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Arising from this, some Anglicans have decided (in my opinion erroneously) that blue is the Advent colour according to the Sarum Use

Interesting, thanks for the history. Liturgists IMHO seem not to be interested in preserving old Rites/Uses intact, but rather using them as justification for their own experimentalism.

Is anyone out there using the Sarum Use still?

Is anyone out there using the Sarum Use still?

It was used in England (along with a few other less well-known Uses) and Scotland before the Reformation so when the Book of Common Prayer was introduced in 1549 it was stopped. Queen Mary brought it all back, then Queen Elizabeth dumped it again for a new B.C.P. in 1559. The Priests would celebrated Mass secretly would probably have varied between Sarum and straight Roman, those who were ordained in England before the changes would have been trained to do things in the Sarum style; but as the Jesuits started to train Englishmen at the Douay Seminary they used the Roman Rite. Thus Sarum probably died out within a single generation of clergy.

When the Catholic hierarchy was restored in England it was suggested that Sarum be used but this was rejected with three main grounds, first the Priests were now all trained in the Roman Rite; secondly, there was a high degree of ultra-montanism which lead people to want the same Mass as the Pope; and thirdly (in my opinion most importantly), Sarum had died out, and liturgy is supposed to be an organic developing system, one cannot resurrect a liturgical Use, one can lament its decline (standing in Salisbury Cathedral and envisaging a Mass with seven Deacons and seven sub-Deacons, with all of the servers in tunicals one does wish that one could see it in full glory), but dragging it back can become archeology rather liturgy.

I've visited a western rite Orthodox church that uses a liturgy derived from Sarum, although I don't have any point of reference to gauge how much their service deviated from the Sarum manuscripts. I was impressed. They carried out the service simply, without a lot of frills (e.g. the chanting was more functional than splendid), with a sense of strict respect for the holiness of the sacrifice. What really struck me was that the language and rubrics were intensely doctrinal, with a lot of emphasis on the Trinity. I came away thinking that if the Novus Ordo were similar, there'd be less room for dissent in the Church. Their doctrine was too clearly on display in the liturgy. You couldn't mouth the words while thinking to yourself that they must really mean the opposite.