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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Archbishop Müller on the SSPX and His Controversial Writings

By EDWARD PENTIN  

(National Catholic Register)  In the second part of this interview with Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller (Part 1 can be read here), the new CDF prefect discusses the latest on efforts to bring the Society of St. Pius X back into full communion with the Church, the current situation regarding the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and responds to what some saw as controversies over some of his previous writings on the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and on the Eucharist.

What stage have we reached in the dialogue between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X?

I wouldn’t call it a dialogue between two Church partners. This was a brotherly colloquium to overcome difficulties with an authentic interpretation of Catholic doctrine. This authentic interpretation is guaranteed by the Pope. The SSPX must accept the Holy Father, the Pope, as the visible head of the Church. They have a great respect for Tradition. They must, therefore, accept the position of the Pope as stated in the First Vatican Council. They must also accept the doctrinal pronouncements made since the Second Vatican Council, which have been authorized officially by the Pope.

Part of the problem is that, after 30 or more years of separation from the Church, some groups or persons can be very closed in their own dynamic, in their own groups, and very fixed on these points. I believe that these questions will be resolved in the long term.

Is it possible for reconciliation with Bishop Richard Williamson within the society?

Williamson is a separate problem to this reconciliation process. It is simply unacceptable that a Christian or even  more a bishop — of course he is not a Catholic bishop, as a bishop is only Catholic when he is in full communion with the Pope, the Successor of Peter, which Williamson is not — denies all that the Nazis had done against the Jewish people, their exterminations. How is it possible to be so cold-hearted about this? It is absolutely unacceptable, but this is a separate problem.

They [SSPX] need to accept the complete doctrine of the Catholic Church: the confession of faith, the Creed, and also accept the magisterium of the Pope as it is authentically interpreted. That is necessary. They also need to accept some forms of development in the liturgy. The Holy Father recognized the perennial validity of the extraordinary form of the liturgy, but they also must accept that the new ordinary form of the liturgy, developed after the Council, is valid and legitimate.

Some argue the Second Vatican Council was merely pastoral and, therefore, not binding. How do you respond to this?

The problem here is the interpretation of the word “pastoral.” All councils are pastoral, in that they are concerned with the work of the Church — but this does not mean that they are merely “poetic” and therefore not binding. Vatican II is an official ecumenical council, and all that was said in the Council is therefore binding for everyone, but at different levels. We have dogmatic constitutions, and you are certainly obliged to accept them if you are Catholic. Dei Verbum discusses divine Revelation; it speaks about the Trinitarian God revealing himself and about the Incarnation as fundamental teaching. These are not only pastoral teachings — they are basic elements of our Catholic faith.

Some practical elements contained in the various documents could be changed, but the body of the doctrine of the Council is binding for everyone.

In view of all this, are you nevertheless confident and optimistic there will be reconciliation with the Society of St. Pius X?

I’m always confident in our faith and optimistic. We have to pray for goodwill and for unity in the Church. The SSPX is not the only breakaway group in the Church. There are worse ones on the opposite side, too. These movements are worse because they are often denying essentials of Christianity. We must work for unity, and so it is also my task to invite all to come back into full communion with the Catholic Church, which is led by the supreme shepherd, the pope — who is the Vicar of Christ.

If they do come back, what positive aspects could they bring to the Church?

They could underline what Tradition is, but they also must become broader in their perspective, because the apostolic Tradition of the Church is not only about a few elements. The Tradition of the Church is large and wide. On the other hand, there must also be a renewal in the celebration of the liturgy, because we have had a lot of abuses of the liturgy, which have damaged the faith of many people.

Could they perhaps help correct some of the abuses?

That is not their task, but ours. One extreme cannot be the equivalent of the other. The extremes must be corrected by the center...  (continued)

Read More Here

On the SSPX

By Ann Barnhardt at Barnhardt.biz:

I get lots of questions, and hate mail, about this, and in the spirit of getting things wrapped-up and saying everything I have on my little list to say while I can, here's my screed on the SSPX.

The Society of Saint Pius the Tenth (SSPX) is a group of traditionalist Catholics who broke away from Rome in 1970 after Vatican II when they were told by evil Marxist infiltrators inside the Church that they were forbidden from saying the Tridentine Latin Mass. They were led by an Archbishop named Marcel Lefebvre, hence the term "Lefebvrists" sometimes used to describe those in the SSPX.

The legalisms are EXTREMELY confusing, but as I understand it, Vatican II never actually forbade the saying of the Tridentine Mass. That was all a lie by the Marxist-homosexualist infiltrators. But, instead of hanging around and fighting the good fight, the SSPX took off on its own.

There have been steps toward reconciliation over the last 40 years, and as I understand it, SSPX Masses are indeed valid, but they are still not in full communion with the Church.

I totally sympathize with them - I can't imagine the fury and heartbreak that so many felt in 1970 as the Mass was literally eviscerated before their eyes and turned into a Protestant off-Broadway performance vehicle for homosexual priests and nuns, specifically designed to degrade the Church from the inside-out and ultimately destroy it by turning it into a neo-pagan Marxist-homosexualist cult.

But apparently ol' Annibale Bugnini and his masonic cohorts didn't take Christ Almighty seriously:

"Thou art Peter (Cephah) and upon this rock (cephah) I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
 
You ain't gonna win, boys. And that goes for the uber-right contingent every bit as much as the Marxist-homosexualist infiltrators. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, and Peter is the Rock upon which Christ built, and builds, His Church.

It does not get any clearer than that. Any argument or confusion on this point is a direct result of satanic-inspired heresy aimed at destroying the Church by tearing it into utter chaos (40,000 protestant sects in the U.S. alone, all gleefully ratifying mortal sin, and counting!), ripping people away from the Eucharist, and ultimately resulting in people being lost eternally to hell. Period. You don't agree? You don't like that? You want to be your own pope? You want to "vote" on what the Truth is? Wow. I SOOOOOO don't care what you "want", "like", "feel" or "believe." I care about what the Truth is, and scripture makes it crystal, crystal clear on this point for anyone who isn't blinded by their own pride.

So, think of the SSPX as Protestants, but on the other side of the spectrum.

Today, the head of the SSPX is a bishop named Bernard Fellay, and he is working very hard to try to get the SSPX fully reconciled to Rome and thus 100% back inside the Barque of Peter. Everything I have read and listened to from Fellay seems extremely sensible, faithful and sincere. He fully comprehends that he is a shepherd and that he needs to get his flock back into the Church, and he is trying very hard to get that done before the manure hits the spinning airfoils.

The other three SSPX bishops? Not so much. The nutty wing of the SSPX is led by a bishop named Williamson. Williamson is nuts. Just stone-cold bonkers. He is a vicious anti-Semite (and there is a considerable problem with this inside the SSPX), holocaust denier, and naturally flowing from that evil and insanity, Williamson is a 9/11 truther. Like I said, the dude is nuts. Once you know that information, you know everything you need to know about Williamson and his wing.

Now you might think that all the traddy Catholics *lurv* me and that I have bunches and bunches of "friends." Oh, you'd be dead wrong. Most of the traddy Catholics hate me too, because people like me just can't win for losing. They send me lovely emails telling me how much they hate me on a fairly regular basis. They also send me Williamson propaganda. So, I have a pretty solid dossier of evidence on this point.

Would you like to hear what they tell me? Sure you would.

A. If you are 35 and unmarried, you must be a lesbian. We hate you.

(And all this time I thought it was a combination of my shrewish personality, dull wit and acrid body odor. Huh.)
 
B. You're a convert. We hate converts. We hate you.

(The Blessed Virgin Mary, the first Convert to Christianity, was unavailable for comment. Her press secretary simply referred all inquiries on this topic to the First Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation. Oh, and the Great Commission of her Son.)
 
C. You speak to Jews. We hate you.

(If your stupid asses don't even understand Catholicism, how do you expect the Jews today to understand it, much less convert to it? Maybe if you learned your faith, understood how every aspect of the Church and the Mass is a perfected fulfillment of Judaism, and could then EXPLAIN that to people, you might actually win some converts. Oh, but I forgot. You hate converts.)
 
D. You're ugly. Your hair is ugly. You have horse teeth and bug eyes. We hate you.

(Are you sure THAT isn't the reason I'm not married? Because I'm so freakishly physically repellant? Just sayin'.)
 
And, finally, my personal favorite:

E. You prophesy before men UNVEILED. We hate you.

(Okay, I can't win here. If I say to myself, "Ahem, I am going to PROPHESY now," and put on a veil to make a video or give a talk, then I'm a delusional, megalomaniacal nutcase. If I don't, some kooky dude sends me emails telling me that I'm going to hell for my failure to accessorize. Dude, throw me a bone. Seriously.)
 
That's all good for a chuckle, but let me explain with an analogy what these people's error is, and it isn't just them. It is the error of any schismatic.

Let's say your wife was diagnosed with cancer. Would you suddenly hate your wife? Would you argue that you didn't marry a body riddled with cancer, and therefore she was no longer the person you married, and then leave her in a smug huff?

Would you hate your wife's body, and thus hate your wife? No. You would love your wife and her body, perhaps even more than before, when you saw her under attack from the cancer. You would want to fight the cancer - chemotherapy, radiation, surgery - anything to get rid of the cancer and bring your wife back to full health and vigor.

This is exactly the situation in the Church today. The Church has cancer. Bad. Fully metastasized, all over-type cancer. It is called Marxist-homosexualism, and the cancer was first observed and diagnosed 45 years ago. Sadly, instead of clinging to the Bride of Christ and fighting the cancer, some people abandoned Her, claiming that the cancer WAS her body, instead of just an invading infection. Others left out of indifference. Others stayed and embraced the cancer as a "good thing" and "progress". A tiny, tiny contingent stayed, held Her hand, and have lovingly administered as much medicinal therapy to her as they possibly could.

The Williamson wing of the SSPX hates the Bride of Christ and will never rejoin her no matter what, because they are too prideful and dim to make the distinction between the Body and the cancer. They want a new wife, one of their own making, and "cancer free." And that is what they will get, but they will quickly find out that their new bride isn't really a bride at all, but just another cheap whore. A true and loving Bride with a bad case of cancer beats a whore in her prime.

So, Fellay needs to get back into the Church ASAP, and let the chips fall where they may with the SSPXers. Even if it is just Fellay and one other person coming back into the Church, it will be worth it for that ONE person, and Fellay will have done his job as a shepherd. Our Lord made clear that men will be sifted. People will have to choose. Wheat or chaff? Sheep or goats? This is one of those "siftings."

Get back in the Barque of Peter, Bishop Fellay and all SSPXers of good will, of which there are many. Because the gates of hell and its cancer WILL NOT PREVAIL. There is going to be a miraculous cure, and your Bride wants you there to share in the joy of the healing, which is explicitly guaranteed by Our Lord Himself.



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• On the SSPX

Pope Gives Advice to Keep Catholics From Falling Away

Be Better Believers, More Pious, Welcoming in Our Parishes

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 22, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI met today with a group of bishops from Colombia in Rome for their ad limina visits, offering them some concrete advice on growing religious pluralism and the increasing presence of evangelical communities in the country.
 
The Pope cited the concluding document from the fifth general conference of the Latin American and Caribbean bishops, which observed that people often leave the Church not because of what non-Catholic groups believe, but because of what they live.

Hence, the Holy Father said, facing this challenge is "about being better believers, more pious, affable and welcoming in our parishes and communities, so that no one will feel distant or excluded."

"Catechesis must be promoted, giving special attention to young people and adults; homilies must be carefully prepared, as well as promoting the teaching of Catholic doctrine in schools and universities," he added.

All of this, the Bishop of Rome affirmed, will help to recover in the baptized "a sense of belonging to the Church and to awaken in them the aspiration to share with others the joy of following Christ and of being members of his Mystical Body."

Benedict XVI added that it is important to emphasize the Church's tradition, Marian spirituality and the rich diversity of devotion.

"To facilitate a serene and open exchange with other Christians, without losing one’s own identity, can also help to improve relations with them," he said, "and to overcome mistrust and unnecessary confrontations."

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The Semi-Permeable Membranes of the Various Protestantisms

by Mark P. Shea

7/21/09

One basic rule of thumb to understand in Catholic/Protestant conversations is that it is not the case that Catholics rely on Sacred Tradition and Protestants don't. Rather, Catholics (and by this I mean "educated Catholics speaking out of the Magisterial teaching of the Church") rely on Sacred Tradition and know they do, while Protestants rely on (parts) of Sacred Tradition and (usually) don't know they do.

So, for instance, despite Paul's prescriptions (directed only at clergy of his day) that a man must be the husband of but one wife, nowhere in the text of Scripture is it made clear that Christian marriage must be monogamous for all (a fact that did not escape Luther or John Milton). Nowhere does Scripture spell out that the Holy Spirit is a person, much less the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son. Similarly, you will look in vain for instructions in Scripture on how to contract a valid marriage (unless you buy this list of "Top 10 Ways to Find a Wife, According to the Bible"):

10. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she's yours (Dt 21:11-13).
9. Find a prostitute and marry her (Hos 1:1-3).
8. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock (Moses, Ex 2:16-21).
7. Purchase a piece of property, and get a woman as part of the deal (Boaz, Ru 4:5-10).
6. Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife (Benjaminites, Jgs 21:19-25).
5. Have God create a wife for you while you sleep (Adam, Gn 2:19-24).
4. Kill any husband and take his wife (David, 2 Sm 11).
3. Cut 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law's enemies and get his daughter for a wife (David, 1 Sm 18:27).
2. Even if no one is out there, just wander around a bit and you'll definitely find someone (Cain, Gn 4:16-17).
1. Don't be so picky. Make up for quality with quantity (Solomon, 1 Kgs 11:1-3).

Of course, this doesn't really help much. The fact is, the Bible says "marriage is good" but gives us not one word of instruction on how to do it. That's because Scripture is not and never was intended to be the Big Book of Everything. And yet, of course, Protestants all over the world get married, believe in God the Holy Spirit, and have but one spouse because, as James Dobson says, God's plan is one man and one woman. How do they do this when Scripture is so unclear?

Whether they realize it or not, they do it by accepting Sacred Tradition percolated to them from the Catholic Church through the Protestant tradition. It's the same way they know that the books of the Bible they accept are supposed to be books of the Bible. It's the same way they know that public revelation closed with the death of the apostles, even though Scripture is completely silent on the matter (Revelation 22:18-19 doesn't count since that passage refers to the Book of Revelation, not to the Bible, which was not fully collated -- and from which Revelation was sometimes excluded -- before the late fourth century).

Retention of Catholic Sacred Tradition fragments has kept Protestantism in such sanity as it still possesses. So when the Bible Answer Man appeals to "historic Christianity" in understanding what the Bible means, that's typically a good thing. He's appealing to Sacred Tradition and agreeing with the Church. It's Eupocrisy in action!

However, in those places where Protestantism attempts to reject Catholic Sacred Tradition, the narrative suddenly and wrenchingly changes. Suddenly, the demand is made for nothing less than an explicit proof text from the Bible. It works like this:

1. If a thing is condemned by the Church but permitted by the Protestant (say, gay marriage), the demand is for an explicit text forbidding it. ("Show me where Jesus said one word about not allowing gay marriage! That's just the Church imposing its purely human ideas on what Jesus came to say.")

2. Conversely, if a thing is allowed by the Church but condemned by the Protestant, the demand is for an explicit text commanding it. ("Where in the Bible do you find anyone asking us to pray to dead people? That's just the Church imposing it's purely human ideas on what Jesus came to say.")

Note how the terms of the argument shift to suit the "Heads I win, tails the Church loses" agenda. It's no longer good enough to say (as the Protestant generally does when, for instance, arguing for the divinity of the Holy Spirit), "Here are biblical passages which, taken together, point to the reality that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person even though there is no text that says 'The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.'"

No, arguing from such obvious implication is out the window. In many circles, even a nearly algebraic piece of logic like

1. Jesus is God.
2. Mary is His Mother.
3. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God.

. . . gets rejected as "inbred reasoning" since Catholics can't produce the Bible verse that says explicitly, "Mary is the Mother of God." Suddenly, only direct, explicit testimony and instruction in legally watertight language will do.

How this works on the ground can be seen everywhere. The Protestant who wants to permit abortion points out that there is no unequivocal commandment in either the Old or New Testament saying, "You shall not have an abortion," and evinces absolutely no interest in how the texts we do have ("You shall not murder," for instance) have been universally read by the Church from the earliest times. Likewise, the Protestant who dogmatically rejects, say, prayer to the saints simply ignores you if you point to the fact that Scripture shows us that the dead (like Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration) are aware of what's happening on earth, that we are told that "we shall be like Christ" (who intercedes for us), that the Body of Christ is One (not split in two by death), and that the early Church understood all this to imply that we can ask prayers of the dead just as we ask them of the living.

As remote as the flaky pro-choice Episcopalian and the starchy Bible-thumping Fundamentalist preacher may seem to be from each other, they share a deep commonality in the way they reject whatever aspect of Catholic teaching they dislike. From liberal to conservative, the argument proceeds: "Unless the Bible explicitly commands what I forbid or forbids what I want to do, then the Catholic teaching I dislike is 'unbiblical.'" (Of course, the word "Bible" is not unbiblical -- even though it also never appears in Scripture -- because the word "Bible" is a fragment of extra-biblical Christian tradition generally acceptable to Protestants.)

Indeed all the various forms of Protestantism have this (and only this) one feature in common. They may differ on Mary or baptism or the divinity of Jesus or even the existence of God (if you include Unitarians as a particularly robust form of Protestantism that has jettisoned more of Catholic teaching than its predecessors). But they all agree on erecting semi-permeable membranes in which some (but not all) elements of Sacred Tradition are allowed through (different bits for different groups).

Those elements that are allowed through are called "the witness of historic Christianity" or "the clear implication of Scripture" or "the obviously reasonable position." Those not allowed through are called "human tradition" or "myths" or "the unbiblical teachings of Rome" or "relics of patriarchy" or "ancient superstition" (even when they are the obvious testimony and practice of all the apostolic communions in the world since the beginning of the Church.) Finally, to the filtered-in elements of real apostolic theological and moral teaching are stapled sundry human traditions like sola scriptura or some theory about predestinarianism or the "perspicuity of Scripture" or the need to speak in tongues or (in the past) the curse on Canaan as a biblical basis for American chattel slavery or (more recently) the glories of homosexuality or abortion.

Of course, as history goes on and at least some sectors in Protestantism allow the centrifugal force of Private Judgment to move them further and further from both Sacred Tradition and (inevitably, given the logic) Sacred Scripture as well, you reach a point where appeals to Scripture as an authority in debate don't matter, since Scripture is, after all, simply the written aspect of Tradition. Sooner or later, it occurs to people trending away from acceptance of Apostolic Tradition to ask, "If I've rejected everything else the Church says, why should I care about its 'holy' writings? I can find a hundred German theologians who say of the supposed 'word of God' what I've been saying of 'Sacred Tradition' all along."

For the present, many (graying) Evangelicals still retain a deep reverence for the sacred writings of Holy Church (though there are some signs that the itch to deconstruct Scripture will wreak enormous damage among those who come to clearly face the choice between the pole in Protestantism that seeks the Apostolic Tradition and the pole that seeks to keep deconstructing until nothing, including Scripture, is left).

For those still in this betwixt-and-between stage, who reverence Scripture and have this conflicted grasp of an Apostolic Tradition coming to them through a semi-permeable membrane, what is needed is a paradigm shift: the realization first of the shell game that is played in order to filter out Catholic traditions according to the preferences of the particular Protestant tradition one adheres to and, second, a willingness to acknowledge the possibility that when this is honestly done, it will be found that no Catholic doctrine -- none whatsoever --actually contradicts Scripture and that all that is essential in Scripture is also essential in Catholic teaching.

That's a terrifying prospect if one has accepted any of the various myths by which the sundry Protestantisms justify the rejection of whichever bits of Catholic teaching they reject. All the myths -- ranging from "I listen only to the Bible alone and not to the traditions of men!" to "I accept Tradition within reason, except that church tradition is never accepted as equal in authority to canonical Scripture; it is always subject to revision provided a scriptural basis can be found" -- are equally doomed if that turns out to be so, which is why those committed to the sundry Protestant schemas require not new information but an alteration of the will: a willingness to consider the possibility that there is no conflict between Catholic Tradition and Scripture and that every apparent conflict is just that -- apparent and not real.

Once that possibility is squarely faced and accepted, the argument for receiving all of Sacred Tradition rather than simply the bits you like can naturally follow in a rather reasonable way. But first, the membrane(s) must go.

---

Mark P. Shea is a senior editor for www.CatholicExchange.com and a columnist for InsideCatholic. Visit his blog at markshea.blogspot.com.

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