Re the blue, yes there are later teachings, but the documents of an Ecumenical Council are always paramount to any lesser communications written by the pope alone. You do well to remember this.
**With regard to the bold, it is significantly important to understand that the last ecumenical council, V-1, had 803 in attendance compared to nearly 2900 in the second. The point you are so casually dismissing is that the magnitude of bishops who formulated these doctrines is triple in comparison to the First Council and therefore decidedly improbable to have generated error. When a pope lawfully convenes an ecumenical council, the documents that arise from it, and which the pope solemnly ratifies, are infallible. The rhetoric professed by some uninstructed pundits argues that a pastoral council means “not infallible” and they conclude wrongly that these documents may be dismissed. I hope you are not adopting this error./**QUOTE]
First bold, no one is arguing that Ecumenical Councils are not paramount. The point is that by your definition, all previous councils to Vat II are rendered somehow less, or incomplete, because more teaching came after them. This is not true. Doctrine, by definition does not contradict itself, so no previous councils are rendered any less by the fact that Vat II came later. Similarly, all teaching that has come since Vat II, regardless of its level of authority, does not render Vat II (or anything else) less.
Second bold, it is not in any way important, and does not matter in the slightest, that there were more Bishops at one Council or another. All valid Councils are equally valid, and their validity comes from their nature, not from the number of attendees. Vat II is not more (or less) “probable to have generated error” based on its attendees, it, like all other valid Councils is free from error by it’s nature, not by who attended.
All councils are equally infallible in that sense, and again, no one has argued otherwise or argued against the validity of any council. Similarly, no one has even mentioned Vat II as a Pastoral Council or in any way implied that this makes it less valid.
Sirach2;10825091 said:
In this sense, doctrine can
change to a fuller progression into God’s Truth. This was my intended meaning, in line with Dei Verbum. Of course, it will be debated by some that the understanding, when fuller in nature, is potentially erroneous and cannot change. Not so, provided it flows from the same sense. Both Councils have stated this. What will never change, as I stated in two posts, is an ExCathedra statement such as I.C. or the Assumption. These will never “develop” into anything beyond what the Church has declared infallibly, nor will they change.
Again doctrine cannot “change”. Our understanding of a doctrine can grow or progress, but this growth or progression can never, in any way, contradict, alter, or lessen the earlier understanding of the doctrine.
This “growth” only serves to clarify within the previously existing understanding, but it in no way alters what was already understood, it simply clarifies what was already understood to a greater degree.
It is not incumbent upon the faithful to read many older documents to understand what the Church is teaching now.
Heaven help us if it was. Trust in the Magisterium and assent to their teachings is the only requirement Jesus asks of us. We either trust, or we must put our fingers in the wounds before we believe – “blessed are they who do not see, but believe!”
As Bl. John Paul II said of the CCC, there is no more certain Rule of Faith in which we may trust than the Catechism he approved after the Council.
It is absolutely incumbent upon the faithful to read “older documents” if they want to understand the fullness of the faith. No document, or council, embodies the entire faith, so to gain a fuller understanding of our faith we must learn as much as we can about all of it, not pick and choose. Again, “older” documents, councils, etc are not rendered in any way, any less valid or important because something else happened more recently. All are equally valid, equally holy, and carry equal weight, by definition.
You mention “what the Church teaches now”, but this a false distinction. The Church does not teach anything now that it did not teach before. Nothing has changed or been altered in Church doctrine in any way, so there is no difference between what the Church taught “then” and what it teaches “now”. One cannot separate teaching into catagories of “then” and “now”, it is all the same thing.
And again, no one here has in any way questioned the validity of Vat II, the CCC, the Magesterium, or the Holy Spirit, so you need not defend their validity.
Now for the meat and potatoes.
All four documents listed below are the teachings I promised to put in one place for anyone who retains the slightest doubt that promulgating these in four sepaerate documents would cconstitute any misgivings concerning the Church’s precise meaning.
Continued . . .
Again, no one has questioned the validity of Vat II or any of it’s documents. It is a valid, infallible council, the same as all the other councils, and no one has denied or questioned that. As the Church and Popes since Vat II have explicitly said, Vat II
must be read in light of the rest of Tradition. It does not supercede, alter or replace any previous Tradition, and can only be properly understood in context of Tradition. It is not “what the Church” is teaching now", it is the same Truth the Church has always taught, and does not somehow supercede anything else because it is more recent.
Many will disagree with you here. The CCC is sufficient for doctrinal formation, unless a person chooses on their own to study the development from earliest ages. It is not required of any Catholic. Go back to RCIA.