POST VATICAN II LITURGISTS CALLED FOR BIG SIGNS AND I WOULD SAY THE EASTERN RITE WAS A BIT AHEAD OF THEM!

I like the New Liturgical Movement's commentary on the Eastern Rite below this photo:

It is currently, for some odd reason, fashionable to admire the colorful extravagance of the Byzantine liturgy while contemptuously dismissing anything in the Latin tradition suggestive of the same. We admire gigantic gold vessels and rich vestments in the East while settling for unsightly cups and drab drapes in the West; we catch our breaths at an impressive iconostasis, while shaking our heads at altar rails and other signs of separation between the nave and the sanctuary; we extol the marvelous poetry of the kontakion or troparion sung to a haunting traditional melody, while leaving our own incomparable Gregorian repertoire out in the cold. I doubt NLM readers are afflicted with this peculiar double standard or hypocrisy, but its ubiquitous presence in the halls of academia and power suggests that we are dealing with a psychological disorder, a kind of self-loathing that compels some people to strip themselves of the treasures of "the other" and to force themselves into a plainness that is almost a punishment or an echo chamber of one's own emptiness. We can point to the beauty elsewhere, like a tourist passing through Versailles, as long as we deprive ourselves of it here and now, and suffer our democratic fate.