[annalex]

the old Latin practice, as lamentable as it may seem today and indeed may well have been then, really had absolutely nothing to do with the state of the theology or liturgical praxis of that church?

There was always some material in the vernacular present; however, the Church in the West operated amindst a variety of tongues and principalities and so faced challenges that Byzantium and later the Russian Empire did not have. In that, the liturgical Latin served a salutary role as a guarantee of proper doctrine being taught, and not some ethnic variations of it.

[Kolokotronis]

"In that, the liturgical Latin served a salutary role as a guarantee of proper doctrine being taught, and not some ethnic variations of it."

I agree 100%. What I was responding to was the assertion that the Church engineered a general unavailability of the scriptures really in any language, not complaining against Latin which certainly did, to an extent, avoid the very translation problems we've all seen here on this thread.