Liturgical Intolerance

A proper understanding of the Roman Ritual needs contact with the ancient form of the ritual and cannot be opposed to it.

Unreasonably divisive, countless bishops continue to ignore, and even persist in attempting to exclude, the ancient form of the Roman Liturgy.

Cardinal Ratzinger criticized that stance on many occasions, even before his motu proprio Summorum pontificum as Pope Benedict XVI.

"For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is...important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church's whole past. How can one trust her present if things are that way? I must say, quite openly, that I don't understand why so many of my episcopal brethren have to a great extent submitted to this rule of intolerance, which for no apparent reason is opposed to making the necessary inner reconciliation within the Church."

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000, 416.