Was God Behind the Ambiguities of Vatican II?

By the admission of many who attended it, Vatican II is filled with ambiguities, and those ambiguities were later exploited by modernists and liberals to advance teachings the Council itself never intended. Yet Vatican II was a legitimate ecumenical council calling for our assent and obedience. How do we hold both truths together?

Robert Sungenis takes up the question directly. Vatican II, as Pope Paul VI noted, was a pastoral rather than a dogmatic council, and it issued no extraordinary statements carrying a note of infallibility; being pastoral, its language was often verbose and imprecise, which gave rise to the ambiguities in question. If the Council was nonetheless guided by the Holy Spirit, then in some sense God was behind these ambiguities. Robert explains what that really means, comparing it to other times when God gave ambiguous laws to Israel in the Old Testament.