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.

Link:

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

h/t to Deacon Greg Kandra

Pope Francis, the Pride of Mockery, and the Mockery of Pride

By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae at These Stone Walls

The very presence of Pope Francis makes a mockery of pride, and calls for a most vital Catholic reform: a reform of our hearts to atone for the worst of our vices.

“It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into our religious life . . . But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual. Consequently it is far more subtle and deadly . . . Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952)

For nineteen years in a row, I have been separated by prison walls from the Church’s remembrance of Holy Week. Palm Sunday, the Chrism Mass, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the Good Friday Veneration of the Cross, and the Easter Vigil are all reduced to a remembrance from inside a prison cell. In preparation for Holy Week this year, I have been reading the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, a trilogy of books by Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus. Volume II is subtitled Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection.

I wanted to write something brilliant and uplifting for Holy Week so of course I turned to Benedict the Beloved. But as I read his inspired pages, I kept coming back to my Holy Week post of 2012. Something Benedict wrote causes me to point once again this Holy Week to “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.” Here are Benedict’s words:

“Of the two men crucified with Jesus, only one joins in the mockery; the other grasps the mystery of Jesus. He knows and he sees that the nature of Jesus’ ‘offense’ was quite different. . . and now he sees that this man crucified beside him truly makes the face of God visible; he is truly God’s son. So he asks him, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingly power.’ ” (Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, p. 212)

The other criminal, crucified to the left, takes his pride to the grave and runs his mouth in mockery in sympathy with the very Roman officials and the crowds who condemned him. In a most bizarre display of so-called “Stockholm Syndrome,” that crucified man emulates their pride and takes up their prejudice to mock Christ.

His mockery bears witness to C.S. Lewis’ quote above about the true source of our pride, “the worst of all vices.” That other man echoes Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. He sneers, even from his own cross: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us then!” The arrogance of his agenda was exactly what C.S. Lewis predicted of pride’s true nature. It deprived the condemned man of an awareness of the reality of his life and death. It stole his common sense. It left him with the worst combination of human traits: a closed mind, and an open mouth... (continued)

Read More at These Stone Walls

Link:

• Pope Francis, the Pride of Mockery, and the Mockery of Pride

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• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

Don't forget to make your morning offering to God every day this Holy Week!

From RealCatholicTV:

Don't forget to make your morning offering to God every day this Holy Week! Fulton Sheen likes this one:

Oh My God I offer thee my prayers works and sufferings this day, in union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the intentions for which he pleads and offers Himself in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in thanksgiving for Thy favors, in reparation for my offenses and in humble supplication for my temporal and eternal welfare, for the needs of our Holy Mother the Church, the conversion of sinners, and the relief of the poor souls in Purgatory. I wish to gain all the indulgences attached to the prayers that I say and to the good works that I shall perform this day.