A Kierkegaardian reflection on the Novus Ordo

Michael Novak, Confessions of a Catholic (1983, p. 87):

I concede to Kierkegaard that aesthetic pleasure is not the criterion of true religion. Indeed, it has sometimes seemed to me that one feels more keenly union with the Crucified when the choir is awful, when the sermon is attic-dry, when the church service is like a suburban sensitivity lesson with guitars, dancing, and clapping hands, and when the soul cries out in desperate anguish and despair. The "new liturgy" that has followed Vatican II is often a torture to the soul. How ugly and how vulgar it often is. Amateur songs, syrupy renditions of tragic verses from Scripture, clouds of peace, light, love, and joy affect a soft sentimentality far worse than anything we encountered in our childhoods, even at novenas or forty hours, and sicken the healthy aesthetic sense. Compared to the chaste Gregorian chants of our youth, the songs sung in our churches in the 1980s, written by flying nuns and long-haired scholastics (seen on dust jackets, as I once was, in their jeans and turtlenecks) disgust the soul. True religion survives maudlin aesthetics. Believing in the church is often a form of crucifixion. Desolate, the soul cries out for liberation from such abuse. Nevertheless, we pray: "Not my will but thine be done."

[Hat tip to S. Ramos, via Christopher]