The speaker was Eric Routley from England.
"I'm alarmed at the extent to which liturgists are attributing to the laypeople a demand that the laypeople never bother making. We're assured that there's a huge demand for participation in services of worship by congregations. But who tells us this? Three vocal people in the congregatoin and the whole noble army of liturgists tell us that. The glorious company of the [boffins] tell us that..... The demand is usually expressed in quite inadequate terms. Participation is often represented as an attitude which if it were present, for example, in an air traveler, he would issue in a request to be allowed a turn at flying the plane..."
"Do you, when you are halfway through the longer of the Phartarunza Prelude 682 allow people to interupt and ask questions? You see, we have to distinguish between a legitimate desire to express ourselves clearly and communicate wisely and the humanistic desire to take everything into our own hands; between a proper wish that authority shall make itself clear and a wish to usurp that authority for ourselves. And confusion between those two lines of thought is what has turned so many of our services of worship into reviews or auction sales. It is what has turned our theological conversation into rancid contests promoted by people who claim to represent this or that interest, and our church assemblies into political brawls."
"....It is the new temperament that's done the damage. And the damage is to remove from our worship all wonder, mystery, and distance, and replace them with familiarity, anxiety and pride. There is nothing in the primary thought of modern liturgy that leads inevitably to that effect. It is the satanic demand for our own rights that does it."
"....The removal of mystery and distance is a function of this deplorable humanism that encourages everybody to say to everybody else, including God, 'I'm as good as you are.' ....It is a profane distortion of the proper attitude towards Almighty God when we are discontented with any thought that He is infinitely greater or wiser than we. What we say is, 'He's not doing half a bad job. But I think if he consulted me He would do a little better." ....The removal of distance and the cult of what people call Informality, but of course what it really is is bad manners, can be a callous invasion of the worshipper's privacy.....
I can give you a very simple example of this: If I go to church here or there ... and I have to ease out of the pew desk a copy of the hymnal to find #396, which while I'm singing the choir is walking about in order to comfort themselves, as soon as I've gotten there I'm told to turn to p.353 of the prayerbook - put that back, pick that up - the next thing, I shall not be told, so I'll have to look at the bulletin, pick it up and look at this rather small type-writing, and ah, yes -- there's the reading. Then I shall have to pick up another book to look up the Gloria which they're going to sing. Then there shall be a hymn out of a strange red folder, which is called More Hymns and Spiritual Songs. And I find that I shall have to be handling 3 pieces of paper and 3 books. It's a marvelous paper chase; it's a wonderful party game. But I'll tell you what it is - people are saying, 'Ah, we must always surprise the worshipper - we must keep the worshipper on his..." And by your leave it is not your business but the Holy Spirit's business to surprise me. My dear liturgist, whoever you are, You're taking an awful lot on yourself. It's your business to get things out of the way.... And therefore, it is your business to know and to use what is blessedly and sacredly familiar..."
"I'm not concerned with the new language whose discomforts time will iron out. I'm concerned with the desparate activism and sense of overclouding with the pedagogic cracklings of the clergy who start the service like an 8th grade class with 'Good morning.' With whatever latest device they will produce to force me into a bottomless and sociable frame of mind - when what I came to church for was to join my friends in being moved by the Gospel. And I have to confess this: It is not merely because I once was young and now am old, that I rarely find myself now moved in worship to an unbearable sense of the intolerable beauty of God. I have known moments, sometimes during the singing of a great and appropriately chosen hymn -- sometimes just listening to a preacher who knew what to do with words -- when I couldn't prevent tears coming to my eyes -- not tears of grief; tears of joy; tears of growth -- because I was suddenly in the presence of the Ineffable for a moment. And I think that a great deal is being done in our modern interpretations of worship to make that impossible. Well, I hope musicians are not contributing too much to that aridity...."