A Burden of Song

Dr Mike on the CMAA discussion boards a thread, (about, of all things, serial music! .... but I digress,) said something of such great good sense, and said it so well that I must repeat it here:
we can jump up and down and holler about singing in church and accuse people of not being properly catechized if they don't -- sound familiar? -- or we can work with the situation. Train those who want it but provide good scholas and choirs for the churches to once again sing for the people. Don't deny people the opportunity, but let them understand their role, which is not carrying the entire burden of the singing at Mass.
I have tried to explain before that we are often asking too much of the congregation.
Eleven musical numbers at my parish. Yes, some of them are very short (the gospel acclamation, the memorial acclamation, and the "great" amen,) and some of them the burden is mostly on someone else, cantor or choir, (the kyrie sometimes, and the psalm always,) but still, eleven musical numbers!
And some of them go on....and on.... and on....
We expect people who are walking, watching for the usher's cues, and EATING, (I may unblasphemously say,) for Christ's sake, to also sing for longer than Billy Bigelow's Soliloquy would last with the most self-indulgent leading man.
It's unreasonable!
And that Notre Dame study of parish life some 20 years ago or so, gave evidence that it's counter-productive -- the more the congregation is asked to sing, the less well they will sing.
The trouble is, of course, that those who have placed this burden on their backs will also have very wrong-headed notions of the hierarchy of what should be sung, hymns hymns and more hymns....