That Apostle of Common Sense

George Weigel has written an article I want to paste on people's foreheads.

The Mass in its Extraordinary Form is NOT the Tridentine Mass. In George's masterfully compact style: Amidst the recent, fevered speculations that Latin days are here again, it's important to note what the Missal of John XXIII is not. It is not the "Tridentine Rite," because it includes modifications of the missal mandated by the Council of Trent in the 16th century; it is not the "mass of Pius V," which some Catholic megatraditionalists argue is the only valid form of Catholic worship. It is, in fact, the mass as celebrated every day at every session of the Second Vatican Council.

It's going to take a while for people to start using the new terminology. Hopefully, we'll start asking one another, "Do you go to the E.F. mass or the O.F.?" And I dearly hope that the Bishops, while they deliberate over words like 'gibbet', will revisit the Missal of 1962 and consider offering it in the vernacular, because it's pure poetry. Maybe there will begin to be a merger of the two Forms: doing the Consecration ad orientem, beginning with a psalm that disposes people to worship, referring to the souls in Purgatory-- all those elements that were left on the cutting room floor hastily or without cause.

But George sums it up very well: the real goal is getting the O.F. more reverent and true.