*Yep. I think you are on to something. Almost everyone I knew back in the 60's who was Catholic no longer is one. All those I grew up with and stood in LONG Confessional lines with are now prots or non-church goers. Many are divorced and remarried and yet all of us back then were regular attendees of CYO (Catholic Youth Organisation) and we were all well-catechised.
But, our "christianity" was unacknowledged. We were Catholics and we had rules and regulations, dammit!!! As to a personal relationship with Jesus? Please. Who among us back then were taught to trust Jesus totally? Nobody I grew-up with. We conversed often about going to Confession, and not missing Mass, and not eating meat on Fridays, etc. It was all about formal, external, and legalistic attachment to rules and regulations. Our Liturgies were austere, formal and bereft of beauty. Our old Liturgies were said in about 30 mins , even on Sunday, by our old priest and we went through the motions of kneeling, standing, etc all in perfect unison in a liturgy drained of significance and meaning. It was there. We had to go or go to Hell. We went. And then suddenly, everybody stopped going.
So sad...
I don't know what Catholicism you grew up with, but mine sure wasn't formal, legalistic and devoid of a personal relationship with Our Lord. Nor do I recall that we were urged to adopt that type of relationship.
Everybody, from cloistered nuns to the little old lady in the back pew conversing with Our Lady to Father reading his breviary, knew what it was all about. The problem was that the ill-advised "reforms" that followed Vatican II took away the structure that supported all this and even condemned the people who practiced it. I once remember hearing the new, improved Fr. Bob (generic term - I don't remember his actual name) announce that the Church had moved beyond the Rosary - which was the standard Biblical/devotional reflection and prayer that had sustained generations of Catholics - because the "Church" (his, at least), no longer approved of private, non-collective prayer.
There was an excellent article in First Things last month by Joseph Bottum, "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano," which described the destruction of the intricate "nests" of Catholic piety and religious life by the out of control, misunderstood and misused trends that came out of Vatican II. I don't agree with all his conclusions, but I think he was very right about the fact that we had a rich and diverse world of very deep piety, combined with practices that kept it alive, which was somehow destroyed almost overnight, and that this destruction was is what sent Catholics fleeing and drove the "swallows" away from "Capistrano."
Good point.
There was a disconnect. It played out so that the concept of Fatherhood (divine and human) was distorted into a "Do As I Say, DAMMIT!!" thing, rather than a Father who understood the best uses for the design--similar to a family father whose restrictions and instructions to the children are based on experience.