A reasonable person would look at what else was happening at the same time, to determine what the actual casuation was.

It is only the simplistic person who will buy into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument for causation.

The sacrament that is more telling than the reduction in the number of vocations is marriage; the fall-off of marriages and the surrounding issues are far more valid evidence of the causation than simply looking at the reduction in the number of ordinations.

Marriage has been impacted by a number of issues, including materialism (which took off after WW2, when we started the move to dual incomes and women moving into non-traditional jobs); the rise of ABC which started in 1930 and by the early 1960's was fueled by the new form - the Pill; the almost instantaneous rejection of Humanae Vitae and the the following massive increase in the use of ABC; the sɛҳuąƖ revolution which reached a fever pitch in the mid 1960s; the gradual move since the 1960s to later and later marriage; the change in civil laws which previously made criminal both ABC and "shacking up" and the massive increase in both categories since then; and the move to "no fault" divorce which lead to a mssive increase in divorces.

Those who obstinately confuse the reform intended by Vatican 2 with the dissent that followed after Vatican 2 and is nowhere prompted by the docuмents - or for that matter, the OF - are either too intellectually lazy to do any research, or they are approaching intellectual dishonesty.

Many of the same issues that impacted the sacrament of marriage have had an impact - direct or indirect - on other sacraments. The dissent that over-ran HV spread like wild fire; if the Vatican was (theoretically) so far off the mark on sɛҳuąƖ issues and was to be ignored, then where else were they to be ignored? Where else were they simply a bunch of out-of-touch old people who simply "didn't get it"?

It is not the alternatives which are within the OF which caused priests to so thoroughly ignore the rubrics; it was the expanding idea that whatever Rome said was irrelevant, and that relevance had to be applied at the local level.

Vatican 2 did not create the changes in society, nor do the docuмents support any of the craziness that has gone on since 1965. Nor was it a few priests, ordained after 1965, who gave us the chaos in the OF; it was priests who were ordained before Vatican 2, many of them well before it. Blaming the necessary reform of the Church - which according to this pope and the last one still has not been fully implemented - for the subsequent chaos is simply to ignore the multitude of issues impacting both the clergy and the people in the pews. Experimentation had already started in the Mass before we got the OF handed to us, and that at a time where the rubrics were more formal and complex and a time where authority was far more reaching and (supposedly) effective.

And any business which fires its leader over things which the leader has no control is a business which will fail shortly.

It is an argument from absence. You may say in another one hundred posts that it is heresy. I will not accept it as such. When I see words such as "implicitly" and phrases like "at least in practice" I see a hedging of truth, that is, trying to make something exist in a vacuum. It is not the definition of heresy. This is the definition of heresy.

The obstinate denial after Baptism of a truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith (2089; cf. 465).

No denial equate to no heresy.

As has been mentioned numerous times before, Catholics did not leave the Church because of the change in liturgy (and, apparently, neither did the change in the liturgy bring in the wayward protestants; perhaps there is some other underlying element?); the continuance of the latin Mass would have seen the same loss of souls.

I will ask this once again; PLEASE SHOW ME AN EXAMPLE OF ANYTHING PROTESTANT IN THE MISSAL OF POPE PAUL VI.

Just because the confused theology of a protestant allows the use of liturgical books that are not part of their faith does not mean that there is anything inherently flawed in the liturgy. By your logic, the Bible itself is questionable since so many atrocities have been committed throughout the centuries using the Bible as a source of authority.

Actually, Mass attendance prior to the Council was already in decline here in America during the "Golden Age" of the 1950's, the same with vocations.  YOUR claim is unsupported by statistical data. Attendance in Europe had been in decline, too, before the Council.  So there.  It has been posted here nearly ad nauseum that people left because the Church did not change its classic stance on issues such as divorce and birth control.

Please cite one instance where protestants celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass with a belief in the True Presence according to a liturgy of the Catholic Church.

please show me from the missal of pope paul vi anything that is protestant.