Karl Rahner rightly held that the biggest revolution at V2 was with regard to EENS and Catholic ecclesiology, but was stunned that the "conservative Fathers" didn't make a peep about it. Here was the most revolutionary thing about V2 and it went by unnoticed even by the conservative group, individuals like Archbishop Lefebvre, who was one of the group's leaders.
And this trend continues, so that 90% of Trad Catholics (my personal swag at a number) have this loosey-goosey view of EENS, but I find this incredibly ironic, as I see (agreeing with Rahner) that the core/root issue or error with Vatican II is rooted in the same view of EENS and the same ecclesiology as that of Vatican II.
Bishop Sanborn, when asked in debates about what the core heresy of V2 is, always begins with V2 ecclesiology. But then he says that non-Catholics can be saved. But this necessarily (as per the above syllogism) means that non-Catholics can be inside the Church. Thus ... Vatican II ecclesiology in a nutshell. Dr. Fastiggi exploited this contradiction and therefore won the debate against Bishop Sanborn.
If someone were to convince me of the prevailing view of EENS among Trads, that heretics, schismatics, and even infidels (Hindus in Tibet) can be saved, then I would be compelled to drop all theologial opposition to Vatican II (and the NOM would be a separate issue). Really, all that would remain would be Religious Liberty, but I can make a compelling case for that from this new ecclesiology as well.
MAJOR: People have a God-given right to save their souls.
MINOR: People save their souls by doing what (they believe to be) God's will (even if it isn't).
CONCLUSION: People have a God-given right to do what (they believe to be) God's will (even if it isn't).
This is the foundation of the "subjectivism" that Bishop Williamson rightly holds to be the fundamental error of Vatican II.
So you start with doctrinal subjectivism (with Wojtyla's religious indifferentism) and the next step is moral subjectivism (which is where we are with Bergoglio today) ... and all of Vatican II is clearly explained.
But people for some reason fail to see that EENS-denial is the "Rosetta Stone" to interpreting and unlocking all of Vatican II.
Some, such as Bishop Sanborn and the SVs, who are the most hostile to Father Feeney, have this mindset because they have overreacted to the R&R underselling of the Church's infallibility, by exaggerating and overselling it. To them, a long rambling speculative (in his own language) allocution (aka speech) by Pius XII to a group of midwives might as well have been a dogmatic bull or solemn dogmatic definition issued with the full weight of papal authority to the Universal Church. To them,
Suprema Haec, which per Canon Law isn't even merely authentic Magisterium, as it never appeared in AAS, is on a par with the Council of Florence. I've even heard SVs claim that any book with an
imprimatur on it must be regarded as free of error, and therefore effectively infallible. Of course, nearly all of them also reject the Pius XII Holy Week Rites as tainted with Modernism. So they're rather selective about applying their principles. To these SVs, "Feeneyites" are just as much as the V2 Modernists, and Father Feeney a heretic just as bad as a Hans Kung. So they ironically cling to the same ecclesiology that they condemn as the chief heresy of Vatican II. I find this utterly inexplicable. And Karl Rahner was also at a loss to explain it, that those who opposed Vatican II failed to see the most revolutionary aspect of it.
Oh, the SVs have also extended infallibility to the Church's "theologians" per what I call "Cekadism". Theologians have never been regarded as infallible, and are not part of the teaching Church. At best, they can be considered a reflection of the "Believing Church". For 700 years, they all got it wrong in following unanimously the erroneous opinion of St. Augustine regarding the fate of infants who die without the Sacrament of Baptismm. And what of the fact that all the Church's theologians all got behind Vatican II (with the exception of one or two who can rightly be called "theologians", such as +Guerard des Lauriers). What's a "theologian" anyway? What criterial define a theologian? At any rate, they nearly-unanimously backed Vatican II, and continued to do so until the present day. So what happened to the infallibility of theologians suddenly? Did they all suddenly defect from the Church one Tuesday morning in 1963 at 9:35 AM? But just a few years prior, their works were effectively infallible? When they were condemning Father Feeney they were infallible, but then when they embraced the theology of Vatican II they were not infallible, and not Catholic theologians anymore? This is mind-boggling nonsense. BTW, Msgr. Fenton, one of these pre-V2 theologians, explicitly rejects Cekadism in passages that I have cited before.