Wisdom of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

"Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this [Traditional Latin] 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." (Cardinal Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy. San Francisco: Ignatius. 416)

"I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It's impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that. A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent." (Cardinal Ratzinger. Salt of the Earth. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997. 176)

"The second great event at the beginning of my years in Regensburg was the publication of the Missal of Paul VI, which was accompanied by the almost total prohibition, after a transitional phase of only half a year, of using the missal we had had until then. (...) The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic." (Cardinal Ratzinger. Milestones–Memoirs 1927–1977. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998. 146)

"A venerable rite such as the Roman rite in use up to 1969 is a rite of the Church, it belongs to the Church, is one of the treasures of the Church, and ought therefore to be preserved in the Church." And "what was up until 1969 the Liturgy of the Church, for all of us the most holy thing there was, can not become after 1969…the most unacceptable thing." (Cardinal Ratzinger. Address to a liturgical conference at the Benedictine abbey of Fomtgonbault, 2001)