So sadly true. I just finished reading "The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture". It's a devastating look at what happened to what used to be a solid Catholic foundation in the Boston area. It wasn't the sex abuse scandal that did it; it began long before that.
I would guess that the liberalization of the culture and of the American Catholic church happened at about the same time, post 1960. Instead of fighting liberalism, many Catholic clergy and nuns decided to join the enemy.