Not everybody's elders found the period immediately after Vatican II to be a golden age of Catholicism. Some were saddened the Latin Mass was taken from them. Some were told how they pray was wrong, whether that was the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, Novenas, processions,and other traditional devotions. Some had their beautiful churches wreckovated...beautiful vestments, statues, high altars, Communion rails, paid for by the sweat of the brow of generations of immigrants discarded like yesterday's trash instead of gratefully accepting what was passed to them. The common witness of Friday penance binding together the faithful, gone. Is it and wonder so many walked away, if what was held sacred one day could be thrown out the next, people thought, what's the point?
I get that not everything was perfect, but why throw out the baby with the bath water?  Fortunately, there are those, including younger Catholics who are preserving and restoring traditions that some wished would disappear