Timothy and Trady. Do you think, there were Catholics who felt the same way, you do, in this time period of history? The key to any council is who interprets it and then enforces the implementation. Confir the Acts of the Apostles and the council of Jerusalem....they didn't just write a letter and send it off to Antioch, they also selected two representatives to make sure their letter was properly received.....to the degree the bishops came home from the council and were in control of the development - like in Poland or the far east....things went OK. In the US and EU zone bishops were NOT in control as the Media and theologians and others took the pole position and ran with it.... most people, especially the "bureaucratic" people in the Church got their information about what it all means not from the Pope or Vatican but from the NYT, Time Magazine, religious order theologians, etc. all trumpetting their interpretation as the sign of the times, etc.

Hence we got the parallel magisterium and 'american church' craziness of the 1980s and 1990s (from folk who generally couldn't fight their way out of wet paper bags via persuasion so just did things, just asserting their view as fact and buffaloed or bluffed their way to change on the ground.)

But while the West was being infiltrated via various Communist 5th columns (not my opinion, the KGB archives revealed post 1989 attest to this), as well as the usual anti-Catholic secular elites' infiltration and good old fashioned defections in the face of the Zietgheist (world, flesh and devil), the East and south and other parts were NOT experiencing a collapse in vocations and evangelization.

Instead, the 3rd world was experiencing a boom in every category.

So that tells me that the decay of the West cannot be laid at the feet of Vatican II, as though it wasn't already well underway.

Let me remind everyone that Trent and the Tridentine Mass did NOT save England or Germany or Scandanavia and other lands from protestantism and later secular atheism. The Old mass and disciplines and outward appearances did NOT stop the French Revolution, the rise of Socialism and satanism of the 1840s. It didn't save Portugal or Spain from military dictatorships or their civil wars.

So the rite and rubrics alone or outward appearances "alone" without a deep yearning for holiness and willingness to be radically faithful to all the virtues not just some.... is the sine qua non of all renewal and life.... irrespective of rite, rubrics and uniforms.

We can't confuse cause and effect. The golden era of the 1940s-1950's were a historically unique effect of a lot of difference influences.... but as we see, that window of blessings didn't endure. Maybe it's because Christians are not supposed to live for long without struggle and persecution? Maybe our Lord is right when he says the price of following him is to pick up crosses....