From Fr. Ignatius Harrison, Provost of the London Oratory of St. Philip Neri:

I personally hope that the Holy Father’s wise and prudent Motu Proprio [Summorum Pontificum], and the thinking and experience that inform it, will be the start of a much needed new phase of liturgical study and development. The errors of judgment that were enshrined in the newer forms of the Roman rite are plain to see. Perhaps these can now start to be addressed in a more positive and constructive way than was sometimes the case in the past….

As regards the older form of the Roman rite, I rejoice that the Holy Father has now wisely taken us to a point that many of us believe should have been the case when the new rites were imposed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, i.e., that the newer forms would have better been presented as an addition to the older forms, an not as an obligatory substitute. If anyone takes the trouble to examine the relevant texts, it is abundantly clear that the Second Vatican Council mandated a prudent reform of the then existing Roman rite, not the creation of a new rite. If there had not been that strange attempt to suppress the older forms, an authentic (and I believe necessary) reform might have been quicker in the coming. One deemed it bizarre in the extreme that those forms of worship which had nourished the Church for so many centuries should suddenly be declared illegal. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has now revisited and deleted that bizarre embargo. In doing so, I am convinced that his intention is not ‘to put the clock back,’ so to speak. He wants to repair and rewind the clock, to ensure that it goes on ticking away, steadily and reliably, into God’s future.

This is but one comparatively small step on a very long path. There is another step which I hope and pray will come soon…. We have been promised a new and better English version of the ordinary form of the Roman rite of holy Mass. An accurate and dignified translation of the new rite is long overdue. Sad to say, the appalling ICEL translation in current use has already had so many bad effects in the life of the Church.

Here we have two very encouraging and edifying projects: a more worthy English version of the Mass, and a rediscovery of the spiritual riches of the Church’s Latin liturgical tradition. Here we have two necessary and significant steps on a long path. Let us pray that both will contribute to a more efficacious fulfillment of the Church’s unchanging mission — to bring the world to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to make Him better known, better loved, better served, and more wholeheartedly adored.