The Progressive Hollowing out of Piety

A comment I saw on Rorate Cæli earlier today, two years old but new to me, on the beginning of the post-conciliar decline in the Church. It began before the council:

The process started long ago. In retrospect, I can remember the progressive hollowing out of piety and devotion -- in myself among other places -- as the 1950s wore on. I recall reading a Catholic Book Club advertisement for Fr. Leo Trese's "Vessel of Clay," a book of meditations for priests. At the age of 11 or 12, I was amazed at the notion of priestly humility reflected in some of the quotes. For me, priests were just functionaries. So were bishops, and backroom functionaries at that. As a boy, I literally never met one who struck me as pious; and with a priest uncle and two nun aunts, and an altar boy for good measure in a very Catholic environment, I met plenty. The same was true of the sisters and brothers who taught me, and the literal scores of my aunts' consoeurs that I met in the convent parlors of the Sundays of my youth. The conciliar revolution went like a hot knife through butter because above all, it adjusted principle to fit practice -- moved the goal posts, as Bishop Williamson recently put it.

Alas for worldly priests and lukewarm religious, and for all the souls they could have influenced for the good, but did not. Alas for the lack of saints in our modern Church (which includes thee and me, dear reader).