Fr Ray Blake has a post containing the video of a presentation by Mgr Andrew Wadsworth Executive Director of ICEL as the second of his guest speakers to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of his church. I hope Fr Ray won't mind me reproducing it here. I've heard Mgr. Wadsworth speak before and he is well worth listening to. The talk is an hour long but you can pause the playback and listen in sections. Mgr Wadsworth is giving his personal views but he is someone who has been very influential in the work of the new English translation of the Missal.
To give you a flavour, he thinks that some of the things wrong with the way liturgy is celebrated today are:
The manner of distribution and reception of Communion, leading to a casual disregard for this great Sacrament.
The appalling banality of much liturgical music.
A quality of performance where the congregation expect to be entertained.
A proliferation of services led by laity, leading to a lessening of the importance of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
He thinks that the future holds:
A re-introduction of ad orientem celebration.
Kneeling for Communion.
A recovery of the Latin tradition - which remains necessary even in a vernacular celebration because we need an insight into the Latin tradition if we are to understand the vernacular which historically and presently comes from the Latin.
He notes the irony that currently, the teachings of Sacrosanctum Concilium (The Second Vatican Council's Document on the liturgy) are rather more likely to be evinced in a well prepared presentation of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass than the Ordinary Form.
Couldn't agree with you more, Mgr. (Though not in this parish, of course, where that future is already being widley implemented and encouraged!)
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