That's a good analogy. The mystique was gone; in fact, as someone posted last week, it was replaced by a team of lay people. Vatican II cannot be undone; Vatican III must be held at bay for now.
We still recall the glory of the church at that time. Once our generation passes away, who will take up the gauntlet?
Tonight, our parish priests will "christen" the newly expanded parking lot with ... kickball! They want to commune with the parishioners. Back in my childhood, the growth of a community would have been celebrated with Mass and Benediction, followed by a Eucharistic Procession.
I never thought I would ever pine for the return of those days. Despite no air conditioning in the church, incense wafting skyward, bells ringing, and stomachs grumbling, large crowds always turned out for mass.
That's when priests didn't mind vesting in public. They were already halfway there because they wore their cassocks and birettas in public.
Oh, please, let's not get melodramatic. OK? Many of the proponents of the Tridentine Latin Mass (including myself) never experienced it as a child. As Raymond Arroyo said, "How can we be nostalgic when we never experienced it to begin with?" Don't forget, too, that many of the dissenting agitators of the 60's and 70's are dying off and aren't being replaced.
Given that the orthodox, traditional seminaries are creating many more priests than the heterodox, dissenting seminaries, the balance will shift and Holy Mother Church will begin to recover. As a priest friend of a FReeper said, "The Lord loves His Church a lot more than you or I, and whatever He permits will be for our good. We must fight the good fight, but we must not argue with the Lord about what He permits and why."