An even bigger problem

The abandonment of the inner unity of Scripture and feastday is one of the greatest disasters of the new rite. It makes the prayers, the readings, and the sacrifice seem like three different things, when they ought to be clearly woven together, as in the old rite, making one seamless garment.

But there was something more, and worse: the proper chants for her feastday, in the new Graduale Romanum, are, in some cases (like the Alleluia verse) irrelevant, and in other cases barely relevant ...

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The argument in favor of the new lectionary is essentially flawed because it relies upon numbers and the mere quantity of something as the sufficiency necessary for correct evaluation. Thus, to put it another way it seeks to implement the liturgical reform the way governments try to reform things, by throwing more of something indiscriminately. In this case it happens to be Scripture. Just as truly as government throws money at education, or defense in the desperate hope that things will get better, so the new lectionary throws as much of the Bible at the layman as possible, indiscriminately, in the hope that he will leave the Church knowing something about the Bible. The Traditional Lectionary's effect, however, is qualitative, focusing not so much on how much of the Bible the man in the pew hears, but rather what the man in the pew hears.

In the Traditional Liturgy, the lectionary was tailored to match the breviary and lead the faithful to a certain idea through its collects, antiphons and other propers; the lectionary of the Novus Ordo often makes use of antiphons and propers that do not match any liturgical objective, prayers that are given just for the sake of it.