If you revisit the article, it becomes quite evident that VAT II had nothing to do with this loss of faith. If anything, the primary reason given is that the Church refuses to keep up with modern times - it is too orthodox. That is what is so revealing in this story.
And that poor priest who believes this and is trying to lure the kids back in . . . bless his heart, you know he's TRYING. But that's the fallacy in this whole line of thought (you can't call it reasoning).
Trying to make the church "relevant" and "modern" is counterproductive. The teenagers ultimately are attracted to the church because it is the "other" - the contrast between their daily lives and the transcendent Reality. Cell phones and parties and pop music can only go so far, and when the kids realize that their lives lack a spiritual center, they turn back to the Church that was waiting for them all along, eternal and unchanging and True.
They don't turn to a pop-church that has been transformed into the World. What would be the point? They can hear better music on their IPods . . .
When I was an Episcopalian, the church went through this same convulsion trying to "attract young people". You see where it's gotten THEM.
I don't see where you get that from the article.
Vatican II wasn't the cause of all of our woes, but it did play a role in releasing the pent-up modernism throughout the Church.
Then, some people, after they got a taste of "create-your-own" Catholicism, wanted even more. Now, that the hierarchy is starting to put the brakes on some of the nonsense, it's upsetting these people.
Ye-es, it does seem that even a liberalized Church is now to the right, culturally speaking, of many Irish Catholics, and many Catholics throughout the West. However, judging from the ferocious secularization of the past four decades I believe the suicidal "throwing open of the windows" of VAT II during the cultural hurricane of the late 20th century so damaged the authority of the Church, and the Faith of many in the West that the RCC is now irrelevant to many even nominal Catholics. Had the Church held to orthodoxy she may well have declined numerically during social upheavals of the later postwar years, but I don't think she would have been reduced to a state of barely-tolerated irrelevance in so many of her former strongholds, as we now see happening in Ireland. But then again, you know the old saying about the man who weds the spirit of the age...