How does anyone know what the "degree" of a council is?
Neil said:
but the Catholic way of demanding the religious assent of faith is dogmatic definition, of which Vat.II contained nothingEXACTLY! As you stated, V2 was the first non-dogmatic, pastoral, ecuмenical council in history. That is evidence right there that it should be viewed "differently", but many don't have an explanation for this difference, and it doesn't fit their theory, so they ignore it.
It seems to me that Vat.II fails 1, 2 and 4, not just 1.
In the interest of making a point about the lack of clarity and obligation to obey V2's "decrees which decree nothing", I conceded 2 and 4. But I agree that 2 and 4 are debatable and not 100% certain.