The Prince of Wales laments its loss. As I have discovered, if you actually stand up and talk about the importance of our heritage and the lessons to be learned from our forebears you are at once accused of a quaint nostalgia for a picturesque, irrelevant past. Well, I'm not afraid of being considered old-fashioned, which is why I am ready to declaim the fact that I believe the Prayer Book is a glorious part of every English speaker's heritage and, as such, ought to be a Grade 1 listed edifice. Possibly there are more people today who read less well than people in the past, although I doubt it. Most people then couldn't read at all.
Poetry is for everybody, even if it's only a few phrases.
But banality is for nobody. It might be accessible for all, but so is a desert. The Book of Common Prayer has been a spiritual resource of English-speaking people for four centuries. It is a book of prayer for the whole community, devised and composed so that it might satisfy everyone. To some of his contemporaries it seemed too conservative, to others too radical, but it has survived changes in Church and State that would have destroyed a liturgy less sensitive to the profound human need for continuity and permanence.