Judging by the precipitous drop off in weekly Mass attendance since the reforms, a lot of Catholics feel the same way - perhaps the proportional majority.
Have you ever been involved with an Evangelical Protestant church? If so, you would know that a large percentage of Evangelical Protestants are ex-Catholics. In the churches that we attended before converting to Catholicism, at least 25% of the attendees and members were ex-Catholics.
I doubt very much that these Christians left the Catholic Church after Vatican II because they missed the Latin Mass, and then started attending a Protestant Church where Latin is non-existent and any kind of liturgy is considered “Catholic” and “not in the Bible.”
Also, I think that many Catholics stopped attending Mass for the same reason many Protestants stopped attending church in the 1960s–they got caught up in the turmoil of the 1960s world; e.g., Viet Nam war, “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30,” “Free Love,” the Cold War, the struggles for Civil Rights, rock music, rebellion, and drugs.
The 1960s were called “the Sick 60s” by many people, including my parents, who were appalled at how societal norms crumbled and were replaced with protests, violence, civil unrest, addictions, and disrespect for parents, country, church, and any kind of authority.
I think a lot of Christians fell away from their churches back then and have never come back. It’s hard to sit in a church that had rules like “No blacks, no slacks, no tracks” and “Women must wear head coverings,” while the rest of the country is burning bras, throwing molotov cocktails at cops, and “tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.”
