“What I longed for most at the end of my imagined participant-observation of a post-Vatican II liturgy was sustained silence, genuine stillness, and the curvature of liturgical indirection–either this or an unthrottled exuberance, unbridled improvisation, and kinesthetic exertion. Everything I observed in my mind's eye was swift, clean, decorous, and aimed at the middle range of human emotions. The extremities were forgotten. The liturgy was cordial, friendly, open, upbeat, and more or less democratized. But neither God nor the world is cordial, friendly, open, upbeat, or democratized. The “scandal of Christianity” is largely displaced by such a safe, comfortable environment.”