Ping!
Hope this report is definitive.
Reform of the reform can’t come soon enough for me. I’ve been going to my territorial parish all summer (during the school year I sing in the choir at another parish that has a decent and fairly traditional music program). The microphone is turned up full blast, and even though I sit in the last pew, I just cannot stand to have the cantor belt out his/her treacly modern songs on a thunderous scale or to have the readings proclaimed such that they can be heard two or three blocks away. The mike could be turned down 50% and everyone in the church would still hear just fine. It is not required for full and active participation in the mass that everybody’s eardrums get broken. I can only think what a horrible impression would be given to any inquirer coming to see what a Catholic mass was like. And Vatican II says Gregorian chant should have pride of place — when has my parish last had that, 40 years ago? Can’t we have even a little of Church’s liturgical artistic and musical patrimony, even if we still have to suffer through one or two modern ditties as well?