I am from a Catholic culture, Spanish, every single family member going back like forever was baptized into the Church as an infant. On the other hand, few lived a Catholic life, 8 out of 10 were fallen away Catholics, specially the men, and the few that went to mass, only went to "punch in their cards" on Sundays, and not every Sunday at that. A serious Catholic? I doubt there were more than 10 among 300. Most of them received the priest at heir deathbed or close to it. Whether they did a good confession or not only God knows. From my experience in Spain, Latin America, Italy, and France what I described was the "standard" of Catholic countries, and basically only a few old ladies lived the Catholic life. Baptized as infants "Catholics" when they could decide for themselves either went to punch in their cards on Sunday, or became fallen away Catholics. One thing was a certain, no one became a Protestant. To a fallen away Catholic, Protestantism was moronic, if one is going to hell for their sins, one might as well enjoy themselves in sin. They knew that devout Protestants were just fools going to hell without ever enjoying life on earth.
Fast forward to today. The "devout" family members have all become Protestants or New Age religions. They speak to you about Scripture, and God, and the sinning world. I NEVER heard anyone in my family speak about religion before. They are all divorced, or their children are a disaster, divorced, fornicating and worse. But they are "religous".
What i just described is happening all over South America. It is the template of what has become of the Vatican II church statistical 1 billion baptized Catholics throughout the world.
What brought this about? It is one thing, the Vatican II church legitimized all religions. The Vatican II church in practice told Catholics that they did not need to belong to the Catholic Church and LIVE a REAL Catholic life to be saved, that anyone that everyone who is "religious" will be saved. The Vatican II church is no different than any Protestant church, so, the Catholics joined one of the other churches or religions.