I would like to call attention to the fact that King Charles’s anointing occurred behind screens. The ancient coronation liturgy adheres to the principle that what is most sacred is veiled. Notice also that ad orientem worship and the silent canon in the Catholic Mass also observed this principle.
We like to think that what is most sacred should be visible and that its visibility will allow people to better apprehend the sacred action.
Phenomenologically, the situation is exactly the opposite. The sacred is most hidden in its sacrality when it is most visible, while it is most visible in its sacrality when it is most hidden. Worse, this insight was being rediscovered by secular continental philosophy at the same time as versus populum worship and the loud praying of the canon were being advocated by Catholic liturgists. It is often a disfunction of the Catholic intellectual tradition that we get into trends centuries too late, after they have already become passé. Those who finally adopted these outdated trends then see themselves as sophisticated and progressive, when in fact profoundly regressive and should have spent more time reading contemporary literature than 17th century literature.
Somewhere along the line the Cartesian ideal of clear and distinct perception came to prominence—a certain “mathematical prejudice” (to use a Heideggerian turn of phrase)—which put an emphasis on the intelligibility of what is present to our gaze. Unfortunately, such attitudes influenced the academics who planned liturgical reforms. They would have been better off to learn the phenomenological insights contained in the liturgy itself instead of thinking themselves its teacher.