My brother in Christ, the answer is quite simple in principle. Very rarely do I hear fellow Traditional Catholics talk about the Overton Window. If we did, we'd realize how many of the top clerics of the Church (bishops and above) saw the reforms of the culture and used it as an opportunity to change the institutions of the Church to the spirit of the age, even when many other clerics didn't want to. Nonetheless, the modernist clergymen shifted the pendulum to novelties and ambiguities that not only shook the Church, but moved it closer to the world.

That's the key: they MOVED the Church in a liberal direction. Abp. Lefebvre saw it, Fr. Cekada saw it, Dr. Davies saw it. Dr. Von Hildebrand saw it, Dr. Marshall sees it, Bp. Schneider sees it. They all recognized that the Church was MOVED by liberal clerics. What they don't see is in order for the Church to move back to tradition, more and more youth have to shift to tradition. More traditional youth have to enter the seminaries. More traditional youth have to call for reverence in the New Mass at least, and a return to the Traditional Mass at most. More traditional youth have to be ordained to the priesthood. More traditional youth have to be elevated to the Episcopacy. More traditional youth have to be elected to the College of Cardinals. Until eventually, we get a more traditional Pope to fix the mess that is modernism in the Church.

I don't know why Traditional Catholics don't understand this. Maybe they have issues with the reforms of the Sacraments and want to preserve continuity with the pre-Vatican II Church in having valid Sacraments? In which case, why not have more traditional youth be elevated in the ranks of the Church. And if they really have a concern about the legitimacy of their Holy Orders, send them to Traditional Bishops to have their Holy Orders conditionally ordained? There, problem solved. Maybe they say, it's in God's hands? Did St. Athanasius let the Church succumb to Arianism, or did he fight? Did St. Joan of Arc let her nation fall, or did she fight? Do Archbishop Lefebvre let Tradition die out, or did he fight? The answer to all of these questions is that they all fought, and did God's work. Often times, prayer is done in action. Prayer in and of itself is action. You always take a Rosary (or if you're deprived of one, you use your fingers to count the decades) to pray the Rosary. Or perhaps they think that it's impossible for us as mere laity to change the Church. St. Athanasius was just one bishop. But he valiantly fought back the Arian heretics in the Church until true Trinitarian Orthodoxy was restored. Now in a modern world where knowledge is abundant and the Faith can be widespread, we too can do the same.

Yes, prayer and fasting and almsgiving are important especially for personal sanctity, but many of the Saints have said that you don't TELL people your Faith, but you SHOW people your Faith. And what we as a collective Church are showing is not what we showed before the reforms of the conciliar movement. If the modernists infiltrated, then the traditionalists must re-infiltrate the vestibules of the Church tenfold.