Forsooth, I would not! It seemeth, though, to me, that those who go through our educational system (even to becoming PhDs) and can, then, be expected to have learned to read and comprehend, not mere Cranmer, but Shakespeare, and not mere Shakespeare, but Chaucer, and much else that (presumably) educated educated people are literate about. It is not far fetched to entertain that such folk should immediately make sense of a randomly chosen sentence from of, of all things, the BCP. (I, too, am often facetious, but not in this.)

The new missal translation is a big improvement. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess. English is capable of all the grandeur of any other language. If one disapproves of more recent translations, blame the translators, not the language.

Old Church Slavonic: Still in use, although a number of eastern churches have gone to the vernacular. My own Byzantine church has liturgies in English.

My own Byzantine church has liturgies in English.

That's a thing? Wow. Had no idea.

(Although I did run across a "hymnal" once, supposedly for use in an Orthodox church, that looked like some 1970 Catholic church-camp compilation. It was terrifying. But I also thought, "Well- at least it's not just us."

There are some historic examples here and there that fit the bill to some extent or another, but for all practical purposes- no. It does not happen.

The closest thing one might find now is an Anglican Ordinariate parish.

If you don't mind invalid sacraments and heretical schizmatics, there might be Anglican parish here or there still using The English Missal, which is (essentially) an edition of the pre-V2 Roman Missal with Anglican BCP translations. But even that is going to be pretty rare.

Gavin means "versus populum", when he says, " Maybe we could have an EF with ad orientem, too".

In fairness to the OF, however, one would have to do more than merely add these ugly barnacles to switch from the one to the other.

Chris

Salieri,

I call that the 4-hymn sandwich. No, it's not a good idea, however prevalent it may be.

I really need to remember the code for purple text. . .

Whoops! Thanks for catching that, Chris!

My point, humorously made (I refuse to embrace purple font - if you want to assume nothing I write is a joke, go ahead. If you want to assume everything I write is a joke, go ahead. If you're going to intelligently judge what I write on its merits, go ahead.) is that some people thought it was a good idea for "The Mass" (what the EF was called 100 years ago) to be in vernacular. They also thought some other things were good ideas. And they updated the Missal accordingly.

For those who don't think these things are good idea, there's Summorum Pontificum and what we now call the EF Mass.

It's like... Windows 8. Many people prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8. But I hear so few people saying "Why isn't there a Windows 7 with a Metro UI?? I don't want Windows 8, just the Metro UI!" (I don't know why someone would want Metro.... just roll with me here.) Either you use Windows 7 or you use Windows 8. Or you dual boot, or virtual machine. But you don't get to have Windows 7 with features that didn't exist in 2009.

By the same token... if you want English, use the 1970 Missal. That is a feature of the Missal. If you want the prayers at the foot of the altar, use the 1962 Missal. That is a feature of that Missal.

If you want both, become a high Episcopalian. If you want both and want to be a practicing Roman Catholic, too bad. Life's unfair.

.

an additional reading [...] alleged[ly] opens more of Scripture.

What you are implying here (that more scripture is not more scripture) is (in my opinion) totally insane.

Alleged? What, then, would be the substance underneath the ostensible pretext?

Having three Scripture readings read out like a laundry list and then ignored in the homily is not much better than doing the same for two.

The solution to this problem is neither to have less reading from scripture, nor to have it read in Latin.

more wasn't so much the object here, but different.

Yep, you got it. That was the goal, to be different from the bad old mass and Church. Then, we could be more like our Protestant brothers and sisters who practiced another path to salvation.

I had my own missal in the unenlightened fifties (still have it) and followed along quite nicely for a pre-teen, even with that horrible Latin.

I had and have the Bible in many different forms, editions, and English translations. I was reading scripture back when scripture wasn't cool. When I was twelve, I visited my aunt's Baptist church - you know, where they know the Bible better than Catholics. I knew more than they did, which really shocked them.

What you have noted with your statement on difference, sums it up well. The object of many of the reformers was an overthrow of the Church as it had been, and the creation of a new and "different" church.

I think the "periti" may have been part of the problem. However, the problem has never been Vatican II. The problem was those who came home and misinterpreted and misapplied what the Council had said and done. That is still going on today, but it is getting better, I think. Don't get me started on Paul VI. He was a disaster who caused a greater loss of faith than any formal heretic. The man could never call a spade a spade, and waffled with the wind. Paul VI was a Vatican diplomat with some very universalistic views.

Father Krisman,

Your response to me causes great puzzlement. I didn't assert that His Holiness was a "dim-witted idiot".

(Yes, there is a song with the lyric "sing a new church into being", but that isn't part of the official text of the Mass, and to address it here would be to digress.)
I haven't claimed that there is (or was) a "great conspiracy to sing a new church into being". In fact, I spend a fair amount of time (off this combox) debunking the idea that the cause of our current problem (both in America and in the Church) can or should be sought in conspiracies. I treat these conspiracies as one or other form of gnosticism.

The argument I advance in my paragraph about the priest with his back to the people is what I have heard, seriously proposed, by those who are unwilling to "turn back the clock", or "refuse Vatican 2". I took it to its logical conclusion, that since we can read our own translations and mean whatever we want Scripture to mean (witness the huge number who call themselves Catholic and are quite sure that one can be a good Catholic without accepting anything the Church teaches, even Her fundamental teachings which must be accepted) the addition of a third reading is irrelevant to either the worship of God or the edification of the faithful.

As to "different" Scripture: the simple fact is that the Consilium chose new Scriptures where perfectly good ones already existed. The result of changing the Lavabo and eliminating the prayers at the foot of the altar (to say nothing at all of any other part of the Mass, but merely to bring up again these two examples) is to have LESS Scripture, when the ostensible goal was MORE Scripture. To have so many pericopes of Scripture which have "optional" parts to make a "shorter version" again belies the idea of greater exposure to Scripture. To abandon the Last Gospel again serves the purpose of reducing the sheer quantity of Scripture at every Mass.

I don't need a conspiracy, and don't want one. I don't know why they made the changes I've outlined. I do know that exposing us to "more Scripture" doesn't make sense as an explanation for the reasons I've outlined.

Latins and their councils. What else could you expect but chaos? And they say they are organized. LOL. I'm glad we easterners only have to accept the first seven.

Yes. By treaty with Rome, we accept the first seven councils as ecumenical. The remainder are Latin church councils which had little, if anything, to do with us. The Orthodox also only accept the first seven as ecumenical, since the entire church was not present for the later councils.

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My issue with scripture in the OF is not the quantity, but the coherency and cohesiveness of the scripture. Some readings appear dropped into the mass with no relationship to anything else. It seems the object is to read the entire Bible in a 3-year cycle, not that the readings should bear any relevancy to each other.

"Ordinary Time" is a rather interesting season. We tend to overlook it's importance. It is meant to follow the public ministry of Jesus Christ. Funnily enough, I've been told that the 3-year cycle is meant to not only give us the same lessons from different Gospels, but it is supposed to mirror the public ministry of Jesus Christ, which by sacred tradition is held to have been about 3 years long.

The prayers at the foot of the altar and the last-gospel began as private devotions that were originally meant to be said privately. The prayers at the foot of the altar were not formally added to the liturgy until 1570 with the missal issued by Pope Pius V and thus, was something of a novelty at the time.

Adam, the second reading is the odd man out.

I'm aware of that. But isn't the Old Testament the "new" thing?
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EDIT:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fil1k42qnnqyaaq/Table of readings in 1962 Missal.pdf

I guess it was sometimes an OT and sometimes an Epistle?
But it looks like on Sundays, it was usually an Epistle. (?)

And in the current lectionary, the Epistle is only the "odd one out" (it seems to me) during the second run of Ordinary Time (after Pentecost).

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Adam,

After the moment of creation, everything was a novelty at some point. The question, surely, is one of organic development, in line with the mind of the Church, or not.

You seem to be sidestepping the point that I've raised about different Scriptures, rather than more of Holy Writ.

Filioque? Is outrage!