Pope Francis Makes Holy Thursday About Dirty Feet

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This will show those rulemakers

This will show those rulemakers

Boniface at Unam Sanctam Catholicam has detailed the striking offense that is the Pope’s regular Holy Thursday Stunt.  Pope Francis is trying to make a new religion, but it’s not really new.  It’s just not Catholic.

Pope Francis has again made headlines by announcing he will spend Holy Thursday washing the feet of inmates at the Rebiba prison in Rome. This is the third time the Holy Father has chosen to perform the foot washing ceremony in such facilities, visiting the Casal del Marmo prison in 2013 and the Don Gnocchi center for the elderly and disabled in 2014.
Saying the Holy Thursday Mass in the prison in 2013 was one of the first gestures of Francis’ pontificate, which earned him the respect of many while provoking apprehension among traditional Catholics. This misgiving among traditionalists provoked (and continues to provoke) ire among those who “don’t see what the problem is” and can’t understand why this is such a “big deal.”
I would say this is one issue where the traditionalist objection is totally misunderstood – willfully, I believe. “Don’t like it when Peter goes around with tax collectors and sinners, huh?” “Yeah, Jesus was offensive to the Pharisees, too.” These are the sorts of shallow rebuttals our criticisms have been met with, as if there is really nothing deeper to traditionalist objections beyond the stupid old “tax collectors and sinners” trope.
The problem is this is Holy Thursday, one of the holiest days of the year. It’s about so much more than dirty feet.
First off, lets clear the air about one thing: there is no problem with the pope celebrating a Mass at a prison or other such facility. Benedict XVI celebrated a Mass at Casal del Marmo prison during Lent of 2007 – the same location Francis used in 2013. The issue is not the location of the Mass, or that the pope wants to celebrate with prisoners, elderly, indigent, whatever. Not an issue.
Benedict, however, did not celebrate this Mass on Holy Thursday, and that is a big difference. This brings me to my first objection: The traditional location of the Holy Thursday evening Mass is St. Peter’s basilica, which made the Holy Thursday Mass much more available to the faithful. St. Peter’s Basilica (according to its website) is capable of seating 15,000 people; if Mass is held in the square, it can accommodate 80,000. Whatever one may want to say about Masses of that magnitude, it cannot be denied that a Mass in a basilica offers a much greater opportunity for participation of the faithful than a Mass in a small prison or nursing home. The Holy Thursday Mass, which inaugurates the sacred Triduum and which (until 1642) was a holy day of obligation is in a totally different category than, say, a daily Mass. This is why when Benedict XVI wanted to celebrate Mass in the Casal del Marmo, he did so in a daily Mass, not the Holy Thursday Mass, which as part of the sacred Triduum, is of a much more solemn and public nature than a mere daily Mass.

Remember, the pope is also Bishop of the diocese of Rome. This means that for the past three years, the faithful of that diocese have been deprived of access to the celebration of one of the most sacred Masses of the year by their bishop. I admit this is not a huge issue or a monumental scandal – but it is something.

My pastor is having an “Easterbration” in the town football stadium with games, face-painting and even Mass!  There’s going to be puppets.  The whole town is invited, but if you don’t want that there’s an alternate Mass at church with no choir. (A blessing.)  That’s what the Pope is doing to faithful Catholics and priests, depriving them of their right and treating them with contempt, like Obama treats Israelis.
Regarding the importance of this inaugural Mass of the Sacred Triduum, it is well to recall that its proper name is the “Mass of the Lord’s Supper.” The “theme” or focal point of this Mass has always been the double institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood by our Lord Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.
In his last Holy Thursday homily delivered in 2004, St. John Paul II preached on the centrality of the Eucharist and its connection to the priesthood in the context of Holy Thursday:

“While we fix our gaze on Christ who institutes the Eucharist, we have a renewed awareness of the importance of the priests in the Church and of their union with the Eucharistic sacrament. In the Letter that I wrote to priests for this holy day, I wished to repeat that the Sacrament of the altar is gift and mystery, and that the priesthood is gift and mystery, both having flowed from the Heart of Christ during the Last Supper.” (source)

This is why one of the readings from the Holy Thursday Mass has always been the institution of the Eucharist as described in 1 Cor. 11:23-32. This has been part of the readings for the day as far back as we have records. In Pope Francis’ Holy Thursday celebrations, there is little emphasis on these traditional themes. For example, Francis’ 2013 homily does not mention the Eucharist at all; the refrain was a very generic message of “Help one another”; Francis’ 2014 homily focused entirely on the foot washing ceremony and admonished Christians to “be servants to one another.” No mention of the priesthood at all, and only a passing comment on the Eucharist, which he strangely subordinates to “service”; service is the main theme of the Mass in Coena Domini, and the Eucharist is an afterthought to service. This is an inversion from the familiar formula that the Eucharist, in fact, is the source and summit of the faith.

It must be remembered that though foot washing in general is a sign of service (cf. 1 Tim. 5:10), the Holy Thursday foot washing in particular is much more than that. Christ did not just wash His disciples’ feet as a sign of service to mankind in general, but of the service the hierarchy renders to the clergy in particular. This is why most liturgical foot washing in the Church’s history has always focused on the bishop’s service to his clergy; priests, canons, deacons and subdeacons have been the recipients of foot washing; this was true of diocesan bishops as well as the pope. It is an ecclesiological ritual relating to the clergy and their superiors, not a general sign of service to mankind.

It is certainly not “wrong” to wash the feet of persons not among the clergy; obviously as the parish level, a priest does not have any clergy beneath him whose feet he can wash and the washing of laymen’s feet is the norm (still, in some parishes, the priest will not wash the feet of anybody willy-nilly; he will choose representatives of different parish apostolates – Knights of Columbus, the DRE, ushers, etc). As mentioned above, foot washing was a sign of general obeisance in the early church. But at a pontifical Holy Thursday Mass, we would expect a bishop or the pope especially to recognize this clerical aspect of the rite by performing the Mandatum on the clergy subject to him. This gets obscured when the focus of the rite is reduced to mere “service” without reference to the clergy.

The choice of Holy Thursday is appropriate to the Pope’s message however, because it strikes right at the heart of the Church and goes fundamentally to his own stark faith and twisted vision.  The message of humble service is not the main message of the Pope’s Holy Thursday show.  The main message is break Church laws and flout the Eucharist, Holy Mass, and the priesthood on behalf of the poor and the sinful.
If the Holy Thursday foot washing is supposed to signify the service of the hierarchy to the Church – and to the clergy in particular – then we can easily understand why it is totally inappropriate that non-Christians should be the recipients of the ceremony. In what fantasy land can a Muslim or atheist in any way represent the Church?
Finally, of course, we all know that the rubrics for Holy Thursday say the recipient of the foot washing must be a vir (Lat. “man”). In 2013, the decision of the Holy Father to wash the feet of women prompted some apologists to simply shrug and say, “Well, the Holy Father is the supreme interpreter of the Church’s liturgical law and canon law. He can change it how he sees fit.”
That’s true to an extent. But it seems lost on many that to say one has an authority to change a law is not the same thing as suggesting he can simply break the law. We all understand this. If the Holy Father does not like the current legislation, he has the power to change it. He can promulgate new rubrics or new norms if he so chooses. But for law to be law, this is accomplished by an act of law; i.e., the lawgiver changing the law by an legitimate exercise of his legislative power. The law is not changed by the lawgiver simply breaking the law.
Suppose the speed limit in your town was 30 mph. Suppose your small town Mayor decided he did not like that speed limit. Suppose, on the premise that he was the “supreme authority” in your small town, he just decided to start breaking the speed limit with impunity. How would you react? You would be indignant! You would say, “If the Mayor doesn’t like the speed limit, then change the law, but for heaven’s sake, don’t just break it!”
Since the rubrics for Holy Thursday have not changed, the fact remains that Pope Francis is simply violating the rubrics. You may say the law should change. You may applaud his inclusiveness. You may affirm that he has the power to change the law. But you cannot deny that he is breaking the law every time he washes the foot of a female on Holy Thursday. There’s no other way to explain it.
The writer closes this most excellent and necessary piece with a powerful reminder of the mass capitulation of faithful intelligentsia in the new FrancisEra.

Let us also remember that the conservative apologists who are now saying that the pope can do whatever he wants are the very same who, under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, loudly insisted that the letter of the law must be observed when it came to liberal priests washing women’s feet.

It is not because I or anyone else has a “problem” with the pope fraternizing with the poor, or prisoners, or whatever. It is not because we think women are inferior or any nonsense like that. The substance of the traditionalist critique of Pope Francis’ venues for Holy Thursday is that this is a violation of liturgical law and hence an abuse of power; that it obscures the ecclesiological symbolism of the Mandatum rite and constitutes a detraction from the Eucharistic and clerical focus of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper; and that it deprives the Catholics of the Diocese of Rome from the ability to publicly celebrate the beginning of the Triduum with their bishop, thus depriving them of special graces.

You may read all this and shrug and say, “Eh. You’re nitpicking.” Maybe you think that. Maybe you are right. God knows. But it is definitely not a matter of traditional Catholics somehow objecting to the poor, or women, or prisoners receiving papal attention. You may think the objections are not worthy of consideration; but at least acknowledge that there are legitimate objections that go far beyond the tired old “tax collectors and sinners” mantra. It was never about that anyway.

I would add that outside the terrific scandal to the world that these symbolic acts provide, they are likely offensive to Our Lord as well since they deprive him of the worship He is due, not just in Rome but everywhere, and they obscure the message of His Gospel during moments most meaningful to Him.

Judas and the Preferential Option for the Poor

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Take that jar and raffle it!

Something for the raffle

The Palm Sunday Gospel, the story of Jesus’ Passion, begins with the a clear example of the difference between the true Church and the kind of thing that lurks around today.

When he was in Bethany reclining at table
in the house of Simon the leper,
a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil,
costly genuine spikenard.
She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head.
There were some who were indignant.
“Why has there been this waste of perfumed oil?
It could have been sold for more than three hundred days’ wages
and the money given to the poor.”
They were infuriated with her.
Jesus said, “Let her alone.
Why do you make trouble for her?
She has done a good thing for me.
The poor you will always have with you,
and whenever you wish you can do good to them,
but you will not always have me.
She has done what she could.
She has anticipated anointing my body for burial.
Amen, I say to you,
wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world,
what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

Although this passage doesn’t mention him, the other Gospels indicate Judas was of the opinion that the perfume should have been sold off and given to the poor.  He thought it wrong to honor Our Lord in this way.

Judas was jealous.  He was embarrassed by the woman and he thought this an ostentatious show.  He was materialistic and openly challenged Jesus to make a ‘preferential option for the poor.’

The woman, who may have been St. Mary Magdalene, was focused on Jesus, on his life, his body, and, as Our Lord says, His burial.  She was worshiping Him for His own sake and sparing no expense to do it.

Is this woman not like those who love the Holy Mass said in beautiful churches, where we honor God in the way He wants, being present before His sacrifice?

And is Judas not like those who want to make the Mass ‘for the people;’  stripped down, profane, and vulgarized, in ugly utilitarian buildings?  Such Christians would replace loving doctrinal obedience to God with simple ‘service’ to others.

Finally, like Judas, those who make the Faith into ‘a Church of the poor and for the poor’ where ‘the poor are the center of the Gospel,’ always seem to be the ones who want to control other people’s money, to enable the state, and participate in their ‘service’ programs.  They attack profit and ownership, calling it oppression.

Judas held the money so he felt bold enough to tell even Christ what to do with possessions.   Judas also stole from the purse just as governments steal through high taxes, unjust regulations, debt, and inflation; all in the name of ‘the poor’ and service.

In the next passage today at Mass, Judas moves to betray Jesus.  Is this not perhaps how our Church is betrayed from within in our day – by materialists and thieves?

In His time Our Lord would not allow Mary’s worship to be denied.  Who defends her today in His name?