That's an interesting theory and speculation, but it doesn't hold water. We have a history of councils being called and dogma being determined usually in response to conflict, controversy, or outcry.
For example: the bogus list claims that Trent "added" the Apocrypha to the OT. Leaving side the question of whether the so-called Apocryphal books should be canonical, the fact is they were read, studied, and trusted as canonical long before Trent, and the action was taken at Trent not as some brand new idea but in response to Protestants ruling the books out.
Again, rightly or wrongly, the definitions of Marian Dogmas came about because of persistent, even mounting, popular clamor. Catholics were content with things as they were for all those centuries, but finally they appealed for resolution.
My tag line, for example, was known and prayed and said to have been from a vision some years before the definition of the Immaculate Conception.
To assess the reliability of the Marian Dogmata on the time between them and Christ is to misunderstand the process and the kind of things that lead to such definitions.
Have been pondering this point.
Just doesn’t hold water, for me.
Prottys are aware of a lot of legends about the early church. They remain, to us, legends.
Prottys are aware of a variety of interpretations of Scripture—many of which various Christian clubs differ on. For many of us . . . we await God to sort it out conclusively. We don’t presume to declare emphatically that which God did not choose to exercise emphatic precision about in His Word.
It still is inescapable to me that at a variety of points in time down to the modern era, the Roman political power-mongering committees found it advantageous to declare various legends or even mere ideas . . . to FROM THAT POINT be DOGMA for the faithful to believe and follow. All the while pretending that the dogma had been whole, complete and homogeneous from 400 years before the edifice began.
That just doesn’t hold a molecule of water, for me.