Benedict 16 has had to say about it.
Is there an official document explaining the official documents?
No - as that is a cat-and-mouse game being played. As Pope Benedict himself said, the documents of Vatican 2 need to be read in light of the prior 1900+ years of documents - and that should come as no surprise to anybody.
For starters, the documents of Vatican 2 were not written for the laity - they were written for the ordained; bishops to lead their priests, and priests, to implement.
And as I have noted, outside Europe and North America, the bishops have been able to implement the documents without all the issues, trouble, and headaches of the bishops of Europe and North America, because they (the other bishops) lived in societies which did not have all the freedoms which North America and Europe have had, and have so badly abused.
Poland is a prime example of a country which went about implementing the documents, without the dissent from both the far liberal end of the spectrum, and the far conservative end.
Why is there no “Document explaining the documents”?
Because the vast number of bishops of the world don’t have the problems the far conservative element has, and because most bishops are not flaming liberals. Most of them are simply trying to evangelize, to bring the Gospel to all, and to implement the understandings set out in V2 documents.
It might be helpful, when a bishop has problems with V2, to remember that the documents were written by and under the authority of bishops, and @ 2,000 bishops read and voted on them. The vast majority of the bishops had no problem understanding what was being written; a miniscule number did. Others may have disagreed with the documents as written (somewhere, I believe, there are tallies of the votes), but that does not in and of itself mean they felt the documents were wrong. Rather, they might have chosen to say the matter differently, and that may have been going not so far, or going further. Trying to weigh the vote against, without knowing the “why” behind the vote" is a fools game and totally without merit.
Just an observation, and a caveat.
The caveat first: My next comments are not reflective of any intent to label the SSPX.
The observation: in 2,000 years, the Church has been pretty clear about the Gospels, and from time to time, someone has “gone off the rails”, Arius and Martin Luther being easy examples. And each time the Church has answered them.
And each time the Church has answered them, others, following the leader, have continued to go “off the rails”.
This time, we have had the document first, and then a bunch of people going off on their own tangent. As to answers to them, for example, Liberation Theology has been addressed, although most in North America are not intimately wound up in the matter.
The four bishops have been addressed. I am not saying they are heretics, as that is so far above my pay grade I don’t spend time considering the matter. However, there are limits of how long someone can go around accusing the Church of heresy in veiled language, before there is a permanent split. And that split does not need official action by the Church, or official labeling.
Is there going to be reconciliation? Well, we are still working on the Lutheran/Church split.
