…more than a thousand words, that’s for sure!
 Many thanks to all of those who commented below.  (Reflections also at New Liturgical Movement and Thrownback) I entitled the post “Necessary Conversations” because I think they are just that – necessary.
Why?
Because here’s the thing. I just don’t think it’s ever going to be 1977 again. Oh, I could be wrong of course – In 1960, not a Catholic soul alive could have imagined that it would ever be 1977. The idea of it would have flummoxed almost everyone.
(And mind you, “1977” is a metaphor. It’s a metaphor for felt banners, liturgies built around 3 chords and a guitar (or maybe 4 chords, because G7 is really pretty), improvised Eucharistic prayers, totally sincere, yet endless Liturgy Committee meetings to figure out what we can “do” to make the Mass more “meaningful” and a liturgical sensibility that said: the less formal, the more in tune to the contemporary moment, the better. )
Not that every parish is going to turn into St. John Cantius tomorrow. Nor, perhaps, should it.  Most everyone is still happy with 1989 (more chords, felt banners stuck in the closet now)  but the pendulum is swinging in the direction, simply, of the retrieval of the richness of the Catholic liturgical heritage and some serious reconsideration of what ritual is and more specifically what the Catholic Mass is.
As I’ve said before, my big ah-ha moment over the past couple of years has been the realization that most of us – myself included – have been formed to think of the Mass as a prayer meeting. A highly structured prayer meeting, but a prayer meeting nonetheless, one which emphasizes community and who we are in the here and now, a prayer meeting which should somehow be expressive of who we are as individuals and a community.
Prayer meetings are good. But that’s not what the Mass is.
And that understanding is what I see reflected in the comments below. It seems fairly obvious to me – those who respond positively to the photo seem to emphasize the Sacrificial aspect of the Mass, and the necessity of the ritual and other externals reflecting that reality. TSO said it well:

It LOOKS like what it is – it looks like we are offering Jesus to the Father and asking Him (the Father) to look upon His son that we might be saved. The priest, in facing the altar, removes himself from focus and eliminates a distraction: the only thing we can look at, really, is Jesus in the Eucharist.

Those with negative responses – or even mixed – tend to emphasize the Mass as God’s people gathered to share in the meal of Christ’s Real Presence, and they don’t see that reflected in that image.
This, of course, is the classic way of envisioning the pre- and post-Vatican II thinking about the Mass, and it’s not accidental, for the shape and content of the 1970 Missal purposefully diminished the sacrificial sensibility. Whether you like that or not, whether or not you fancy Masons behind it or  the Spirit, it’s true. It’s just the way it is – it is the way in which those of us who can claim to be post-V2 babies have been formed by the liturgy. I know I have.
And it can be very difficult to see it any other way.
So what I wanted to accomplish through my little exercise was first of all, the bringing of these differences to light in a way that avoided politics, accusations, ideological battles or spiritual swordsmanship.
I wanted, if only in this tiny little space of Church, for those who are uncomfortable with certain aspects of the pre-Vatican II Mass to listen to those who find it beautiful and spiritually enriching in an irreplacable kind of way and see that their devotion is not about nostalgia or aesthetics.
I wanted those who do find the Extraordinary Form more spiritually resonant – and even in general a more formal celebration of Mass across the board, which might include the Ordinary Form in Latin and celebrated ad orientem – to listen to those who are put off by it, either by their own history with it or other perceptions of clericalism or obscurantism and be able to talk about all of this without resorting to assertions of spiritual immaturity.
Several commenters who actually were alive during the 40’s and 50’s and remember the Mass before Vatican II have reminded us of the importance of being realistic, and they are certainly correct. In memoirs of these Masses, you tend to pick up that things were either dreadful or glorious, but that seems to be the way of memoirs – that we only remember the extremes. Long-time readers know that I am intrigued – even obsessed – with the period of transition around Vatican II, and that my position is simply – if there was no sense that reform was needed, reform wouldn’t have happened. Any student, for example, of the liturgical movement of the 20th century – and I don’t mean only the academic liturgical movement, but that which expressed itself in the lives of lay Catholics of the 20th century – knows that there was great interest in deepening lay participation in the Mass, both interior and external, that there was concern that Catholics make a greater connection between the liturgical life of the Church and everyday life, and there was a great movement to increase the numbers of Catholics receiving Communion at Mass.
This is absolutely true. But what I would say – simply looking at the comments here – is another reminder. Those who, in these comments, spoke to how the picture evoked in them feelings of awe and connection with Christ, were, for the most part, speaking from experience in the present, not looking back forty years. They were saying, “This is how it affects me, because this is what I feel and think when I attend Mass in this form.”
I just don’t think there is any going back. Not to 1954, not to 1965, 1982 or even 2007. We’re going forward and as Catholics, I wish we could listen and learn from each other without slamming each other in boxes. Perhaps there is something to be gained from contemplating the more intensely sacrificial expression of the Extraordinary Form and the power of careful ritual to “hold” faith.  Perhaps there is something to be learned from the congregation’s vocal participation in the Mass. The marginalization, the mutual disdainful dismissals…can we stop? Can we?
Perhaps?
To me, it all comes down to this:
What some see as an obstacle to communion with the Lord, others see as a help. The way out of this is not to argue and engage in tactics of mutually assured destruction, but to explain why this – whether it is the ritual or the relative informality or the Latin or the vernacular – is a means to communion and nourishment for the mission with which Christ charges us all.
Of all the excellent comments below, one brought me to full stop. It was brief, it was deceptively simply, but it bore tremendous weight and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m grateful to all of you, and especially Romulus, who wrote of the picture:

I see a man offering a sacrifice. The man has a cross on his back.