Even if it may have caused more problems than it solved, Vatican II for the future Pope was in no small part about reintegrating loose and undisciplined elements of immutable Catholic doctrine with Christological and Eucharistic teaching.
George Weigel writes, “In the years immediately after the Council, Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), who was one of the three most influential theologians at Vatican II, knew that the Council’s reception was imperfect and its implementation even more imperfect. Nonetheless, he identified further reasons why Vatican II was necessary and why its teaching was essential for the Church’s life going forward:
“[The] Council reinserted into the Church as a whole a doctrine of [papal] primacy that was dangerously isolated; it integrated into the one mysterium of the Body of Christ a too-isolated conception of the hierarchy; it restored to the ordered unity of faith an isolated Mariology; it gave the biblical word its full due; it made the liturgy once more accessible; and, in addition, it made a courageous step forward toward the unity of all Christians.” — quoted by George Weigel, Why Vatican II Was Necessary, October 19, 2022, NCRegister
Catholic Critique 