What Did the Pope Mean about the Liturgical Reform?

Some folks are asking me what the Pope meant by this:

“After this magisterial, and after this long journey, we can assert with certainty and magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible.”

He’s not saying (any more than Pius V in Quo Primum was saying) “This is the absolute eternal set-in-concrete-realio-trulio only way the Latin Rite will ever be celebrated ever again!”

On the contrary, roughly translated, he means, “There’s a reason it’s called the Ordinary Form. It’s the normal, everyday form of the Mass in the Latin Rite and it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future–which could mean centuries.”  Correlatively, that means there’s a reason the Extraordinary Form is called the Extraordinary Form.  Don’t bet the farm on it becoming the dominant form, much less replacing the Ordinary Form.