CathInfo.com

... a Vatican Council was finally called and, unfortunately, its most famous decree of "Papal Infallibility" (which any devout Catholic always knew was true in the first place) seemed not only unnecessary but imprudent since Marxism/Communism and all of the other heresies that had sprung up in the 300 + years since Trent were all in full-swing at that time (the Manifesto, for example, being published in 1848). That famous yet unnecessary decree then became sort of a laughing stock to the secular press (it is still ridiculed and laughed at today, sadly).

One final point:  what you consider "unnecessary", the council fathers (and Pius IX), thought otherwise. The fact that it is a "laughing stock", ridiculed and laughed at by the world, is utterly irrelevant.  No dogma, no truth of revelation, is "unnecessary", nor do we take into account the scorn of the world when professing the true Faith.  Your attitude is impious, and such disdain for revealed truth should never be found on the lips of a Catholic.

One final point:  what you consider "unnecessary", the council fathers (and Pius IX), thought otherwise.

And you said in an above post that Pius IX was to blame anyway. You insinuated him and subsequent popes were "bad catholics."

...

God has permitted this crisis both as punishment and as correction, and we will never receive the correction if we insist that the crisis originated somewhere “out there” rather than within ourselves.

It was bad Catholics who kept offending God, refusing to amend their lives.
It was bad Catholics who would not pray the Rosary daily.
It was bad Catholics who refused to do penance and reparation for the conversion of sinners.
It was bad Catholics who would not make the First Saturdays as Our Lady asked.
It was bad Catholics generally who refused to recognize this is a spiritual war, and completely dropped the ball in using the spiritual weapons we were given.

So when the great deception came, whose fault is it that it was welcomed with such enthusiasm, facing virtually no opposition?

Bad Catholics.

Yes, God allowed the Crisis in the Church to allow the Wheat from the Cockle to self-separate into two groups: the elect and the reprobate. Read the Parable from Matthew 13: 


 24 Another parable he proposed to them, saying: The kingdom of heaven [the Church] is likened to a man [Jesus] that sowed good seeds in his field.  25 But while men were asleep, his enemy [Satan] came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way. 26 And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle.  27 And the servants of the goodman of the house [the Church Hierarchy] coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle?  28 And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?  29 And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it.  30 Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.