This is what the Catholic church clung to until the 60's. Many do not understand that there is nothing holy about a language. There was pressure on the Vatican because Catholics thought it would be more desirable to say the Mass in their own tongue. I'm not sure what the primary issue was...whether it was the large number being converted who were from 3rd world nations or what.
Before the Douay-Rheims Bible were several other English translations including the Tyndale, Coverdale, and Wycliffe Bibles. I had forgotten about the 8th century Bible. Was that Bede?
The Wycliffe translation was an ungrammatical rendering of the Vulgate which was passed around in manuscript form. Most manuscript versions extant include obvious interpolations added by Wyclifites (sometimes paragraphs long!) to bolster their doctrines.
Tyndale did a decent rendering, with a number of textual problems, of the NT and the Pentateuch.
The Coverdale Bible was kind of a pastiche of a translation - it drew partially on Tyndale's NT and unfinished OT, partially was a loose translation of Luther's German Bible, and was filled in in places with a clumsy rendering of the Vulgate.
The most important English Bibles before the Douay-Rheims and the KJV were the official Bishop's Bible, also called the Great Bible (which was a revision of Coverdale's project) and the Geneva Bible, also called the Breeches Bible (for its odd turns of phrase) which was a revision of the Coverdale OT pastiche according to the Rabbinic Bible and a revision of the Tyndale NT according to Beza's Greek text.
The Douay-Rheims was the first Bible, and the KJV the second, to be prepared by a group of scholars skilled in the original languages who critically examined their sources. The KJV, as I mentioned earlier, made extensive use of the work of the Douay scholars' efforts.
I had forgotten about the 8th century Bible. Was that Bede?
Bede translated part of the Gospels. Only a fragment of his translation of John is extant.
Aelfric was also a Gospel translator, and Alfred the Great also translated Scripture notably the the Psalms. There were also the anonymous translators of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the West Saxon Gospels and the Paris Psalter (which followed the Gallican Psalter of the Old Latin Bible)- all in the period from 800-1000.
A further comment: when a language ceases to be used for profane purposes and becomes dedicated solely to divine worship and theology - the language has become sacred. It is not sacred in itself - it is sacred in its use.