Domine non est dignus.
A recurring thought yesterday watching the services for the Queen Elizabeth was the extraordinary beauty of the language used. Your Tatler is no stranger to it as he was brought up in the Episcopal Church before they ruined the Book of Common Prayer, not to mention the Church itself, in the ’70s.
Another recurring thought was when the forces behind the reforms [sic] of Vatican II were busying themselves junking the beautiful and elegant Latin texts, replacing them with the lifeless and mediocre English translations found in Novus ordo, it’s a pity they didn’t consider a far better alternative to the expulsion of Usus antiquior: the pillaging as much as possible from either the 1662 (UK) or 1928 (US) Books of Common Prayer, making necessary changes of course to agree with Catholic teachings.
Instead, at every mass we are subjected to eminently forgettable and boring English, save for the preposterous wrenching into Elizabethan English for the Pater noster (amusingly, the Episcopalians do the exact same thing), which seems to this writer tacit recognition the hopeless inadequacy of the English used in the rest of the mass.
It will be pointed out of course that mass texts used by Anglican Use parishes (more properly, those in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter) are just as your Tatler prescribes above. The problem is AU has not exactly caught fire in this country, and parishes are few and far between.
Chances of the Traditional Latin Mass returning to use in Holy Church are just about nil at this point. It’s difficult to learn and most Catholics now have little interest in hearing words they cannot understand. Perhaps, however, some Pope, some day, let us pray, concerned with the wretched state of modern Catholic liturgy will promulgate, or even order–because he can–at least one mass at every English speaking parish be celebrated in the language of Shakespeare, Jonson and Spenser (and, er, Marlowe). Who knows, that might even stir interest in doing something about the excruciating torture that is Catholic praise-music.
The Taos Tatler 