[ultima ratio]

Where do you get such bizarre ideas? You should get your facts straight. No old timer ever said a novena or did the Stations during a Mass. That is pure baloney. An old lady might have been too tired to follow along in her missal and so she said her beads and followed with her eyes and heart. The Mass was directed to God, not ourselves. It did not include the nervous and constant flow of banal responses that constitutes participation today--sheer noise, in my opinion. Words,words, and more words in an already too-noisy world. The faith was practiced on a far deeper and quieter level in the old days than anything you would be familiar with, judging from these naive posts.

[BlackElk]

Just to show I can too be even handed, I state total agreement with each and every word of this post of yours. I would add that there was nothing irreverent about saying the rosary at Mass. The priest said the Mass. The altar BOYS responded on behalf of the people. Missals existed with translations on facing pages and descriptions of choreography to keep people aware of where in the Mass the priest was. People knew the meaning of the consecration and conducted themselves accordingly and the magnificent Latin language caused no one to have boils but rather provided some precious respite, peace and quiet in an unquiet world. AND no one got the notion that the laity were some sort of equivalent of the priest, lifting their hands up, grabbing at each other and generally Kumbayaing their way through ever stranger rubrics. Valid, yes, but very often a liturgical toothache nonetheless.