"The problem was the lack of catechesis or, rather, liberal Christianity in the place of Catholicism. It was not until My children got into college that I woke to the fact that they knew NOTHING about the teachings of the Church. In my inattention I failed to notice they were being turned into Episcopalians."
No doubt that's part of it, but I do believe there is more to it. Even well catechised Roman Catholics, say of my advanced years, know little or nothing of Church history or of the theology behind the teachings of the Roman Church. Even with them when I mention the Fathers, I get a blank stare. Just my opinion, but I suspect this may have to do with an old "pay, pray and obey" mentality which prevailed in the Western Church. The laity was never taught that it was their job to keep an eye on the hierarchy and to ferret out and expose heresy and heterodoxy among the priests and their superiors. Now of course that wasn't the way things worked in the Latin Church so to expect such behavior is unfair, I'll admit. I hate to use this term, but it seems to me that the Latin system prevented and prevents the People of God from "taking ownership" of the Faith and that much of the trouble the Latin Church now may be experiencing stems from this mentality. Isn't it interesting that the same problems haven't cropped up in the other particular churches in communion with Rome!
As a reader of history, and a "fan" of John Henry Newman and of the historian Christopher Dawson , I have always taken a long view of the Church. However, it has taken me a long to sort out what has happened to the Church since VII, to separate the sheep from the goats. I now understand the Reformation better, since what has happened since 1965 is another reformation, which like the first was characterized by a rebellion of the lower clergy. I don't know if you have read Jacques Maritain's Peasant of the Garonne, Which was published just at the end of the Council and which forecast all the bad things that have happened since. Maritain had been an idol of the liberals, but this they wrote off as the confusion of a garrolous old man, when what they hated was that he was spot on. It is a prophesy. I bought it, skimmed through it, and more or less discounted what he said. The most striking phase is "geneflection to the world." This is what so many priests did. They abandoned their mission; the ones who stayed too often were like Hans Kueng or , worst, Father Drinan. Eventually I got to see what Dostroyevski so mistrusted the Jesuits. They want a worldly kingdom of heaven, like the Muslims.
That isn't the "Latin system," so much as it is a peculiar mentality that has grown up in the West, and is especially bad in this country.
There were/are plenty of priests and religious who nurtured that "religion is something best left to the priests and sisters" mentality, because it made their jobs easier. (If nobody asks tough questions, they don't have to answer tough questions, and can then move on to important things, like golf.)
The absolute antithesis to that is some of the lay movements, like Opus Dei and others, which preach a objective, real lay vocation to holiness and orthodoxy.
As far as there being a lack of community in large parishes, I think the lack of authentic community is not the cause of the problems, but the symptom of them. The problems arise from the utter banality of the liturgy in some of those parishes, and from the extreme clericalism of some of the priests in those parishes. (See above.)
And it's also true that catechesis absolutely stank in the years between 1965 and 1985. The people who were the victims of that bad catechesis are now the young and middle-aged adults who should be the heart of the community in those parishes. Many of them are gone; they're either inactive Catholics or have left the Church completely.
But even those who have stayed often don't have the understanding of their faith necessarily to become the kind of lay defenders of orthodoxy you have in mind.