I have celebrated a baptism in the Extraordinary Form for the first time. I mention this not as the opening salvo in some campaign, rather to emphasise how I came to it without preconceptions. My reactions are based not on some a priori position or nostalgia, since my only experience hitherto has been my own baptism, just before the rites were changed – of which I naturally have scant memory. It is impossible not to recognise a case of lex orandi, lex credendi. The emphasis taught to the average Catholic school pupil, that baptism “makes you a member of God’s family, the Church”, is powerfully expanded by the theological symbolism and texts of the older rite.