Dear Neville,
I don’t know why you assume that the difficulties the acharonim were discussing is the practice of eating chodosh. Perhaps the problem for them was how to understand the sugya correctly. That is what they refer to as a dochek. The pnei yehoshua writes that he understands from the sugya that chodos is a machlokes on shel Torah and we must be machmir.
See his words. Starting with the last paragraph on the page.
https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14635&st=&pgnum=552
My point is that it is a lot of precedent. For that alone, I’m uncomfortable calling it a kulah. It’s a machlokes. And since it’s shel Torah we go after the machmir. But in the sugya itself, it would not be a kula to learn that way. If you think this is to much pretzel logic, I cede the debate without taking back my opinion.
The Rema is reluctant to reconcile practice with theory in this manner. Is that enough to assume that his opinion is that it assur according to the law? I really don’t know how to ascertain that in a non-biased manner. So I don’t know. And, not knowing is a lacking in Limud HaTorah. Not a kula in Hilchos Chodosh.
I’ll easy take this back. But I’m really uncomfortable saying that people are learning more today and are more aware of how shaky it is. It’s a befeirushe gemara in kiddushin! There is no way the yeshivaliet of old missed this. The difference is that post war we have come in contact with the Sephardim and others that do not eat Yoshon. Now that it is an option, Yidden revisited the topic. And it changed.