St. Pius X's breviary was a product of a similar mindset to that, which produced the Novus Ordo 60 years later. Change for change's sake.
Oh no, the prayers are TOO long, so let's shorten them. The people are too dumb(sarcasm) to say the entire Breviary in the order St. Benedict intended.
At least we Byzantines have not revised our Horolgion, and it remains the same as it was during the height of the Byzantine Empire 1,000 years ago.
Oh no, the prayers are TOO long, so let's shorten them. The people are too dumb(sarcasm) to say the entire Breviary in the order St. Benedict intended.
I agree 100%. The St. Pius X Breviary destroyed the basis of the Roman Breviary, which was that Matins covered Psalms 1 to 108 and Vespers covered Psalms 109 to 150, with Psalm 118 being the day hours. This made the whole thing much more complicated, since now the little hours varied every day.
If it really was "too long", the secular clergy could have been given the option of combining the little hours of Prime, Terce, Sext, and None into one longer midday hour, where Psalm 118 would be recited in its entirety, instead of being broken up over four hours. That wouldn't have required alienating the Breviary from tradition.