I too was born in 1946. I never heard anyone ever complain about Latin. It was taken completely for granted. We were told you could go anywhere in the world and you would have the same Mass. It was not the Latin Mass, it was the Holy Mass. Nobody even gave our native language a thought.
Children (my brothers and I) understood everything that was going on and none of us was at all confused by the Latin. We knew it off by heart as well and could answer any part of the Mass. We also understood what the Latin words meant.
You sometimes saw people saying their Rosary, but it was not a common sight. Oh yes! we had Mass books as well and followed them.
We had huge numbers of Catholic children in each class. First Holy Communion group photos show my tiny face lost in a sea of other faces. Most practiced the faith, not like now when parents bring their children for a first and last Holy Communion. We learnt the faith from our parents and that faith was reinforced by teachers who were invariably nuns in full regalia. Lay teachers were not needed because the convents were full.
TKGS nailed it.
When I was a child, going to Latin Mass was a day that we cherished. We tried to focus on Christ and His saints, and that was made easy with all the statues in the Church, the beautiful vestments, the high altar with the candles and the golden tabernacle, the glorious Latin hymns and chants, the incense used during the Mass, the Holy Water during the
Aperges Me at the beginning of Mass, and the traditional Missal. My mom brought along Catholic story books for my younger brothers and sister to keep them quiet. Yes, occasionally my brother would pinch me, and my father would bop both of us on the head and then finally separate us. He did not want him pinching me, or me complaining about it as we were to suffer in silence. He would try other means to make my Sundays as miserable as possible, and I would pray all the harder that he would change into a lovely man someday. I guess that was the beginning of my desires to enter religious life ... to pray for our family that we would be saved.
All the girls and ladies wore pretty hats, gloves, and their best clothes. It was a time when most Catholics had huge families. We did not have thrift stores as parents would collect what was "gently used" and bring that to the church on Sunday to share with those who were struggling, and during that time, most of us were struggling to make end meet or struggling to save for a new house, a new car, a new TV, or for college tuition. I obtained some lovely clothes though this clothing exchange, and by adding a scarf or a different belt, the outfits looked new. Sometimes my mom would have me rip seams and make an entirely new and more stylish outfit.
I spent my teenage years in the very progressive San Francisco Bay Area. That was the era of Flower Children. In 1963 or 1964, we had an English form of the Mass for the first time, and the nuns mentioned that this was due to the changes of Vatican II. I remember the priests were reading the Epistle and Gospel for the first time in English, but we were still singing the
Gloria, Sanctus, etc., in Latin except at the Low Masses when everything was recited in English..
In Summer of 1971, I moved down to Los Angeles, but they still had the Latin Mass, as the Novus Ordo Mass was not promoted until 1973. That was a while ago, so I may be confused by the dates, but the LA Archdiocese seemed to be more traditionalist and delayed the implementation of the Novus Ordo. I remember the "crash courses" offered in the LA parishes to bring the people up to date on the Novus Ordo, and how many of the people were upset.
And yes, the Modernists told us that saying the Rosary was very inappropriate as we were now to participate in the Novus Ordo by singing and being attentive. Yet, how could we be attentive with the new "rock" masses, so the churches were no longer silent. With the silence gone, the mystery seemed to vanish.