We need a new liturgical consciousness, to be rid of [the] spirit of arbitrary fabrication... 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 Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2002, 415-416.
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