To take it a step further, why stop at modern English? If you are in south central LA, why not do a liturgy in Ebonics? Ebonics IS a valid dialect of English even though most of us hate it, so why not liturgize in it if the claim is that people should not have to learn higher registers to worship?
Probably if for no other reason than any hierarch with two brain cells to rub together would understand that the time, effort and money required to produce such a translation of the required liturgical texts would be a colossal waste of time. Just as when opening a mission the bishops don’t just randomly pick places and hope people show up.
Regarding the language issue, I apologize if I used the wrong terminology to describe the exact style of English used. I’ll stick to just describing whatever the various styles are as archaic, denoting simply they are not the language that is used commonly today.
Perhaps there are people who can listen to the liturgy in archaic English, or read a prayer book printed in the same language and the meaning of the words is readily apparent to them. I know some people who this doesn’t happen to be the case for though, both non native speakers of English and a couple of residents of my household who are under the age of seven.
I personally as I have said don’t have an issue with using archaic English; if there are people who like it and find it aids their worship, that’s great. I like our services which are almost all in what I would call contemporary English with some Slavonic mixed in here and there. My issue is with those who criticize churches that use languages other than English, but themselves use an archaic form of that language.
I’m not sure if I’m one of the “whiners”, but I can say I don’t believe Cowboy is “whining” if that was directed at him. I may not agree with a good deal of what he is saying, but to me he clearly wants what he thinks is best for the church.