The regular worship of the average Catholic parish may well go on regardless, despite the ruling from Pope Benedict XVI authorising the use of the Tridentine Rite of the Mass in certain circumstances. For English speakers, a far bigger and more propitious change lies ahead - the introduction of a new translation of the rite that replaced the Tridentine form not long after the Second Vatican Council. One change looks forward, but the other backwards. The Tridentine Rite - called for by the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century - belongs to the Counter-Reformation era that has gone. Those who have campaigned to recall the rite want the era back too, and all that goes with it.

A puzzling feature both of the motu proprio and of the explanatory letter Pope Benedict sent with it is the attempt to present the ruling given now as in line with previous practice. The Pope says the Tridentine Rite is correctly understood as the "extraordinary" form of the Mass - using that word in the non-startling sense - while the post-Vatican II form remains the ordinary form. Together the two forms constitute one Rite. But in many people's minds, the Tridentine form was simply banned, banished and suppressed.

Benedict XVI declares: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden." But it was. This is a clear repudiation of the policy (with a few small exceptions) of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, not a continuation of it.

This becomes even more apparent when the Pope virtually orders a bishop to permit Tridentine Rite Masses in his diocese in future, and even encourages groups aggrieved by any refusal to appeal over his head to the Vatican. Previous popes left the bishop's authority intact. But then the Pope declares: "Nothing is taken away, then, from the authority of the bishop." This is, to put it at its most polite, confusing.

The reauthorisation of ...

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Pope Benedict XVI has made it clear that he would like to end the almost universal prohibition on celebration of the Tridentine Mass. He has run into some opposition, and the reasons are worth examining. One of the few exceptions to the prohibition was an indult (the technical term for permission to deviate from Church law) obtained by the bishops of England and Wales, which gave individual bishops in those countries ...

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