With regards the virtual suppression of 'patristic hymns' and the promotion of 'new hymns,' (not to mention 'new psalm-tones, new Ordinary settings, etc. ad nauseam,) a few observations from a practitioner...
In 1965, THE gold-standard hymnal was "Our Parish Plays and Sings," published by The Liturgical Press c/right 1959. It had about 90 hymns, plus several Chant ordinaries, psalm-tones, and other miscellaneous pieces of music.
It no longer exists, despite its utility.
By 1970, with the readings-cycle now increased to 300% of the prior Rite, "hymnals" became almost useless and were replaced by fascicles--missalettes--which contained the readings and hymns, as well.
There were a few trends, in addition. "New" music had to be created, because through vote-manipulation the Bishops' Subcommittee on Music had licensed folk/folk-rock/"guitar" music. Weakland of Milwaukee was a principal engineer of this fraud, which actually did NOT have any legal force.
Regardless, "new music" was created and sold. If that music utilized the new English translations, the royalties HAD TO GO TO ICEL, the sole body responsible for the English translation.
As a result, only a couple of publishers were quick enough on their feet to make the transition to a "fascicle" house--and they printed the "new music" (think St. Louis Jesuit crap) as part of the missalette. Other hymnbook publishers died on the vine, unless they had significant libraries of "other music" they could sell.
The zeitgeist also had negative effects on parish choirs and organists (who needs them? Bongo-groups are cheaper and just fine...), AND by the 1980's, the capital cost of the new publishing technologies was extremely burdensome.
More publishers died, or were purchased. Coca Cola actually owned the library of at least two major RC music publishers by 1985.
Real hymnody (such as that found in the older English and German books from the 1700's/1800's, is not being written, with few exceptions.
So: the publishers which had actual artistic standards are virtually all gone. What remains are those which were able to pay ICEL's demands and purchase/print "new" music, pushed very hard by the powers-that-be (Weakland) during the 1970's.
The same 90 or so "old hymns" are in most hymnals and fascicles--along with another 90 or so pieces of "new" garbage. The garbage is pushed by the now-graying but still influential revolutionaries--ironically, the "old hymns" are the ones which are actually sung by people in the pews.
The money went to ICEL and to certain authors who were NOT compensated for the quality of their offerings. The money did NOT go to those who published artistically-sound materials for choirs (few were there) or organists with artistic training (even fewer of these are around.)
Follow the money and you'll find the dreck.
Oh!:(
Now one more question. Why did the people and the priests put up with it? I'm telling you, we'd lynch any priest who tried this and topple any bishop, metropolitan or even Patriarch. BTW, did you read where it seems the Patriarch of Jerusalem, an arch scoundrel if ever there was one, may well have been toppled himself by his brother bishops and the archmandrites out there? That's how we often deal with hierarchial dogs.
The whole idea that people need to be following along and participating with every single word in order to be praying is a pernicious one. I can tell you that while we have liturgy books available to the congregation (although we've changed to some different translations, so they mostly go unused now), the only parts where there is and ever was genuine participation (and the participation is great on those parts) are the things people learn by heart over time -- things that are unchanging (I think you call these the "ordinary." I am NOT an anti-congregational singing person (there are some of those in the Orthodox Church, and I confess to formerly being one of them. It is just that when people are flipping through books, they generally aren't listening and praying.)
The ideal service is one where there are fixed portions that people know by heart and sing along on to traditional chant melodies, and variable material done by a trained chanter or choir, to whom the congregation listens attentively without flipping through a book.
Having seen the wretched stuff put out by the cabal out in Oregon, and seen the hundreds of copies of material sold to each parish each year of their material -- I quite believe that there is a significant "follow the money" component at work here.
But really, maybe I'm being too simplistic, but an enterprising choir director/chanter and a cooperative priest could put together beautiful services in English and save the congregation a lot of money in the process. The priest would need to be willing to be educated, and be willing to educate the parish.
Most musically educated Orthodox choir directors in the Slavic tradition, anyway, own music-notation software and produce and share their work for nothing with each other. We aren't composing new melodies and certainly aren't composing new text (that is only done if there is a new saint or something). We are applying and adapting traditional chant melodies to English translations of the liturgical texts that have been in use in Greek and Slavonic forever. Then, it's sharing photocopies of photocopies of photocopies....although in the modern era, everything is going to pdfs.
We purchase very little material, other than the original sets of service books, which last forever. The Greek Archdiocese is different -- they produce a book every year for Matins/Orthros that is disposable (text only -- any psaltis will know all the melodies by heart.) But each parish only needs to buy one copy each year for use on kliros!
I guess what I'm saying is that from my simplistic Orthodox perspective, it seems to me that you are never going to go back to the Latin mass and the 1959 hymnal that you talk about. But what you could do that would be truly revolutionary (and in line with what B16 seems to believe), would be to model the way you do liturgics on how we Orthodox do it -- but having all of your source material be from the liturgical history of the Western church. You would be the true progressives, unlike those boring, graying hippies...
Think big! Be radical!