Cade_One:

I agree with many of your points.  I hate dancing.  Holding hands is okay, but I am not militantly for it.  I agree that we should not throw out tradition merely to be contemporary.  The non-traditional has become tradition quickly in the mass (the venacular language... particularly "And Also With You" response is better than the "traditional" Latin "et spiritu " which is just stilted writing if you ask me... but is the next target of the neo-Pharisees).  I'll even go further, I prefer most of the more traditional liturgical chants and music, some of the contemporary music (troubador guitars and some of the mariachi mass music) is just plain silly and egotistic performance and not communal worship; but I do like most musical settings by Marty Haugen, Janet Sullivan Whitaker ("The Mass of Creation").

I gladly deal with my physical challenges every stage in the mass or when entering/leaving the church/passing close to the tabernacle... I gratefully genuflect (out of tradition, and in the spirit of thanksgiving that God restored my health to the point where I can simply walk and kneel... that was not a given I would recover this far two years ago); and as I stated in the blog, I will gratefully kneel again at the direction of the Holy Father.  I just really object to this never ending rear guard war being fought by some of the traditionalists, and their uncharitable attitude.

I definitely agree with your point of view when your write:

I think traditionalists, and myself included, fear the day when you walk into a catholic church and can tell no difference from a protestant church.  Though I am not uber-traditionalist, I prefer the more traditional forms of worship over the more contemporary, but neither see one as being more valid over the other.

I am mostly incensed with the notion/attitude (maybe not the actual opinion) of some traditionalists that all contemporary items in the Novo Ordus are inherently non-reverential and disrespectul.  Some of the items of the New Mass (facing the people for one... the response "And Also With You" as opposed to the Latin/literal Latin translation "And With Your Spirit Also") are better theology and better liturgy.  I am incensed with the smirking self-righteousness of a Raymond Arroyo, who in announcing this change of the kneel threw in his editorial comment approving the change "because it is more reverential" when all he had to do was announce the change.  As a matter of fact, the whole raison d'etre of EWTN and "The World Over" in particular is that religious and Catholic news suffers in the mainstream media from such editorializing, uncharitable contextualizing, or ignoring religious themed stories altogether.   

Finally, I am convinced that kneeling while recieving just is not inherently more reverential.  The real problem is the faith formation of Catholics where by polling data half of those recieving communion do not belive in the doctrine of the Real Presence.  This disunity in the Catholic Church about many technical reforms from Vatican II (posture at receiving communion being but one) may not be as scandalous as Rudy Guiliani or Nancy Pelosi receiving communion at all; but it does nothing for the faithful and evangelization to gleefully make it such a cause celebre.  I know that Pope Benedict would not want this (and his other inevitable "reforms of the reforms"), reported in the tone of triumphantism and scolding that we have seen from television priests and news analysts.

Again, I mostly agree with you.

I can't really comment on the paragraph about Raymond Arroyo, because I have never watched "The World Over".  I listened to one podcast of the show, but that is about it.

About the "And also with you" being changed back to "And with your spirit", I don't really even have a problem with this.  It seems to be a bit more poetic.

Whenever these changes to the Liturgy are to be implemented, I just hope that they do a good job, locally, of explaining why the changes are being made.  Our Bishop made some changes a few years ago and they did a poor job of explaining to us, the meaning behind the changes.  When I understood the reasons for the changes, the more open I was to these changes.  They then made sense to me.  For instance, we no longer kneel after receiving Holy Communion, but stand together and sing praises.  There is time after the song to kneel in reflection, while the priest is sitting in prayer.  Though, I would rather kneel in reflection, I don't see why we shouldn't all stand as one in song and thanksgiving after receiving Christ in the Eucharist.

And of course the other change was that we no longer hold hands during the Lord's Prayer (which to my understanding was never officially part of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal to begin with).

During this time when all of these changes were being put into place, I just so happened to read a homily by a Bishop in St Paul, Minnesota, who had just gotten back from somewhere in Europe.  He wrote about how some of the graves, at this one church, depicted people with their arms raised and how this once was the posture of prayer (I just always thought of the posture of prayer being folded hands).  The Bishop's homily answered the why for me (of raising our hands during the Our Father apposed to holding hands).  Prior to reading this homily, I had been almost bitter about the changes being made, but my heart had been softened.