Having been an altar server, and at Solemn High Mass a candle bearer, altar server, thurifer and finally Master of Ceremonies, I can understand and appreciate the beauty and solemnity of the EF. I grew up with a missal with translation on one side, Latin on the other and took both Latin and Greek in high school and Latin in college.
I sit and watch the commentaries on the EF, and I guess what amazes me is how little perspective anyone seems to have on the issue.
For example: the comments concerning the number of young people attracted to the EF. I have not done a survey of how many dioceses have the EF available to any extent, but have pulled a few numbers. For example, the Archdiocese of Chicago seems to be one where there are a number of parishes with the EF available - 12 parishes. That sounds like a lot until puyt into perspective: there are about 360 parishes so that works out to a magnificent 3% (and the numbers may be larger now than when I looked; oh golly, it could have had a tremendous increase in one year of 25% growth - so it would now be 4%). That should paint the picture fairly clearly.
Almost all of the talk about how many youth are drawn to the EF is anecdotal and not in any perspective. If 12 parishes in the whole diocese of Chicago have the EF, it is hard to believe that more than 5% of the youth of Chicago who go to Mass regularly are going to the EF. I seriously doubt that it is 10% just because of the way numbers flow and the likelihood that the 12 parishes which have it do not constitute the 12 largest parishes of the diocese. They may be the majority of people attending in those parishes, compared to, sy, the 35 to 55 crowd, or the 56 - 80+ crowd. But they are a miniscual percentage of youth attending Mass weekly.
In short, there is enthusiasm within the group that wants the EF, and a myopia to what is occuring beyond their own front door to an extent that one wonders where critical thinking has gotten itself off to.
None of what I say has anything to do with an opinion concerning the merits of the EF; the EF speaks for itself. However, the actual real-world numbers of the EF among parishes tells a story that those who support it don’t want to hear, and too often are of the “shoot the messenger” reaction. The EF simply is not taking off in any significant way, and interestingly, Pope Benedict 16 in his letter accompanying SP predicted the same thing. And he ain’t dumb, but many don’t want to hear that part of what he says.
And none of that means that the OF will not see changes made to it; I would expect that over time, there will be some interesting and needed changes.
And what we seem to forget is that a) the Holy Spirit still guides the Church, and b) change normally comes slowly in the Church, and given the speed with which changes were made in the late 60’s and 70’s, one would expect that those in charge would be seriously intending to go slowly, not quickly at this point and well into the future. That, and the church itself has a Pope, and while he has the final say, he does not operate in a vacuum, much as some would like to think or propose. There’s something in the nature of 2000 bishops in the world, and they are not mid-level managers; they have apostolic succession just as the Holy Father does, and share in the process of change.
Are we talking about ‘Rites’ in the sense of ‘liturgies’ here (in which case, this would be an awfully incorrect statement, since it doesn’t take into account the other non-Roman liturgies of the Latin Church such as the Mozarabic, the Lyonese, the Bragan and the Ambrosian, as well as rites that are specific to religious orders such as the Carmelite, the Dominican and the Carthusian, as well as local variants of the Roman Rite such as the Use of Sarum), or are we talking about ‘Rites’ in the sense of ‘churches’?