All very good questions, Anna -

As a cradle Anglican who grew to maturity in Anglo-Catholicism and is now a gladsome member of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, I can well sympathise with your consternations.

1. Reverences and gestures - I was and still am dismayed, puzzled, astonished, at the lack of all the things you mention here. The ready answer is that Catholics are not taught these things and, therefore, seem to consider the practicing of them as eccentric.
Some years ago I spent a few weeks at a certain monastery. At vespers on several occasions I crossed myself at Magnificat and was given a hard and deliberate stare for about ten whole seconds by the monk who was standing next to me. A monk, of all people, thought that such a gesture was bizarre and stare-worthy! Catholics don't bow the head as the cross passes by, they don't cross themselves at places at which you and I would think normative. Many don't even cross themselves thrice at the Gospel. They don't bow throughout Sanctus, nor cross themselves at Benedictus, nor at any of a number of other places. They not only don't genuflect during Incarnatus in the Creed, why most of them don't even bow - even though their missalette tells them to. Many of them don't even genuflect before entering their pews, and if the Blessed Sacrament is not on the altar they don't bow to the altar. And then there is that sloppy liturgy and the unbelievably deliberate blase, cultivated informality and hominess that characterises their celebration of mass in most parishes. It's all really quite strange. Is it any wonder that some studies have revealed that 60% of Catholics don't believe that Jesus is objectively present in the Blessed Sacrament, - a stance which would be shocking to any Anglo-Catholic. It is a commonplace that Catholics are incredibly poorly catechised.

2. Coat racks? I must admit that this is something that doesn't concern me. I've never seen a coat rack in any church, Catholic or other - and if I saw one I would consider it an eyesore. If I'm wearing an overcoat I simply lay it next to me in the pew.

3. There are not many, but a few really good Catholic hymnals whose contents are quite orthodox - but you won't find them in the average parish (whatever that is).

4. Just because it isn't. - and they are not even ashamed of it!

5. Lack of resources? This is a fig leaf. What it usually means is that we have the money (or can raise it) for most anything we want, but music and liturgy are not among those things. There are, of course, those parishes which hardly have the money to keep their doors open, but they are relatively few and deserve our prayers and donations.
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Jeffrey -

...in ECUSA besides St Thomas?

Well, there is the Cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul (aka 'National Cathedral') in Washington. This used to be, until some years ago, a full boarding choir school. Now it is a choir of men and boys without the full time boarding school - and they may have girls now - it just wouldn't be chic not to.
There is also (I think) St John's Cathedral in Denver.
There may be a very few others here and there - but, after all, this isn't England.

...say AY-men? They aren't Southern Baptists.

I've very often wondered that and will forever think it highly eccentric. Before becoming Catholic I had all my life thought that only Baptists and Pentecostals and their ilk said AY-men. It passeth all understanding!

I can't answer all of your questions, but I can do a couple. On gestures of reverence, I don't think they are making somewhat of a comeback. My pastor makes sure to bow his head during mass whenever we say the names of Jesus or Mary, when the trinity is named, or at the name saint of the day. I've started doing the same (I wasn't introduced to this practice until meeting my current pastor). I will say that I don't cross myself when the cross passes since it is hard to do that while playing the organ.

Pretty much every church in my area has a coat rack. This is both new and old buildings. This probably has something to do with the fact that I live in the northern part of the USA and our winters can be quite unfriendly.

I have no idea why we say it Ay-men. I do hear it both Ah-men and Ay-men where I live. I know that I say it both ways and use them interchangeably. However, I always hear it sung Ah-men.

We don't have a Catholic publishing house which may be kind of a good thing.

We have as many Catholic publishing houses as the woman at the well had husbands. And the former are as Catholic as the latter were married.

What would life be like if we only sang hymns published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana?

Re 1)

Prior to V2 there were no prescribed gestures that were binding on the laity. One still sees this piety to some degree at Extraordinary Form Masses – some kneel throughout the whole Mass, others pray the Rosary....

The First Liturgical Movement of the 19th-20th c. invited the congregation to essentially mimic the priest’s actions (e.g. the sign of the Cross at the Benedictus, triple signing at the Gospel...) and what was mandatory red text in the Missal for him became Good Things Every Good Child Should Do.

I get the sense that in those days, this was an easier sell to Anglo-Catholics: people who had already gone out of their way to join unusual parishes that were devoted to reviving ancient customs and really, truly grounded in the liturgy. For the majority of American Catholics who went to low Mass every Sunday, well, why would they do anything different than what they’d always done? It took many more years of cajoling, through the Dialogue Masses just before the Council, the interim Missals and upheaval of the 60s, and then finally what we have today, to convince people to say their responses and to do the actions required by the new liturgy, which are considerably less in number than in the Tridentine Mass from which Anglo-Catholicism adapted them.

What would life be like if we only sang hymns published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana?

What would it be like if the bishop's conference published a hymnal and mandated that we all use it?

What would it be like if the bishop's conference published a hymnal and mandated that we all use it?

You're scaring me now, Charles.

Dear ex-Anglican, keep bowing!

I'm a cradle Catholic, and until I started attending CMAA colloquia years ago, I had never known about bowing when the cross and celebrant pass by or bowing at the name of Jesus. The point is, faithful Catholics aren't doing these things because we haven't been taught.

I never knew the hassles of trying to arise from a kneeling position in a „dress“ until I served at the alter.

I would gently take issue with the notions that children are not being taught the tradition. As I work closely with Pueri Cantores and other groups in the country, I can literally name at least one place in each state in the US where children are receiving "good" and proper training in sacred music. In my own state in Florida there are almost a dozen places where children are being taught, including my own where I have a boys and girls choir and all the children in the school are taught solfege, chant and Latin. Yes, it still has a long way and yes we really only have two choir "schools" but there are many places where people are hard at work. TO that I say "bon courage" mes amis.

What would it be like if the bishop's conference published a hymnal and mandated that we all use it?

Isn't that what the German Catholics do with Gotteslob?

Please, please look at the patrimony of Anglican hymns before comparing them to “Catholic” hymns because the majority of them are either translations of Catholic Latin hymns, nineteenth century texts written by Oxford movement types (or even converts like Newman and Caswall), or translations from continental Catholic or Lutheran sources.

Regarding coat racks, keep in mind that Catholic Churches didn’t have pews until well after the reformation. Pews, coat racks, etc just aren’t related to the sacrificial, temple nature of a church, at least in traditional thinking

Many of us easterners still do not have pews. You need pews for pampered behinds at holy liturgy? Was it pews in 19th century Russia? It was not. Is outrage.

@CharlesW laughing.so.hard.

The Requiem was by Johann Michael Haydn. It was used for the funeral of Otto von Hapsburg, who died in 2011 at the age of 98. He was the last claimant to the throne of the former Austrian empire. A reminder that the First World War, while it happened just over a century ago, wasn't really all that long ago.

Happy Anniversary Anna.

The ecumenical movement of the Catholic church in America which began in the late 60s had serious repercussion that still plaque us today. Catholic hymns suffered greatly as well as many devotional practices which stopped almost overnight. Catholic Church architecture also suffered and as a result so did gestures and holiness. Catholics who are in their 50s or older were either raised in a parish that favored traditional Catholic values or in parish's that did not. In these parishes that had schools, Catholic education suffered. You can easily see the results today. Anyway that's my two cents worth. It probably doesn't help much but its true.

I forgot about Otto. There was a movement to beatify Zita. I haven't heard much about it in recent years.

Because Otto had been (Kaiserliche und Königliche Hoheit) Kronprinz, it was a quasi-state requiem. It concluded with the Kaiserhymne:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMMhfR5i9wA

Thanks for those links to the Hapsburg requiems, Liam. I found that after your links had ;played through others showed up and one could see the entire requiems of both Otto and Zita. They made this monarchist weep with great sadness over what has been lost - very largely due to that Presbyterian twit Wilson.

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Around 2008, when I was sure again that Jesus had died for me, but not sure I was a Catholic, I went to this ELCA church. And their final hymn was this African thing, call and response, I don't even think it was English. And it flopped horribly. Pastor gets to the back of the church and said, "We'll have to work on that one."

It's a miraculous and powerful thing when you can stop Lutherans from singing. Don is right.

Catholic aversion to singing is also baffling to me. I have always enjoyed singing when I attended a "chant camp", where some seminarians spent two weeks with us going over how to sing some easy chant, and at the conclusion of the class, we were able to sing the introit for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, "Cogitationes". That was our first introduction to chant and they emphasized the importance of young men/boys participating via singing. Our next major goal was singing all the propers for Christmas Midnight mass a few years later. We eventually got a director to relocate to our chapel who got us to sing all the propers of the Sundays throughout the year, and major feast days, and various other vocal pieces, harmonization of hymns, and a few polyphony pieces. He told us the secret to getting parishioners' participation in singing is to spread the singers throughout the pews every time we had mass, and eventually others would catch on.

/eɪˈmɛn/ is the original pronunciation, but the /ɑːˈmɛn/ pronunciation came about by the first part of the 20th century, and it fits really nicely into Received Pronunciation, which has /ɑ/ in the first syllable of quite a few words. I do admit to saying the second one, even though I was certainly raised with the first one, and I've thought about going back, but I like the thought of saying it identically to Latin even when the liturgy is in English…

As to the Irish… I like to blame the Irish, but anyone trained at Maynooth ultimately was schooled in the Hiberno-French tradition, which valued solemn Mass and offices in choir, done properly. That's one reason why the pro-cathedral of Dublin does things right to this day; the Palestrina choir is worth your while if you're ever in Dublin, even if you're like me and don't normally go to the NO, preferring the TLM. I remember reading a story about a founding pastor (or someone there in the early days at any rate) of my mum's home parish in the Northeast, an Irish parish, who nevertheless sang solemn Mass on the major feast days as demanded by the church.

As to "AY-men", I relate it to Sydney Poitier and the 1963 movie "Lilies of the Field". It so happens that a lot of things were changing in the Catholic liturgy at about that time.

I bow my head when the cross passes and at my eastern liturgy, also when the gospel book is processed.