Why can’t we go back to using the Liturgy of St. James? It’s absolutely wonderful! Far better than the Novus Ordo and even better it seems than what I’ve seen of the new translation!
Is it permitted to use it? Do any churches use it today?
Well, first of all it’s not like each and every early Christian community used the Divine Liturgy of St. James the Apostle and Brother of God: it’s an (Eastern) liturgy based on the customs of the See of Jerusalem (it was named after the first bishop of Jerusalem after all
) and was historically used there and in the See of Antioch, at least before the Liturgies of Sts. Basil and John Chrysostom superseded it. So we wouldn’t be really ‘going back’ since the other local churches and Sees in the West have had their own particular rites and thus, probably never used this liturgy anyways (not to mention that just because it’s old it’s automatically more legit or more beautiful): on the contrary, we’ll be doing something foreign by introducing the rites of say, Jerusalem or Alexandria or Constantinople onto the See of Rome, which has her own customs. We might as well convince the Syrians to adopt the Mozarabic Rite (Spain) or the Byzantines to use the Ambrosian liturgy (Milan). They’re wonderful, after all.
I don’t know, as of now, of any Eastern Catholic Churches which offers/offered this liturgy, but until recently it was only celebrated on the island of Zakynthos on St. James’ feast on 23 October and in Jerusalem on the Sunday after Christmas, is today celebrated in an increasing number of Orthodox churches. It is still, in its Syrian form, the principal liturgy of the Syrian Oriental Church, both in Syriac and, in the ancient Syrian Orthodox Church of India, in Malayalam and English.
