Worse than deja vu all over again: Vatican caves

And I will ask the Father: and He shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever: The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him. But you shall know Him; because He shall abide with you and shall be in you. ... the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. ... when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will teach you all truth.
--John 14:16-17,26; 16:13

We have it on the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit will be present in the Church forever and will guide it to all truth. This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils. You refuse to do that. You place your private opinion and the opinions of individual liturgists above the authority of the Church to modify the liturgy. You lead others into your misguided ways. For the sake of those who might actually take you seriously I offer the following thoughts:

The Church had already converted the known world before the official transition of the liturgy from Latin to Greek under the reign of Pope Damasus (366 to 384 A.D.). So you see, the Tridentine Mass is certainly not essential to the Catholic faith. Here are some excerpts from descriptions of the Mass by St. Justin, who was martyred around 165 A.D.

On the day which is dedicated to the sun, all those who live in the cities or who dwell in the countryside gather in a common meeting, and for as long as there is time the Memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. Then, when the reader has finished, the president verbally gives a warning and appeal for the imitation of these good examples.
Then we all rise together and offer prayers, and, as we said before, when our prayer is ended, bread is brought forward along with wine and water, and the president likewise gives thanks to the best of his ability, and the people call out their assent, saying the Amen. Then there is the distribution to each and the participation in the Eucharistic elements, which also are sent with the deacons to those who are absent. Those who are wealthy and who wish to do so, contribute whatever they themselves care to give; and the collection is placed with the president, who aids the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in need, and those who are imprisoned, and the strangers who are sojourning with us - and in short, he takes care of all who are in need.
--First Apology of Justin

Now that certainly doesn't sound exactly like a Tridentine Mass, but it is obvious it is the Mass and there were many who attended Masses like the one described above who were martyred for the faith. So it appears heroic holiness can be achieved without the Tridentine Mass.

Here is an excerpt from the catechetical instructions given to the newly baptized by St. Cyril of Jerusalem around 350 A.D. St. Cyril is teaching them how to receive communion:

In approaching therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or thy fingers spread; but make thy left hand a throne for the right, as for that which is to receive a King. And having hollowed thy palm, receive the Body of Christ, saying over it, Amen. So then after having carefully hallowed thine eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, partake of it; giving heed lest thou lose any portion thereof; for whatever thou losest, is evidently a loss to thee as it were from one of thine own members. For tell me, if any one gave thee grains of gold, wouldest thou not hold them with all carefulness, being on thy guard against losing any of them, and suffering loss? Wilt thou not then much more carefully keep watch, that not a crumb fall from thee of what is more precious than gold and precious stones?
Then after thou hast partaken of the Body of Christ, draw near also to the Cup of His Blood; not stretching forth thine hands, but bending, and saying with an air of worship and reverence, Amen, hallow thyself by partaking also of the Blood of Christ. And while the moisture is still upon thy lips, touch it with thine hands, and hallow thine eyes and brow and the other organs of sense. Then wait for the prayer, and give thanks unto God, who hath accounted thee worthy of so great mysteries.
--Lecture XXIII, On the Sacred Liturgy and Communion

So, things change. The church went from communion in the hand to receiving on the tongue and back to receiving communion in the hand in our own time. We no longer touch the Eucharist to our eyes or touch our lips while they are still moist with the precious blood and then touch our eys and ears. What would seem irreverent in our time was seen as showing great reverence in another. Things change.

The church has the right to change them. It has done so for centuries. And there have always been those misguided souls like ultima ratio who think the liturgical practices can't ever change from what they are used to. It is dead things that don't move or change. That is because they are not animated by a spirit. The church is alive. It is animated by the Holy Spirit. Those who possess the Spirit change with it. No, we don't change in essentials. But we leave it up to the Holy Spirit in the Church to guide it in making necessary changes to non-essentials. Don't entrust your immortal soul to the silly, amateur opinions of ultima ratio or individual liturgists like Klaus Gamber. Entrust your immortal soul to the Holy Spirit in the Church.

1. "We have it on the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit will be present in the Church forever and will guide it to all truth. This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils."

But this didn't mean the Holy Spirit would spare the Church the damage caused by fools. And while He would protect the Church from dogmatic error, this doesn't mean that every utterance of a body of bishops is infallible. Vatican II, after all, was a failed council. It was not the springtime of renewal anticipated by Catholics. Instead it was the opportunity long awaited by Modernists to impose a revolution. It has achieved not a single one of its purported goals. It made some pastoral suggestions. But it said nothing binding on our intellects and wills. If it did--suppose you tell us what it is. In fact, you can't, because nothing was stated as infallible truth beyond what had always been stated.

2. "This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils. You refuse to do that. You place your private opinion and the opinions of individual liturgists above the authority of the Church to modify the liturgy. You lead others into your misguided ways."

What pompous, arrogant, self-serving nonsense. If you imagine I refuse to accept the teachings of the Church and refuse to abide by the decisions of the Councils, suppose you tell me which of these I don't accept. You can't possibly do this since I don't deny any such truths or decisions. If you mean the truths and decisions of Vatican II--tell me what are they? If I have called the Council a failure, that is simply a fact. But as a pastoral council, it taught no new truth that I am bound to follow. If it did, tell me what it is. Instead of hurling invective, explain how I am being disobedient. Be specific!

The truth is, if you've followed my posts at all, you'd know they are all about the disobedience to the Church of the people you support. It is they, not I, who have failed to abide by the Church's truths and decisions. Your claim that I place my private opinions above the authority of liturgists and above the right of the "authority of the Church" to modify the liturgy IS EXACTLY WHAT I DON'T DO. I cited one of the greatest liturgists of the twentieth century to underscore my points. How is this placing my opinion above authority? Do you suppose it is I alone who am critical of the Novus Ordo Mass? Some of the greatest scholars in the Catholic Church, including Cardinal Ratzinger, have been just as critical.

3. "The Church had already converted the known world before the official transition of the liturgy from Latin to Greek under the reign of Pope Damasus (366 to 384 A.D.). So you see, the Tridentine Mass is certainly not essential to the Catholic faith."

A straw man. Who ever said the Tridentine Mass was essential to the Catholic faith? Do you think I do not know that there are, and were, other great rites in the Church which express its faith? But having said this, you should also know the Novus Ordo is not one of them. It is a concoction designed to attract Protestants, based on a Protestant theological perspective, hostile to the Council of Trent which condemned making the Mass a memorial meal at the expense of a re-presentation of Christ's Sacrifice at Calvary.

As for the citation by St. Justin--that is all fine and dandy, but if you will reread Mediator Dei, Pius XII makes warns that the present age needs what has accrued over the centuries. The more we retreat from that ancient time, the more we need to bolster the faith transmitted by the past. The ancients did not need what we need, buffeted as we are by unprecedented distractions. We need constant reminders that the sacred is a reality. We NEED to genuflect, to kneel for Communion, to affirm our adoration physically.

But Catholic modernists have been fixed foolishly on a single presumption--that Luther was right. Not only must they imitate his search for a pie-in-the-sky primitivism, they must also brutally impose their fictitious recreation of it. The result has been a nosier Mass, a busier, fussier Mass without a modicum of reflective silence or true contemplation allowed, a superficial recitation of words without interiority, devoid of beauty, without even the saving virtue of being expressive of the Catholic faith.

This was to be expected. It is pretty much what modernists usually produce--buldings which chill the spirit, paintings without meaning, literary verbal trickeries--expressions of big egos rather than of meaning or faith.

4. "The church has the right to change them. It has done so for centuries. And there have always been those misguided souls like ultima ratio who think the liturgical practices can't ever change from what they are used to. It is dead things that don't move or change. That is because they are not animated by a spirit. The church is alive. It is animated by the Holy Spirit. Those who possess the Spirit change with it."

The Church has indeed the right to change the liturgy. But this is not what happened. A single pope assigned a committee to fabricate a Mass that would resemble a Protestant worship service. So it was not "the Church" making the change, not the Mystical Body of Christ allowing the Liturgy to evolve organically as it always had, but the steward of that Church interrupting that evolution and attempting to destroy what the Church had evolved through two millenia. There is a difference. The question is open as to whether he had the right to do what he did. The Pope, after all, has his limits. He is not an absolute monarch. His powers are limited by Sacred Tradition itself--as Cardinal Ratzinger has reminded us.

As for the Holy Spirit in all this--He is certainly not evident in the twin fruits of this liturgical innovation--a precipitous decline in church attendance and a failure of belief in the Real Presence. The fruits of the Novus Ordo have been rotten from the start. So I wouldn't go around bragging about the inspired Presence of the Holy Spirit if I were you.

As for things being dead which don't move--the Tridentine Mass was alive for a thousand years--and it managed to stay alive without clowns and liturgical dancers. It will go on for another thousand years, long after the Novus Ordo is assigned to the dustbin of Church history, another failed idea by intellectual smart alecks who imagined that despite a dearth of faith or even poetic inspiration, they might nevertheless concoct a Mass to replace the one guided through the centuries by God Himself.

Finally, if you were a little more humble, you might have the wits to distinguish between change and revolution. It was Cardinal Newman, remember, who warned that a certain sign of corruption in the Church is revolutionary change. The sign of the Holy Spirit is change that is always gradual and gentle, the very subtlest of shifts in emphasis and understanding.

And while He would protect the Church from dogmatic error, this doesn't mean that every utterance of a body of bishops is infallible. Vatican II, after all, was a failed council. It was not the springtime of renewal anticipated by Catholics. Instead it was the opportunity long awaited by Modernists to impose a revolution. It has achieved not a single one of its purported goals. It made some pastoral suggestions. But it said nothing binding on our intellects and wills. If it did--suppose you tell us what it is. In fact, you can't, because nothing was stated as infallible truth beyond what had always been stated.

Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.  In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.  This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.
LUMEN GENTIUM
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
Second Vatican Council

For any Catholic with eyes to see, that's a pretty sharp and tight tug of closure on loopholes.  Some will continue to deny; just like Frances Kissling, and John Kerry surely do.

Pray for HH John Paul II, the Bishops, clergy, and the faithful.

Luke 18:42 Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."
2 Corinthians 5:7 We live by faith, not by sight.

Thanks St. Chuck for bringing up these two verses!

The citation from Lumen Gentium is essentially descriptive. It is describing the authoritive nature of the Church's Magisterium. But you should realize such authority can only be exercised under certain conditions. Only dogmatic statements made by the Council would be guaranteed Divine protection and be considered infallible and therefore binding on the faithful. This is important to note because Vatican II explicitly excepted its own documents from being considered dogmatic and binding, notwithstanding the word "dogmatic" used in some document titles. The Council fathers wished to offer pastoral guidance only, and therefore nothing they said was actually either binding or infallible.

But if you think something the Council said IS infallible teaching--then it would be incumbent on you to tell the rest of us what you believe had suddenly been made binding on all Catholics. Name, if you will, the specific dogmatic teaching. Remember, we're not talking about dogmas already declared by previous popes or councils which may have been merely repeated by the bishops in the documents. We're talking about a newly declared doctrine that is suddenly made binding on all the faithful. It would be very strange to claim the Council had made such a pronouncement yet not be able to come up with a specific teaching that qualifies. Yet nobody ever does. Nor will you be able to do so, since no dogma was ever specifically pronounced by Vatican II.

"[The faithful] have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence, and position, to manifest to the sacred pastors [bishops] their views on matters that concern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to others of Christ's faithful, but in doing so must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals." (Canon Law 212)

I believe I have presented my opinions on this site, according to these guidelines. I have always tried to do so thoughtfully and with a minimum of attitude, considering the pounding I sometimes take from those who don't agree with what I say.

I used the phrase "nosier Mass" above inadvertantly. I meant to say "noisier Mass." Mea culpa. I don't believe the Novus Ordo is particularly nosey, whatever its other deficiencies.

Vatican II, after all, was a failed council.
--ultima ratio

So you don't believe Jesus kept his promise to send the Holy Spirit to be with us forever. What else can I conclude? You either believe Church Councils have the protection of the Holy Spirit or you don't. I have to assume you do, because in the past you haved cited them to make your case. Yet you claim Vatican II was a failed council. So you must not believe that Jesus keeps His promises. I know. I know. Don't tell me: We don't really need Jesus and the Holy Spirit since we have you and Klaus Gamber, right?

Of course I believe Jesus kept His promise--but not that the Holy Spirit would blow the winds of inspiration through every crackpot Modernist who comes down the pike. And I make a distinction you don't seem to appreciate, but which any theologian understands who is worth his salt: not everything a council says is guaranteed Divine Protection. Only those pronouncements which are specifically declared dogmatic are binding on the faithful. This means, first of all, there must be a clear intent on the part of the council fathers to make a doctrine binding; and secondly they must pronounce the doctrine in such a way that it is clearly understood. After all, how are we to bind our intellects to something murky and incomprehensible? In fact, one reason why Vatican II itself prescinded from declaring anything dogmatic was that it preferred to use a pastoral, ambiguous, sometimes emotionally descriptive language, rather than the language of syllogistic precision and clarity of expression. So maybe you should stash the pious rhetoric and try to get a grip on some of these theological niceties you don't seem to adequately appreciate.

Of course I believe Jesus kept His promise.
--ultima ratio

No you don't. Not really. The traditionalists who have returned to union with Rome believe in Him. But not you. You believe in Klaus Gamber.

No you don't. Not really. The traditionalists who have returned to union with Rome believe in Him. But not you. You believe in Klaus Gamber.

What are your reasons for saying this?

Your last was an ignorant statement. In fact, the more this exchange has worn on, the more evident your own ignorance has become.

And I make a distinction you don't seem to appreciate, but which any theologian understands who is worth his salt: not everything a council says is guaranteed Divine Protection. Only those pronouncements which are specifically declared dogmatic are binding on the faithful.
--ultima ratio

Please consider the following:

These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.
--Vatican Council I

In our own time the Vatican Council, with the object of condemning false doctrines regarding inspiration, declared that these same books were to be regarded by the Church as sacred and canonical
"not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author, and as such were handed down to the Church herself."
When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the "entire books with all their parts" as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals ...
--Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, Sep. 30th, 1943

Pius XII refers to a declaration on the inerrancy of scripture from Vatican I as a "solemn definition of Catholic doctrine," although in the Vatican I document it wasn't a canon in the form: If someone shall say . . . . let him be anathema. Not only can statements such as this from a Church Council be binding, papal encyclicals can be binding as well:

Nor must it be thought that the things contained in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves require assent on the plea that in them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For these things are taught with the ordinary Magisterium, about which it is also true to say, 'He who hears you, hears me.' [Lk 10. 16]. . . If the Supreme Pontiffs, in their acta expressly pass judgment on a matter debated until then, it is obvious to all that the matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be considered any longer a question open for discussion among theologians.
--Pius XII, Humani Generis, Aug. 12th, 1950

Now that we have shown that the binding nature of Church Councils isn't quite as narrow as you think, and have shown that even papal encyclicals can be binding, here is another Pre-Vatican II source on the authority of Church Councils:

Proof From Tradition
If, during the early centuries, there was no explicit and formal discussion regarding ecclesiastical infallibility as such, yet the Church, in her corporate capacity, after the example of the Apostles at Jerusalem , always acted on the assumption that she was infallible in doctrinal matters and all the great orthodox teachers believed that she was so. Those who presumed, on whatever grounds, to contradict the Church's teaching were treated as representatives of Antichrist, and were excommunicated and anathematized.

It is clear from the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch how intolerant he was of error, and how firmly convinced that the episcopal body was the Divinely ordained and Divinely guided organ of truth; nor can any student of early Christian literature deny that, where Divine guidance is claimed in doctrinal matters, infallibility is implied.
...

It is needless to go on multiplying citations, since the broad fact is indisputable that in the ante-Nicene, no less than in the post-Nicene, period all orthodox Christians attributed to the corporate voice of the Church, speaking through the body of bishops in union with their head and centre, all the fullness of doctrinal authority which the Apostles themselves had possessed; and to question the infallibility of that authority would have been considered equivalent to questioning God's veracity and fidelity.
...
Ecumenical Councils
...
That an ecumenical council [ that is convened with the approval of the Pope ] is an organ of infallibility will not be denied by anyone who admits that the Church is endowed with infallible doctrinal authority. How, if not through such an organ, could infallible authority effectively express itself, unless indeed through the pope? If Christ promised to be present with even two or three of His disciples gathered together in His name (Matthew 18:20), a fortiori He will be present efficaciously in a representative assembly of His authorized teachers; and the Paraclete whom He promised will be present, so that whatever the council defines may be prefaced with the Apostolic formula, "it has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." And this is the view which the councils held regarding their own authority and upon which the defender of orthodoxy insisted. The councils insisted on their definitions being accepted under pain of anathema , while St. Athanasius, for example, says that "the word of the Lord pronounced by the ecumenical synod of Nicaea stands for ever" (Ep. ad Afros, n. 2) and St. Leo the Great proves the unchangeable character of definitive conciliar teaching on the ground that God has irrevocably confirmed its truth ...
Infallibility, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910

What are your reasons for saying this?
--Pyro7480

Because they have more faith in the teachings of Klaus Gamber than in the official teaching of a Church Council convened by the Successor of St. Peter. They believe the Holy Spirit actually abandoned such an official council to the modernists. They don't believe in Christ's promise of the Holy Spirit being with the Church forever. Instead they insist that Church Councils submit to themselves and Klaus Gamber. It never occurs to them that maybe they and Gamber might be wrong. It never so much as crosses their minds. This is so even though they know that they as individuals have no guarantee of the Holy Spirit's protection. Yet they go on, in their incredible arrogance, undermining the simple, beautiful faith of many Catholics.

Not a thousand such citations change the basic theological fact that Vatican II declared nothing as dogmatically binding. To be binding, a pope or council must make it clear that a teaching is such, however the doctrine is formally presented. But Vatican II did the OPPOSITE. It specifically stated its pronouncements were NOT binding. In the famous NOTA PRAEVA, the Council stated the following:

"Taking conciliar custom into consideration and also the pastoral purpose of the present Council, the sacred Council defines as binding on the Church only those things in matters of faith and morals which it SHALL OPENLY DECLARE TO BE BINDING. The rest of the things which the sacred Council sets forth, inasmuch as they are the teaching of the Church's supreme magisterium, ought to be accepted and embraced by each and every one of Christ's faithful according to the mind of the sacred Council. The mind of the Council becomes known either from the matter treated or from its manner of speaking, in accordance with the norms of theological interpretation."

In fact, the Council never openly declared a single doctrine as binding in the way the Nota had specified. Nor am I being "narrow" in the way I have argued my point on the infallibility of councils. To be binding, it is certainly unnecessary that a council repeat the "anathema" formats of councils such as Trent. But it is also true that an infallible decree must be clear and comprehensible, not ambiguous and unclear. The human intellect cannot bind itself to something incomprehensible or ambiguous. And it is now generally agreed that the documents of Vatican II are shot through with ambiguities and murkiness.

As for what you are saying about Sacred Scripture, you seem to be knocking down a straw man again, pretending to refute points never raised. We had been arguing only about the infallibility of councils. If you think I doubt the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, you are sorely mistaken. Regarding the infallibility of Papal Encyclicals--this is still another straw man. I concede they may be infallible--but only those teachings which are in agreement with the other previous Magisterial pronouncements of the Church. I have argued this a thousand times on this site and you may go back a year or more and see that I have always made this careful distinction. It is important because nothing NEW in an encyclical is ever infallible. Too often Catholics think that anything said in an encyclical is automatically de fide and binding. This simply isn't so.

In short, you are all over the place, putting citations in fancy boxes or highlighting them as if this could give a little more weight to your non-sequiturs. I still repeat my challenge to you, however: If you believe Vatican II was sometimes dogmatically binding in its pronoucements--which teachings would these be, in your opinion? What new dogmas were presented which were binding? You can't name a single one, because none were ever so declared. Paul VI, in fact, certainly knew this to be true, that nothing the Council said precluded his own actions, since it was exclusively pastoral. He wasted no time introducing into the Church a brand new Mass, for instance, which almost immediately ignored the liturgical guidelines set up by Council only a few years earlier.

...the Council fathers wished to offer pastoral guidance only, and therefore nothing they said was actually either binding or infallible.

"In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra..."

ultima, I will NEVER see how you can adhere to your line of thought. Thank you for the courtesy of a reply nonetheless.
FReegards.

You mix apples and oranges here. I cited Gamber in support of the argument that it is to be doubted whether any pope had even the authority to make major changes in the Roman Rite, let alone replace the ancient rite--which even Mediator Dei tells us the Holy Spirit had guided through the ages--with one that has been newly fabricated. I did not bring up Gamber in the context of the debate over the infallibility of councils. One had nothing to do with the other. You are all over the place with this when you make such a ridiculous statement as the following:

"They believe the Holy Spirit actually abandoned such an official council to the modernists. They don't believe in Christ's promise of the Holy Spirit being with the Church forever. Instead they insist that Church Councils submit to themselves and Klaus Gamber. It never occurs to them that maybe they and Gamber might be wrong."

Gamber said not a word about Church Councils in his celebrated text, so it is absurd to bring him up in this context. It is also a fact that the modernists took over Vatican II--almost all its periti, for instance, were liberals, some of them modernists whose writings had been previously censured by Pius XII. Countless books have belabored this point. Yet here you suppose this never happened! You accuse us of denying Christ's promise to send the Holy Spirit to be with his Church forever--as if that meant specifically with Vatican II and not the Church in general. You further make the absurd remark that Gamber wants Councils to submit to him! Gamber was a scholar well within the mainstream of Catholic thought. His book focuses on the Novus Ordo and the destruction of the ancient rite, not on Vatican II or any other council. Obviously you haven't read it. You certainly should--to avoid making such absurd claims in the future.

If you can't understand my line of thought, read post #114 for a fuller explanation.

One of the problems that is unique in our age is that many pronoucements of the Holy See actually contradict previous Church teachings. So a dilemma is set up: are we to follow Rome's contemporary teachings--or its previous ones? Which have precedence? This problem is not so much apparent in papal encyclicals as it is in statements made by papal organs such as the Pontifical Biblical Commission or by the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations or by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, among others. These have semi-official papal status, but teach doctrines that are out of keeping with Church doctrines affirmed in the past.

The new, post-Conciliar version of the PBC has no actual authority. It can be freely ignored and should be if it contradicts the biblical encyclicals or Dei Verbum.

I doubt that "many" pronouncements of the Holy See contradict previous teaching, especially when consideration is limited to those documents which actually are part of the Magisterium. Oftentimes, as in the case of religious liberty, the "contradiction" is a result of misunderstanding. For instance, on the SSPX website I saw one article claiming the entire Syllabus Errorum was ex cathedra and that it contradicted Dignitatis Humanae. Of course, both assertions are wrong, but oftentimes this sort of thing is how traditionalists find "contradictions".

It specifically stated its pronouncements were NOT binding.

ultima,

You quote the Nota Praevia saying:

The rest of the things which the sacred Council sets forth, inasmuch as they are the teaching of the Church's supreme magisterium, ought to be accepted and embraced by each and every one of Christ's faithful according to the mind of the sacred Council.

Now, Paul VI's Credo of the People of God says this concerning infallibility:

We believe in the infallibility enjoyed by the successor of Peter when he teaches ex cathedra as pastor and teacher of all the faithful,[28] and which is assured also to the episcopal body when it exercises with him the supreme magisterium.

The "rest of the things" are of the "supreme magisterium", which Paul VI says is infallible.

The key here is in that the Nota Praevia says "the sacred Council defines as binding on the Church". This is referring to new definitions, of which there were very few. The rest of the Council's teaching was a reaffirmation of previous teaching or new disciplinary decisions.

What new dogmas were presented which were binding?

Lumen Gentium §21 contains a dogmatic definition of the sacramentality of the episcopate:

And the Sacred Council teaches that by episcopal consecration the fullness of the sacrament of Orders is conferred, that fullness of power, namely, which both in the Church's liturgical practice and in the language of the Fathers of the Church is called the high priesthood, the supreme power of the sacred ministry.

Fr. Congar comments: "It is difficult to see why the Council did not express a dogmatic decision on this point. But it would have been the only case of its kind." (qtd. in Catholic Counter-Reformation Jan. 1972)

Furthermore he says: "There are certain other questions upon which the Council does no more than to express, in a solemn manner, what is believed by all: one could even say that it is giving expression, through a unanimous act of the solemn magisterium, to what is the universal teaching of the ordinary magisterium" (ibid.). This is the case with religious liberty and collegiality.

The rest of the teaching of the Council was simply a reaffirmation of immemorial teaching from Nicaea I to Vatican I, which is reformulated and is still infallible, by virtue of the supreme magisterium. This is because the Conciliar documents were promulgated by Paul VI with the normal formulas for an infallible council:

PAUL, BISHOP SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD TOGETHER WITH THE FATHERS OF THE SACRED COUNCIL FOR EVERLASTING MEMORY

The entire text and all the individual elements which have been set forth in this Declaration have pleased the Fathers. And by the Apostolic power conferred on us by Christ, we, together with the Venerable Fathers, in the Holy Spirit, approve, decree and enact them; and we order that what has been thus enacted in Council be promulgated, to the glory of God.
I, PAUL, Bishop of the Catholic Church

Compare this with the formula of promulgation used by Bl. Pius IX for Pastor Aeternus:

Pius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the Sacred Council, for an everlasting record.

Therefore, all the teaching by Vatican II concerning matters of faith and morals was 100% infallible, even if it is unfortunately phrased ambiguously at times (naturally the correct meaning is the one in conformity with Sacred Tradition and Holy Writ).

At last all which regards the holy ecumenical council has, with the help of God, been accomplished and all the constitutions, decrees, declarations and votes have been approved by the deliberation of the synod and promulgated by us. Therefore we decided to close for all intents and purposes, with our apostolic authority, this same ecumenical council called by our predecessor, Pope John XXIII, which opened October 11, 1962, and which was continued by us after his death.
We decided moreover that all that has been established synodally is to be religiously observed by all the faithful, for the glory of God and the dignity of the Church and for the tranquillity and peace of all men. We have approved and established these things, decreeing that the present letters are and remain stable and valid, and are to have legal effectiveness, so that they be disseminated and obtain full and complete effect, and so that they may be fully convalidated by those whom they concern or may concern now and in the future; and so that, as it be judged and described, all efforts contrary to these things by whomever or whatever authority, knowingly or in ignorance be invalid and worthless from now on. (Paul VI, Apostolic Brief "In Spiritu Sancto", read at the close of Vatican II by Msgr.Felici)

He wasted no time introducing into the Church a brand new Mass, for instance, which almost immediately ignored the liturgical guidelines set up by Council only a few years earlier.

The Pope is free to change disciplinary decisions of an Ecumenical Council, no matter how infallible it was.