Disagree. Vatican II itself caused many of the societal changes in the world. Not saying that modernism/revolution wasn’t already well underway apart from Vatican II (it started at least with Luther and Henry VIII and had been exploding for centuries), but with the “French Revolution in the Church” (aka Vatican II) you had the modernist/revolutionaries take over of the institutions of the Church. So a schismatic sect had stolen Catholic Church property. This led to an even greater revolution/devolution in society which is totally Antichrist. Had Vatican II not occurred the Church would stand as a major bulwark against the forces antichrist that are gaining ground day by day today. That does not mean a complete reversal of the French Revolution and communism per se but it would be totally different than what we are seeing now which is hellish and getting worse. Fatima is the key. The Rosary is our answer. 

It was never "necessary" to revise the Mass. The liturgical changes were a ruse for something much bigger. There was a lot more to V2 than just Sacrosanctum Concilium. Remember, Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The modernists knew they had reached a tipping point where many Catholics (no, not all, but enough) had become lukewarm and ripe for apostasy. 

Perhaps V2 accelerated what had already begun, but it was the shock of sudden abandonment felt by those Catholics who wanted the old ways to continue, not in going-through-the-motions but in the timeless daily emphasis on propitiation, reparation, sacrifice. Yes, many here on this forum grew up in those few families that immediately sought out the underground Mass. But it was far more common for people just to become alienated not only from the liturgical changes but also the seriously weakened attention to the precepts too. As well at the time, many others got scooped up by the still seemingly more conservative Protestant sects.

What if Vatican II had never happened? I don't think it couldn't not have happened. If they sensed the chance for it, why would they have chosen not to strike at the Church in the way that they did?

I didn't bring Vatican II (which, strictly speaking, is a separate issue from the Novus Ordo Missae) into it, but it's a fair observation, so I'll rephrase it, what if neither Vatican II nor the Novus Ordo had ever happened?

My point is the same. 

As is mine, though it might not have been sufficiently clear. They needed the NOM to push through the whole package of V2 changes. Your average Catholic back then wouldn't have been able to explain any of the published docuмents even if those hadn't been purposely so vague. But rip apart the old Mass and the Sacraments, and that's the official signal to the little folk in real life that everything's going to be different from now on, very different.

Yes, some percentage of Catholics even before the early '60s were already on their way to abandoning the faith because of the influence of the secular world. That's not in question. The point here is that the NOM, together with the changes to the Sacraments, made sure that those other Catholics who still wanted to practice the true faith would not be allowed to do so according to the new rules and expectations from the top down. Now add in peer pressure from fellow parishioners, neighbors, in-laws, etc. insisting that [fill in the blank] is now acceptable because the NuChurch says it's acceptable, or at least not irrefutably unacceptable.

Only at a micro level (like not derailing a forum thread) can NOM and V2 be treated as separate issues. At a macro level (like why CathInfo even exists), they can't be. One more time: Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.

(As for the EO, that's probably not a useful comparison to conciliarism due to various historical, geo-contextual, and ecclesial reasons.
And as for Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young is one of his biggest money makers.)

It would've just happened later.

Only if God permitted it anyway.  We don't speak of this type of crisis as if it's merely a natural development or progression of historical trends.

As for the moral revolution in the 1960s, it was orchestrated and timed by the same people who brought us Vatican II.  In fact, had Vatican II not happened, the 1960s revolution could not have happened.  It was necessary first to remove the bulwark of the Church against it.  In other words, the 1960s revolution only happened BECAUSE the Church had been taken out (with God's permission).

No, God rightly held that Vatican II was necessary for a purification of Catholics, since the doctrine of the vast majority of Catholics had become corrupt.  Very few Catholics still believed in EENS, and Vatican II was simply a formulation of what most Catholics already believed by then.  It didn't happen in a vacuum and didn't come out of nowhere.  We didn't have widespread orthodoxy one day and then widespread heresy the next.  This heresy was already everywhere, and God permitted it to be formalized by the Vatican II sect so that it could be called out (especially by its fruits) for what it was, rather than to continue subtly and almost imperceptibly (except by a small handful of Feeneyites) to infect the Church.  It was like a cancer infecting the majority of those who called themselves Catholics that did not exhibit any symptoms, as outwardly everything looked fine.  There were many vocations, buildings (churches and schools) going up left and right, conversions.  So no one (except for a few astute individuals) perceived that there was anything wrong.  You see the same kind of thing with cancers.  Sometimes a cancer spreads throughout the body but isn't treated because the individual is unaware that it's there due to lack of symptoms.  But then sometimes the symptoms come out just in time so there could be treatment.  Had the symptoms not manifested themselves, the cancer could have progressed even further to the point that it would have been too late.

God allowed V2 as a course correction for where the Church was subtly headed.

Alas, too many Trad Catholics still think that things were great in the Church through the 1950s.  They couldn't be more mistaken.

So, to answer the question, had God not permitted Vatican II, the corruption of Modernist doctrine would have continued to spread, but God allowed it to help wake some people up, those who became Traditional Catholics.  And yet, we have Traditional Catholics who have not learned the lesson and are falling back asleep.  We see the neo-SSPX slouching back toward Vatican II, and we have the vast majority of Traditional Catholics STILL oblivious to the erroneous and heretical theological developments of the 1950s (and before) regarding ecclesiology and EENs dogma.  We have a similar secondary "awakening" being willed by God, where the arrival of Jorge is waking people up to the problem of Vatican II ... although others are refusing this second wakeup call also.

The previous post (by Ladislaus) should be considered required reading :)

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Excellent contribution.

(except by a small handful of Feeneyites)

Lol!

There would have been "a clash, a battle, a condemnation" between “the religion of God who became man” and “The religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God”.
—Paul VI's final homily, 7 Dec. 1965, quoted in De Mattei, The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story, pt. 6, § 11(d)

I see what you mean, and I don't disagree with you.  I was more of the thinking that Sacrosanctum concilium did not explicitly call for a new missal.  (Of course, if you talk to the more militant "conservative Novus Ordo" people, they will tell you that it is one and the same missal, only revised.  I have even heard it insisted, by one particularly fanatical Novus Ordo cheerleader, that the Novus Ordo Missae is the "Traditional Latin Mass", part of that "tradition" being the changes of 1969, and the missa normativa is still Latin.)  Vatican II with no changes in the Mass (or just token changes to fulfill the minimum envisioned in SC) and no Novus Ordo is interesting to consider.  Ditto for the Novus Ordo with no Vatican II.

My impression of the EO is that, unless they are among this movement of recent converts who are not necessarily of the ethnicity represented by one of the Orthodox bodies, for the run-of-the-mill EO in the pew, if asked why they are Orthodox, it would be "because that's part of being Greek (or Syrian, or Serbian, or Russian, or what have you)".  I'm reminded of the scene in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when Ian is baptized in the Orthodox fashion, someone says "now you're Greek".  I wanted to gag!

OTGDY is the only remotely offensive song that Billy Joel ever did, the only other thing that comes to mind is a blithe reference to divorce in "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant", referring to Brenda (pronounced "Brender", as one does in much of the Northeast when a consonant precedes a vowel) and Eddie.  While OTGDY was indeed reprehensible, you can also look at it as BJ's ranting in vain against the fact that Virginia didn't surrender her virtue for him.  Seen that way, even though he didn't intend this (one assumes), it is actually, in a backhanded way, a defense of Catholic chastity.  But I still detest the song for its sacrilegious references to the Rosary and to Confirmation, as should any Catholic worth two cents.

And I didn't think of his offhand reference to "my old man's Trojans" (i.e. condoms) in "Keeping the Faith".

Still, though, Billy Joel's songs are more in the nature of ballads, very intelligently written, rather than rock-and-roll per se, well-crafted stories about life in the Northeastern US in the 1950s and 1960s.  And his piano and vocal talents (especially his piano talent) are prodigious. "New York State of Mind", co-produced with Tony Bennett, captures the essence of NYC perfectly.  (FWIW, while of Jєωιѕн ethnicity, he was a baptized Christian.)