“This is all many Catholics know, what the pope called the dictatorship of relativism.”
Unfortunately, you are correct. What is needed is a new, orthodox emphasis on catechesis. Many Latin American bishops have incorporated this into their expansive 5 year programs of evangelization. An emphasis on prayer for all they attempt to do is a huge part of this. They are re-training their Catholics, advancing them in spirituality, morality, Scripture, deeper understanding of the sacraments and the history of the Church. They are forming them into neighborhood groups of faithful Catholics who are evangelizing their neighborhoods with some pretty astounding success.
We desperately need to consider something similar here in the USA....that is under the leadership and INCLUDES the participation of all of our bishops...as it is in Latin America.
What seems to have happened was that many priests and nuns lost their faith, but instead of admitting this, pretended to stay with the Church, and subtly redefined their terms. Ambiguity became their stock in trade. If they left their ministries, they took jobs as teachers, and the Catholic colleges, they took in ex-priests and let them, contrary to canon law, teach religion. What they taught, of course, was not the Catholic faith but their own substitute. God knows how many of these people there were. Some cynics, just pretending for the money; some apostates, using their jobs to teach students falsehoods , their”truths,”but not the Truth, and thumbing their noses at any bishop who might reign them in. Then you have the likes of Father Drinan, who should have been barred from every parish in the country.