One thing struck me about the whole very well-done service: it was high-church Anglican, not Catholic. Among the odd notes were prayers to Mary, who of course is the parish patron, but they referred to the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, which are specifically Catholic doctrines. If I go to mass on the Catholic holy days of obligation for those feasts, the homilies that explain them are actually matter-of-fact, as if the priest were explaining something as obvious as gravity or the weather. At St Mary's, which is not Catholic but from a denomination that more or less does not recognize them (depending on who you talk to), the prayers are oddly adventitious.
Another odd perspective came from diocesan mass that morning, where the advice in the homily, often repeated by all our priests, was pretty down-to-earth. Come to mass. In fact, come to mass on time. Set aside time in your day for prayers. And that was about all. No thees or thous, except in the Our Father. Then I began to think about advice I've gotten in my private devotions. Think about memorizing the common prayers in Latin. Latin is the language of the Church. Prayers in Latin are efficacious. One effect of becoming Catholic for me is having to dust off my high school and college Latin, and I seem to be moving farther in that direction.
The English of the 1662 BCP is a detour and something adventitious. And I'm still not sure how you get from high-church Anglican to Catholic. Not saying it can't be done, but these are different things, and I don't see it yet.
