From the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, on the Traditional Latin Liturgy:
“Personally, I was from the beginning in favor of the freedom to continue using the old Missal...it seems indispensable to continue to offer the opportunity to celebrate according to the old Missal, as a sign of the enduring identity of the Church. There is no doubt that 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 to be preserved in the Church.
“I well know the sensibilities of the faithful who love this liturgy—these are, to some extent, my own sensibilities.…I emphasize this—it would be fatal for the old Liturgy to be, as it were, placed in deep-freeze, left like a national park, a park protected for the sake of a certain kind of people, for whom one leaves available these relics of the past.
“We should be able to understand that this Missal is also a Missal of the Church, and under the authority of the Church, that it is not an object preserved from the past, but a living reality within the Church very much respected in its particular identity and for its historical stature but equally considered as something which is living, and not a dead thing, a relic of the past.” - Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger (2001)
Read from Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) on the
10th Anniversary of Ecclesia Dei