Major Innovations of Vatican II as to its New Ecclesiology

One expects to hear of Vatican II's major innovations either from the traditionalist critics or "ordain a lady" type liberals, but it was interesting to read this report from the Vatican Information System, which described Cardinal Coccopalmerio's discussion of the relationship between the 1983 code of canon law (which replaced the 1917 code of canon law) and the Vatican II council:

Cardinal Coccopalmerio began his address with the recollection that Blessed John XXIII, in his speech convening Vatican Council II in 1959, explained that the Council’s legal scope was to bring about the awaited revision of the 1917 Code. “In his broad perspective, the Pope saw clearly that the revision of the Code had to be guided by the new ecclesiology that emerged from an ecumenical and a global summit such as the Council.” Blessed John Paul II, under whose pontificate the Code was promulgated, also repeated that “the council’s ecclesiological structure clearly required a renewed formulation of its laws”.

“As John Paul II emphasized at the beginning of the Apostolic Constitution ‘Sacrae disciplinae leges’, the reason for the close relationship between Vatican Council II and the Code of Canon Law was that the 1983 Code was the culmination of Vatican II … in two ways: on the one hand, it embraces the Council, solemnly reproposing fundamental institutions and major innovations and, on the other, establishing positive norms for implementing the Council.”

(VIS, 22 January 2013)

Acknowledging "major innovations" and a "new ecclesiology" is remarkably more candid than the line we hear from the "Called to Communion" folks, who sometimes seem to act as though Rome's ecclesiology is something divine.

-TurretinFan