As the executive director was being received in audience by a sympathetic bishop (confer this post), scores & scores of collaborators — and, finally hundreds — were begging the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, to permit more generous expression of their liturgical and other “legitimate aspirations”.
Below are links to scanned copies & originals in a correspondence with then-Cardinal Ratzinger.
(See the post dated May 13, 2003 for records of the same letter to Cardinal Castrillón-Hoyos.)
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Click on the hyper-links below to view another recently ‘declassified’ correspondence from NCCL’s ‘TOP Secret’ archives.
1. Page 1 of sample letter, also sent by hundreds of others — this sample signed by NCCL’s executive director and dated 13 May 2003 to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, begging the Holy Father Pope John Paul II to permit more generous expression of the liturgical and other “legitimate aspirations” of Catholics commonly called ‘traditional’
2. Page 2 of same-as-above sample letter
3. Gracious reply of then-Cardinal Ratzinger to the above petition, in letter dated July 8, 2003 – written on his private letterhead
4. Scan of the envelope of the letter dated July 8, 2003 from then-Cardinal Ratzinger, delivered 7/18/2003
