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The UNESCO convention definition of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) covers religious practices and rites, as can be seen from normative descriptions and dozens of actual examples, many of which are Catholic religious traditions. The Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), practiced in one form or another for over 1500 years by an ever-increasing number of peoples and nations and in possession of a common stable set of rules, meets the UNESCO criteria for listing as ICH; in fact, it is arguably the best possible example. It is also a complicated one. After the Catholic Church’s liturgical reform in the 1960s and 1970s, new rites were introduced and the old rites were officially abandoned; nevertheless, a minority of clergy and laity continued to celebrate the TLM, and, over time, the legitimacy of their attachment to it was recognised by several popes, who also spoke regularly of the great value of the Church’s cultural and artistic patrimony and recommended that it remained joined with its religious origins. In contrast, the current pope, Francis, has recently become opposed to the continuation of the old rites. Be this as it may, it is quite possible that such a threatened but deeply appreciated international ICH as the TLM could be proposed for listing by several states that (unlike the Holy See) have signed the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, to give it a recognition appropriate to its immense historical and present-day cultural value.

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A s the Church celebrated on 8 December 2005 the fortieth n anniversary of the ending of the Second Vatican Council ( 8December 1965 being the date when Paul VI formally brought it to a close with the apostolic brief In Spintu Sancto), my thoughts were drawn to many of the themes this council discussed and synthesized in its sixteen documents. The first document to be promulgated was Sacrosanctum Concilium (4 December 1963), and the last, Gaudium et Spes, in company with the declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Hamanae, the decree on the ministry and life ofpriests, Presbyteromm Ordinis, and the decree on the Church's missionary activity,Ad Gentes (allon 7 December 1965). In an address given when he was stillCardinal Ratzinger, the present Holy Father discerned a deeper significance in the factseemingly coincidental at the time -that the first document to be promulgated was the Constitution on the Liturgy. He then showed its organic interconnection with the other three of the Council's four constitutions:The fact that it [5acrosanctum Concilium] was placed at the beginningwas basicallydue to pragmatic motives. But retrospectively, it must be said that it has a deeper meaning within the structure of the Council: adoration comes first. Therefore God comes first. This introduction corresponds to the norm of the Benedictine Rule: Open Dei nihil praeponatur.! As the second text ofthe Council, the Constitution on the Church [Lumen Gentium] should be considered as inwardly connected with the text on the liturgy. The Church is guided by prayer, by the mission ofglorifying God. Byits nature, ecclesiologyisconnectedwith the liturgy. It is, therefore, logical that the third Constitution [Dei Verbum] should speak of the Word of God that convokes the Church 135