Simply saying "a majority" is a huge understatement. Let's start with attending Mass on Sunday. It is a mortal sin to deliberately miss Mass. Yet we know that 4 out of 5 CAtholics do just that on a given Sunday. Out of the 20% who attend regularly, how many go to every Sunday and every holy day of obligation without fail? And that's just the smallest of the mortal sins. What about contraception, as you mention -- reliable statistics indicate that at least 95% of married Catholics use contraception. That doesn't leave many who are not on the road to hell. Then we have the list of countless other mortal sins -- how many are avoiding them all? The number of the saved in today's world must be small indeed.
Frequent confession is clearly essential. Yet how short is the line for confession at most churches these days. The latest trend at most parishes is to have no scheduled confession time at all -- just call the rectory they say. And even for those who do confess their sins, as St. Leanord points out, they may have a chance of salvation but still there are many opportunities to merely dig a deeper pit for oneself:
If you consider the sacrament of penance, there are so many distorted confessions, so many studied excuses, so many deceitful repentances, so many false promises, so many ineffective resolutions, so many invalid absolutions! Would you regard as valid the confession of someone who accuses himself of sins of impurity and still holds to the occasion of them? Or someone who accuses himself of obvious injustices with no intention of making any reparation whatsoever for them? Or someone who falls again into the same iniquities right after going to confession? Oh, horrible abuses of such a great sacrament! One confesses to avoid excommunication, another to make a reputation as a penitent. One rids himself of his sins to calm his remorse, another conceals them out of shame. One accuses them imperfectly out of malice, another discloses them out of habit. One does not have the true end of the sacrament in mind, another is lacking the necessary sorrow, and still another firm purpose. Poor confessors, what efforts you make to bring the greater number of penitents to these resolutions and acts, without which confession is a sacrilege, absolution a condemnation and penance an illusion?