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Since I don't like the regime of novelty at all, and much prefer to see the clock turned back to 1949, obviously I'm not a "neo-Catholic".

Again, how am I "neo-Catholic"?

Again, how am I "neo-Catholic"?

Simple. You obviously can't be pigeonholed into the "progressive" category and you don't agree with those who trash Vatican II, so you must of course be a "neo-conservative." I had to think about this for a while because before you got categorized (easier to file) I just thought you were a practicing Catholic, loyal to the Magisterium. Whadda I know!

There is only one fundemental cause. People voluntarily giving up their faith. No one has held a gun to anyone's head and said "leave the Church". No one has bolted up the door and refused entry. No one has said anyone is not allowed to buy books or teach their children. If people have left the Church or failed to teach their children the faith - ITS THEIR OWN FAULT! Not the Bishops, not the Parishes, not the Liberals, and not Vatican II. NO ONE DID IT BUT THEM! The same means that have always been available are still available. If people don't avail themselves of it, its not the fault of the Church, but their own fault. The crisis in the Church is a crisis of the faithful leaving the Church for supposed greener pastures in Protestantism and Atheism.

This is a fundamentally non-Catholic point of view. We do not have a radical individualist Church. We have a flock that is led by shepherds. The state of the flock indicates the quality of the leadership by the shepherds. Jesus said, "When the shepherd is struck, the flock is scattered." He also warned against hirelings who pretend to be shepherds but who are only in it for their own advancement and who flee when the flock faces danger.

This is the reality of the Catholic Church. You cannot explain away the reality of tens of millions of Catholics falling away from the practice of the faith by so many individual decisions.

Take any set of statistics you want, you'll see the same trend. You seem to prefer church attendance over seminarians. Fine. Take a look at the recent Gallup poll which showed a steady decline in Church attendance by Catholics from 1962 to today, recently reaching its nadir at a point lower than the protestants for the first time ever. There has to be some cause for this trend. Blame it on sunspots if you like. But it's simply disingenuous to pretend that there is no cause, and it is nothing more than tens of millions of individual decisions that share no commonality.

You are desperately seeking to find any explanation except the plain and obvious one that is staring you right in the face. Why? Why won't you just admit that every one of these problems can be traced back directly to Vatican II?