Diocesan ban on washing women's feet stays in place

By Doug Erickson

(Wisconsin State Journal)   Just a few weeks after his election last spring, Pope Francis stunned papal observers by washing the feet of two women during a Holy Week ritual.

The rite — on Maundy Thursday, just prior to Easter Sunday — re-enacts Jesus’ washing of the feet of his 12 male disciples at his Last Supper. Traditionally, popes washed the feet only of men.

Catholic traditionalists believe the men-only rule should remain — at least for everyone below the pope — and many canon lawyers say church law agrees with that position. However, some dioceses in this country had begun including women long before the pope’s example, and a statement on the website for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says that to include women is “an understandable way of accentuating the evangelical command of the Lord.”

Three years ago, Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino issued guidelines that gave priests the option of either using only men or not celebrating the ritual at all. Given the heightened attention to foot-washing last year, some parishioners thought Morlino might re-evaluate his position.

That has not happened. Brent King, the diocesan spokesman, said priests have the same two options this year — men-only or no ritual. Holy Thursday Mass falls on April 17. Easter is April 20.

As has become his tradition, Morlino will celebrate Holy Thursday Mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Downtown Madison, King said, where he will wash the feet of 12 seminarians.

Last year, at least two priests — at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Madison and Nativity of Mary in Janesville — took a pass on the ritual due to the male-only rule.

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• Diocesan ban on washing women's feet stays in place

h/t to Deacon Greg Kandra

Rebellious and Ignorant

Bishop Morlino Warns Dissenters to Stop Calumnious Inciting of Hatred of Priests, the Faith, and Himself — or Else

The action by Bishop Robert Morlino, which two Catholic scholars called highly unusual, appears to include the possibility of offenders being prohibited from taking part in church sacraments such as communion, confession and burial.

DOUG ERICKSON | Wisconsin State Journal

Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino has moved to quell a backlash against a group of conservative priests in Platteville by warning parishioners they risk formal church censure unless they stop spreading "rumors and gossip."

The action by Morlino, which two Catholic scholars called highly unusual, appears to include the possibility of offenders being prohibited from taking part in church sacraments such as communion, confession and burial.

The warning came in a five-page letter Wednesday from Morlino to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Platteville. The congregation has been roiled by opposition to the traditionalist priests, who began serving the parish in June 2010.

Within months, church donations fell by more than half, and about 40 percent of the church’s 1,200 members signed a petition seeking the priests’ ouster. The church’s 77-year-old school is set to close June 1, a loss many parishioners tie directly to the collapse of donations.

The letter, in which Morlino raises the prospect of invoking the church’s Code of Canon Law against dissenters, has stunned many parishioners.

"There’s almost shock and awe," said Myron Tranel, a member of the church’s finance council. "But mostly, there’s a lot of disappointment that the bishop has decided to deal with it this way."

Others applaud the bishop’s move, saying decisive action was needed because criticism had gotten out of hand.

"This is a warning shot across the bow — you either want to be a Catholic or you don’t," said Gregory Merrick, a member of the church’s pastoral council.

Diocesan spokesman Brent King said Morlino’s main message is that this should be a time of "prayer, serious introspection and forgiveness." The specific texts from the church’s code of law were included precisely so that they may never be needed, King said.

"The bishop’s caution that ‘this cannot continue’ should not be made into anything more than that — a caution," King said.

Standing by the priests

The priests are from the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest, a group known for traditionalist liturgy and devotion to strict Catholic teaching. They do not allow girls to be altar servers or allow parishioners to assist in distributing communion. Critics say they emphasize doctrine over pastoral care and institute changes in a heavy-handed way.

Morlino has stood by them and did so again in the letter to parishioners, the primary purpose of which was to announce his decision to accept the parish’s recommendation to close the school. The priests have admitted "that they undertook some changes in a way that was abrupt for many people," Morlino wrote, yet he said no one has provided concrete examples of the priests straying from church doctrine.

In the end, "the Catholic faith is being taught according to the proper understanding of the Second Vatican Council, and what remains are personal likes and dislikes, along with inflated rumors and gossip, some of which may even rise to the level of calumnious inciting of hatred of your priests, the faith and myself," Morlino wrote.

Where there are those who work to "incite hatred," there "may need to be more formal warning and action," Morlino wrote. An addendum cites many church laws, including one in which anyone who publicly incites animosities or hatred toward church authorities "is to be punished by an interdict or other just penalties..." (continued)

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Bishop Morlino: ‘divide and conquer’ strategy is beginning of persecution

(Catholic Culture) In an interview with Vatican Radio, Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison said that a “divide and conquer” strategy is being used against the Church in the public debate over religious liberty and conscience rights--a strategy that he fears marks the beginning of a “sophisticated persecution.”

“Everybody sees that their freedom of conscience is at stake,” he said. “It just depends who is up to be curtailed at any given moment for whatever reason. If they can do it to Catholics, they can do it to anybody.”

“There seems to be an approach that seeks to divide the Church, even more than she is already divided, along liberal and conservative lines. We should not be this way,” he added. “All the liberal/conservative bit is an import from the political sphere, which really does us nothing but damage.”
Bishop Morlino continued:

To take advantage of the fact that this has already happened in our culture, this division, and then to start to pit the bishops – as if they were merely one group within the Church – [against] what other groups might think, is clearly a straightforward attempt to divide and to deepen division in the Church, and to weaken the Church – the old saying, divide and conquer.

After discussing his fears that the strategy marked the beginnings of a nonviolent but sophisticated persecution, he said that organizations that call themselves Catholic must “really be Catholic” and spoke about his efforts to ensure the Catholic identity of Catholic institutions within his diocese.

Stating that there is “too much liturgical diversity“ among parishes, Bishop Morlino said that “commonality in liturgy,” assisted by the new translation of the Roman Missal, is the foundation of a robust public witness.

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Bishop Morlino criticized over plan to bring in conservative priests

DOUG ERICKSON

The effort by Madison Bishop Robert Morlino to staff several Catholic churches in the diocese with priests from a conservative Spanish society has met resistance in another community.

About 200 members of St. Mary’s Parish in Platteville met with Morlino at the church Monday night to question his decision to bring in three priests from the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest to lead the church.

A diocesan official and parishioners who attended the 90-minute meeting described it as largely civil but occasionally heated, with Morlino apologizing toward the end for having raised his voice earlier in the meeting.
“It was a tough evening for everyone,” said diocesan spokesman Brent King.

The society, based in Murcia, Spain, is known for a staunch, traditional approach to Catholic practice. There are now eight society priests at seven parishes in the diocese.

At other churches where they serve, the priests have prohibited girls from being altar servers, dispensed with the common Catholic practice of using trained lay people to assist with Communion and added Masses celebrated only in Latin.

Morlino invited members of the society to begin serving in the diocese in 2006, primarily in the Sauk City area. Some parishioners praise the priests for deepening their faith and bringing discipline to wayward Catholics; others have left the church, saying the priests’ approach is regressive and too rigid.

“To me, it seems like a step backward,” said Fay Stone, a St. Mary’s member. The priests’ approach is “quite different than we have become accustomed to,” she said.
The parish has about 700 families.

Monsignor James Bartylla, the diocese’s second in command, said in an interview Monday the priests are a good fit for Platteville because their gifts align with aspects of the parish.

Priests from the society are known as good school administrators, Bartylla said, and St. Mary’s has a K-8 parochial school. The society has a special mission to encourage young men to enter the seminary, and the priests will lead St. Augustine University Parish, the campus ministry at UW-Platteville, in addition to St. Mary’s.

“It’s a great blessing in this time of a priest shortage to have these priests here,” Bartylla said.

The priests are replacing Monsignor Charles Schluter, who has served St. Mary’s and St. Augustine for 11 years. In July, Schluter will become the priest at St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Madison’s North Side.

Schluter is “greatly beloved (in Platteville) and has been very effective there, so I know it’s very hard for people to see him move on, and I know that’s part of it,” Bartylla said.

Some parishioners say the timing is bad. The congregation is in the midst of a capital campaign to buy the building it currently rents for its parochial school. The school also is in the process of hiring a new principal.

“With the more conservative priests arriving and a change in the principal, there’s just some unease with the amount of change at one time,” member Lee Eggers said.

Some parishioners also are miffed that the new principal may end up being the father of a society priest. A parish search committee wasn’t aware of that possibility and had verbally offered the position to someone else.

“The entire situation has been handled very poorly,” said member Julie Klein.
King, the diocesan spokesman, said that due to a mix-up, the position had been verbally offered to two people, one of them the father of a society priest. The situation has not been resolved but will be decided by the Rev. Lope Pascual, one of the three society priests who will serve as the primary pastor for the two Platteville parishes.

Diocesan officials apologized Monday for the mix-up.

Member Barb LeGrand said she went into the meeting very worried that trained lay people such as herself would no longer be allowed to offer Communion to the homebound, a ministry the church has offered for 20 years.

After the meeting, LeGrand said she was feeling slightly upbeat because Pascual had agreed to meet with her and others about the ministry’s future. “He seems like a very nice man,” she said of Pascual, whom she met for the first time Monday.

King said he does not anticipate the bishop will change his mind on the new priest appointments. The message from the bishop to parishioners was to get to know the priests and give them a chance to explain why they make the decisions they do, King said.

“It’s our hope that, given the opportunity, the parishioners will grow to love the priests and the priests will love the congregation,” King said.

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