Does Vatican II qualify for an imprimatur?

In 2003 / 2004, the first of the Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II study guides underwent a thorough evaluation by the censor librorum for the Archdiocese of Baltimore (an eminent theologian and professor at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary) as part of the process of securing an imprimatur.  He went through the text with a fine-tooth comb and made a couple of recommendations for rewording certain sentences, not because they were misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine, but because they weren’t sufficiently clear and could therefore invite an erroneous interpretation.

The obvious didn’t occur to me until many years later; if this very same standard was applied to the conciliar text, as the previous post indicates, it would not qualify for an imprimatur.

The point is simply this:

It’s not enough for a given text, that purports to transmit the faith, to possess the mere possibility being interpreted in continuity with tradition; rather, it must transmit the doctrine of the faith whole and entire, with precision and clarity.

Surely this is not asking too much of an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, is it?

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