text: #1
  First of all, Dave, Congratulations! Many folks here don't have your grace in acknowledging gratuitous insults. I hope Sarasi1 happens on this, for she is our resident Orthodox--very knowledgeable, and excellent at bring an Orthodox perspective into our discussions in terms that Catholics can easily follow. She deserves the apology.
  
  You raise two issue--Liturgy and Papacy--and I choose to reply only about liturgy.
  
  In fact, Dave, the Novus Ordo owes a very great deal to scholarship about other rites, especially the Byzantine. 
  
  For about a hundred or so years prior to the V2 reform, liturgical scholars worked very hard to reconstruct the evolution of  all liturgies through the centuries, and one of their most valuable tools was "comparative liturgy." By systematically comparing what was going on in all of the rites from the meager evidence available, a fuller picture emerged.
  
  The Novus Ordo is very largely a restoration of the liturgy of the 5th century or so.