The New Liturgies

"There's very little left in their society to feed their innate sense of ceremony, so it just withers and dies. In some of them, it's so dead that if they ever did happen on a great liturgy, they'd hate it. In others, the sense is dormant, so we have to be sure it's never fed. That's why so much effort has gone into fostering fear of the Latin Mass, Gregorian chant, Palestrina, and the old hymns, and why we didn't rest till we got the Anglicans to revise their Book of Common Prayer. (Be sure to do all you can to discourage any connection or reunion there: We certainly don't want millions of Catholics using that old masterpiece!)

We've made religious ceremony seem embarrassing to them by making their liturgy sound "churchy" without sounding sacred. The old liturgy sounded sacred without sounding churchy; naturally sacred and not embarrassingly churchy; not sissified but strong and proud and high and holy. Now, it sounds weak and embarrassed and flat and secular."
-From The Snakebite Letters by Peter Kreeft