It's been my experience that (silent) reverence is offered to the Blessed Sacrament in those parishes where the priest preaches reverence for the Blessed Sacrament.
There is a precedent for priests mentioning this often: reverence for the Blessed Sacrament is a recurring topic throughout Church history. Never taken for granted, it has been prescribed by councils, by popes, and in the surviving sermons/writings of many saints, including St. John Vianney whose feast day in the new calendar was yesterday: "What is it that makes our churches so sacred and so venerable? Is it not the presence of Jesus Christ?...We must appear before Him with the greatest reverence, and when taking part in sacramental processions we should awaken within us the most profound respect...We should consider those moments spent before the Blessed Sacrament as the happiest of our lives. Let us, sinners as we are, pray with tears and sorrow for the forgiveness of our sins...Let us say to Him in all earnestness that we would rather die than to offend Him again!" (_Sermons of the Cure of Ars_, The Neumann Press, 1995)
The disposition before the Blessed Sacrament, as prescribed by the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Vianney, describes the joy before the Blessed Sacrament not as moments of profane conversation and laughter in an attempt to "celebrate" the Eucharist with people, but as a time of "greatest reverence" and "profound respect" directed to the Blessed Sacrament.
While conversation and laughter in the church can be very distracting to those praying and adoring the Blessed Sacrament after Mass, there is something far more pernicious afoot here.
This modern behavior constitutes a clean break with the pre-Vatican II Church in the application of Eucharistic dogma to discipline. This Unam Sanctam Catholicam blog article offers an important observation: "The real danger is not that the Church will teach error as truth, but rather, that the Church will tolerate error and allow deviations from Catholic discipline because it feels like it can't stop them anyway. Thus, the teaching will remain 'on the books', so to speak, but like obsolete laws in many American states that ban drinking on Sundays but have not been enforced for decades, the teaching of the Church will remain a dead letter while aberrations and dissent will be accepted as the norm."
Our faith determines how we worship, yes, but our faith is handed down from generation to generation, to a large degree, by the manner in which we worship and in the disciplines associated with Eucharistic dogma. This reciprocal relationship does not bode well for orthodoxy when so many insist on engaging in unprecedented practices which are only justified by the liturgical opinions of the post-conciliar liturgical reformers.
