Vatican II kept me out of the Catholic Church for many years. Let me explain.
I was baptized as an infant at Trinity United Methodist Church in Buchanan Virginia in 1950. However, I didn’t have a living faith in Christ until 1977, after having been in the Navy for 8 years, when I joined Rock Church in Roanoke Virginia where my soon to be wife, MaryAlice, attended. The next year we moved to Blackburg where I started college at Virginia Tech and we became members of Dayspring Christian Community there.
My only church experience, for many years, was evangelical/charismatic (Botetourt county where I grew up didn’t have its first Catholic Mass until 1981) and my only knowledge of historic Christianity came from reading and that came slowly.
As I read, piecemeal and undirected, the impression I got third hand was that Vatican II meant that there was no longer any need to become Catholic. When I finally entered the Catholic Church in 2007, my conversion had little to do with Vatican II.
I’m currently a member of St George Melkite Greek Catholic parish near Sacramento.
Your story probably resonates with many converts over the last several decades. Sadly, as with most stories like yours, the matter is not with Vatican II per se, but with the spiraling out of spurious interpretations of the documents of the council by prelates and associated laypeople with a particular agenda. I do agree with your assessment that the uniqueness and necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation was most certainly called into question and likely produced theological apathy among those who might have considered conversion. Why bother?
I agree with what you say, Darin, and I am not faulting Vatican II itself. Also, the dynamics changed with the Internet and I think we are still very early in the working out of the significance of that technological development (have you read Pettegree’s book Brand Luther?).