Just a couple of thoughts, inspired by your comments.

It seems to me that the central question of the Bottum essay is this:

Catholicism was "contained" in those nooks and crannies in which the swallows rested. Catholic culture – high and low, was the means by which the faith was expressed, learned, lived and passed on.

For whatever reason, that’s gone from Catholic life in the US, for the most part.

What now?

By what means will the faith in Christ through His Church be preserved and transmitted?

Can the richness of this faith be sustained and passed on through

• liturgies that are, in the ways they are experienced on the ordinary parish level, present-oriented, with few referents of any sort to 2000 years of Catholic tradition?
• Churches that are largely empty of any of the symbolism that has conveyed aspects of the faith for centuries?
• Preaching and teaching that is rooted in perspectives and trends of the past half-century and no further?
• Catechesis that is primarily oriented to the affective and experiential?
• A broader social context in which the goal of self-fulfillment and the level of material wealth and comfort has overwhelmed, even in religious circles, the call of Jesus to live sacrificially?
• A broader social context, assumed by many, that truth is relative, that the Christian claims are fine for those who believe them, but not necessarily cosmically meaningful?

I could go on, and I don’t mean to sound negative, because I don’t think things are that bad at all – I’m just trying to reset the discussion – the structures in which Catholicism was rather easily, if not always deeply, passed on are mostly gone in the US and Europe. The question, not one borne of nostalgia or wishful thinking is – well, what next?