[ultima ratio]

So what are you saying? Certainly we know what a tradition is--or else language has lost all meaning. The Pope takes an oath not to alter Tradition. Tradition is called "God-given" in the Papal Oath. Vatican I affirms that the popes must guard Sacred Tradition--which it identifies with revelation. Tradition is accordingly that which has been received from the apostles themselves--handed-down to us through the ages. By this definition the old Latin Mass is above all else traditional and apostolic. Ratzinger himself says--as did Pius XII--that it had evolved under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The new liturgy, on the other hand, was fabricated out of whole cloth by an ad hoc committee and is the very antithesis of something traditional, being an innovation that breaks with our Catholic past. None of this is obscure.

[RobbyS]

Tradition is not so definite that it can be codified once and for all, not when some of its is oral. But even the written part is subject to change, because language changes. Scripture itself is under the same rule, especially since the very words of Ourl Ord were in a language other than that in which they were committed to writing. Institutions are what provide constancy, and in the case of the Church that means the apostolic succession and Petrine supremacy. My problem is that you are asking me to accept your interpretation rather than Rome's. That seems to me private judgement, and I cannot accept yours anymore than Gary Will's, someone whose views we both reject.