Vatican II: Prague Spring or False Dawn?

I'm finally ready to post again after the shock of hearing Cardinal Ratzinger named the new Pope. Now I have to decide if the Catholic Church still embodies the promise of Vatican II. Was the mid Sixties a Prague Spring in the Church -- a period of openness that has inspired a backlash but will ultimately prevail? Or was it a false dawn, portending nothing but a respite on the road to fundamentalism? I know what answer Ratzinger would give -- and was ever anyone in the Church given such a foreboding, Dickensian name as he?