"Any Council of the future would have a fair idea of how their deliberations were being received as they were going along. Obviously instant reactions aren't the same as reception, but it would prevent any outright howlers being adopted!"
Maybe; frankly I think it would be a very dangerous thing to do, which isn't to say it shouldn't be done. Suppose this council does take place. What do the liberals of the West do when +Benedict XVI, the greatest patristics scholar to sit on the throne of +Peter in more than 1000 years, allies himself and "his" cardinals and bishops with the Patriarchs, metropolitans and bishops of Orthodoxy? Conversely, what does the Dictatus Papae crowd do? Is the Western Church ready for a major schism? Does the possibility of such a schism mean that the council either never takes place or is doomed from the start?
We've been in a defacto schism for some time. Your point?
The schism has already occurred. It merely waits to be formalized.