Indeed it was, as binding as the requirement of RC rulers to exterminate those Rome deems as "heretics" or face excommunication. Autocrats can do so.
That there are massive rooms filled from floor to ceiling with canons, codes, bulls, decretals, pronouncements, etc., and the Catechism being frequently changed, modified and updated,
As "Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law," (Providentissimus Deus) and "it follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock...the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors," (VEHEMENTER NOS, an Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906), and so RCs are not to engage in interpretation of what was taught in the past, but look to what Rome presently teaches, and which actions reveal.
Thus liberal RCs are the majority.