it has nothing to do with the personal sacredness of the priest. A priest can be the biggest whore master in the world —and in up a storm—that does not prevent the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. When they changed the rite from Tridentine to Novus Ordo they changed the emphasis from “a sacrifice” —or as my I guess there was a sort of thinking at the time —especially in North America, English speaking countries, and perhaps countries like Germany & Holland where u have a mixed Protestant/Catholic population—that if we make the mass less mysterious—less hocus pocus—they won’t think of us as so strange. The changes that did occur weren’t actually the original mind of the Vatican. The genie was out of the bottle. The mid to late sixties experienced crazy folk masses with nuns with guitars and a lot of bad music etc (although I have to say I did enjoy it as a kid of 10-11 years old). The priest became a personality and later on an amorphous kind of therapeutic feeling intruded itself on the mass. In the days of the old mass, I am sure there were good preachers ad awful preachers -maybe that was the only place where a priest’s personality came into play. This is the best way I can explain it.
Actually, they were. And they were many. We're not talking about simple abuses. We're talking about designing a completely different "mass".