I hear the words but I sure don't see the proof behind them.
My conversion from Roman Catholicism came from a direct response to hearing the Gospel from the word of God after a simple prayer asking him for the truth. I was not angry nor disillusioned. I was seeking the truth that, in my heart, I knew I had not heard yet. Once I did, I knew there was no going back.
I sure hope you aren’t really expecting any answers from the Catholics on board.
When I accepted Christ and decided to start regularly attending church again, I went to the Catholic church since that was where I was raised.
As I read more and more Scripture and saw bigger and bigger discrepancies between what Scripture said and the RCC taught, it became obvious that that was not the place for me.
After vacillating between that and an evangelical church where I saw people actually live out their faith with a great deal of integrity, something I had not seen much in the Catholic church, I decided to go where people took their faith and God’s Word seriously.
Good questions. Decisions and teachings are not infallible just because they are taught by an Ecumenical Council or Pope. According to the First Vatican Council's declaration on Papal Infallibility (See the document Pastor Aeternus), a teaching can only be recognized as infallible if the following conditions are met:
1)A teaching must not contradict Scripture, Sacred Tradition, or an infallible teaching of an earlier pope or Ecumenical Council. (Ecumenical Councils must have the popes approval to be infallible.)
2)The Pope must assent to a statement
3)The Pope must intend to speak with his full authority (ex cathedra)
4)He must "define"
5)The statement must concern faith and morals.
6)The declaration must be stated to apply to the whole Church and it must be clear that acceptance of the teaching is binding on all.
You can usually tell that a statement is intended to be infallible and binding on the whole Church because it will say something like this "We decree, declare, and define that and that this teaching is to be held inviolate by the whole Church." In an Ecumenical Council an infallible statement is almost always followed by the phrase that if anyone rejects this teaching or teaches this doctrine is false doctrine then "let him be anathema." It is very, very rare that infallibility is ever used. When formally proclaimed in this manner by a pope or an ecumenical council, the magisterium is called the Solemn Magisterium
Also if a teaching on Faith and morals is EVER at any point in history held by ALL of the bishops of the world including the Pope as needing to be accepted by the faithful, then it becomes infallible under what is called the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium. According to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith this is why the teaching of John Paul II in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that women may never be ordained to the Priesthood is infallible. (This was authoritatively stated by the CDF after someone asked if Ordinatio Sacerdotaliswas infallible. The question had been prompted because it was speculated to be infallible in its own right under the solemn magisterium because its wording was very close to an infallible formula of the solemn magisterium. It stated: Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of Our ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) We declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.
In any case, back to Vatican II. Pope John XXIII explicitly stated that he didn't want to make the Council infallible or dogmatic. He wanted it to be a pastoral council to use the medicine of love. Consequently, the documents systematically avoid the use of threats of excommunication. Since these threats of anathema are required to make something infallible none of Vatican II's documents are infallible unless it teaches an already infallible dogma. Pope Paul VI at the close of the Council also stated that Vatican II had not attempted to define any new dogmas. Thus it is in theory possible for a later Council/pope to overturn or reject most of Vatican II.
By the way, on a side not, one of the major problems with the documents of Vatican II is that they are filled with doublespeak, that can be interpreted in two contradicting ways. So even if the bishops had agreed to the documents, because of the vagueness of the documents, they weren't necessarily agreeing to the same things. This is why earlier councils were always exact in their language and doctrinal definitions...it prevents confusion and everyone knows what the decision of the documents are. Because Vatican II is so vague the documents can be interpreted in opposite ways...this leads to the dissension in the hierarchy that you are talking about. One side wants to interpret Vatican II in continuity with the earlier councils, and the progressive factions wants to interpret the documents in ways that radically break from the past dogmas.
It's easy to give Vatican II a bad rap, but the most serious problems with Vatican II, is not Vatican II itself, but the reforms implemented in the name of Vatican II. Most Catholics think Vatican II did things that it never did. For instance, did you know that in the document Sacramentum Concilium that Vatican II decreed that the mass was to remain in Latin and Gregorian Chant was to be the norm in mass? Vatican II never approved entire masses being in the vernacular it only said that only certain prayers and the Gospel may be read in the vernacular.
Additionally, Vatican II never intended for the priest to face the people, nor the Tabernacles to be moved, nor altars to destroyed and turned into tables, nor communion to be given in the hand, nor did Vatican II do away with the prohibition of eating meat on Fridays. Yet every time the topics come up, people think that Vatican II did it because these things happened in the wake of the Council. So that is why there is so much dissension between the rank and file of the Church. There was a culture war in the Church. The progressives took advantage of the confusion to implement their own agendas in the Church, all the while claiming that "Spirit of Vatican II" gave them the authority. Most people have never read Vatican II's documents and think that what happened after the Council was commanded by the Council.