I apologise of all the faithful and beseech their prayers who in my misconceived arrogance have been excluded by my legalism.
I apologise in particular to those ladies who would have liked to have had their feet washed at the Mandatum on Holy Thursday and were excluded by my rigourism.
I apologise, you were right and I was wrong.
I apologise for teaching that this Rite was about Christ washing the feet of those twelve chosen to be Apostles rather than seeing it as a Rite that expressed Christ's care for the world and for sinners and for the poor. I apologise for suggesting that this Rite was about Christ's priesthood and the Apostles participation in it, I apologise for suggesting that this Rite was in any sense hieratic. I apologise for quoting the Pope Emeritus, and the schismatic Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow in a sermon about this Rite. They were obviously misunderstood by me or were dealing with their own local situation. I was wrong, I was also mistaken. I humbly ask anyone who has been misinformed by me to in future to disregard any teaching I might have given at any time, and especially if I have claimed that it was the Church's teaching.
I apologise too to the poor, I apologise to those my brother clergy who chose to ignore the written Law of the Church but nevertheless had the spiritual insight to understand the Spirit of the Law.
I have indeed been a Neo-Pelagian Promethean and I humbly promise in future to follow custom rather than any directives coming from the Holy See or printed in the Missal. I will indeed do my best to not to teach but to set people free to follow their own lights and inspiration.
I am humbly grateful for this change in the Church's law, though because of the increasing stiffness in my knees for the last few years I have been unable to wash the feet of anyone.
38 comments:
Good one Father :). God Bless!!
I too have sinned.
Is this reaction formation?
Satire, Pride or humility or genuine charity on your part Father. I just do not understand.
And that ("I humbly promise in future to follow custom rather than any directives coming from the Holy See or printed in the Missal")-- begin to treat every rubric as contingent and subject to 'adaptation'-- is precisely what any number of clerics (who had begun under the influence of Pope Benedict to regard the liturgical rite as something other than a fertile playground for 'personal and community self-expression') will do in order to anticipate the 'spirit' of the Franciscan 'reform'. But thank you for your faithful witness!
Father, if you want to hold to the spirit of the Holy Father (and follow his own personal example) you should ignore the new communication from the CDW.
Following it would be nothing other than legalism.
This is a good start but you'll need to do a lot more apologizing for things you didn't do wrong to truly align with the spirit of the age -- which is what we're all aiming for, right?
Count me in as well.
Not just my feet, but my hands and head as well.
Lol, good one Father
This pathetic bishop of rome will drive me to leave the novus ordo and -thank God -stay firmly with the Tridentine Mass .I am 63 years of age and have had enough of this bogus heretical novus ordo apology of a church.Sorry Father i feel your pain too!
I'm glad you've seen the light, Father. As we all know the Apostles were really all female (or, perhaps, trans). But what can you expect when the Gospels were written by MEN?
I really like the spirit of all this. I wonder when all countries will dispense with legalism and instruct their courts to administer justice free from legalism and instead apply the spirit of the age in their decisions. Let's all forget common law (and common sense too).
Surely this is just pastoral realism. How many men actually WANT to have their feet washed?
Just who are the schismatics now?
Seriously?
You are seriously getting worked up about washing of feet? You think the Walls will fall because of washing of Feet?
It's about humility. Something that seems to be in rather short supply these days.
And who told you to kneel & genuflect in the first PLACE.......NAUGHTY BOY. !!!
And yet, Father, such innovations apply only to the Novus Ordo, not to the Traditional Rite. This is the opinion of the Chairman of the LMS: "These concessions have moved many to reconsider the Extraordinary Form, which is not affected by this decree, or similar concessions to liturgical abuses in the past."
I don't understand either why the source quoted in Rorate Coeli believes this to be an 'irreformable' act. The next Pope would surely have no difficulty in reverting to the practice of the past 2000 years in a trice (were we to have such a Pope...)
There is also the wording: 'A pastor may choose...' and those chosen 'may consist of men and women.' It is still the pastor who 'chooses', and is still free to choose whom he deems fit. (And in the EF, the Mandatum is entirely optional and need not take place at all.)
I have strong views about this, but just trying to look on the bright side here.
I feel your pain Father
But Equality rules ok?
Good! Now I've got a principled reason for not "filling in" anymore.
I see that a group of Lutherans visiting Rome have been given Holy Communion at Mass since the Pope gave his answer to that Lutheran woman last year asking why she could not receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church.
Dear Father,
You remark that "for the last few years I have been unable to wash the feet of anyone." Cheer up! Every cloud has a silver lining.
Perhaps if the demand proves great enough someone will invent a remote controlled walk-through liturgical foot spray washing apparatus.
Classic!
I do think priests need to be warned about offering to wash women's feet. The husbands might have a knee-jerk reaction which could be a bit painful.
OKAY, it's probably just me....but I can see this either way. Either do 12 men, and I mean MEN, not boys to do a historical representation of the 12 apostles, - it was always fun to speculate which one represented Judas, OR if women are to be included, to make sure people "get it" that if Jesus was meant to set an example to the apostles that in future they should serve everyone THEN have children, older people, men women all colors, states of life etc. What I don't want to see is 12 women or 6 men, 6 women That would just be confusing.
Ruari said... Seriously? You are seriously getting worked up about washing of feet? You think the Walls will fall because of washing of Feet?
Those words need to be directed to the pope. Apparently he thinks it's such a big deal that it needs to be changed. Why? Were the walls going to fall or something?
It's about humility. Something that seems to be in rather short supply these days.
Indeed, it is about humility. Humble people obey their superiors, something the present pope did not do when he was Ordinary.
He disobeyed the liturgical rules of the Church on this matter, setting that example to his flock.
So, that "short supply" of humility apparently hits everywhere.
Dear Father: As a brother priest, I will not believe you until you apologize for your own carbon footprint! ;)
I am sorry for birthing 10 children and leaving a huge carbon-footprint. Also, for sometimes using an air conditioner, mea culpa!
THE
CHASTISEMENT
“He said he chided her…”
Not to the boys
Who do their own schtick.
Not to the girls
Who call themselves Rick.
Not to the men
Who cut off heads quick.
Not to the Extra
Ministers’ clique.
Not to the gals
On their buses so slick.
Not to the spouses –
Find new lips to lick.
Not to the Prelates
Preaching heresy thick.
Not to the kinky
In lust for a kick.
But give me the mother
With child number eight –
She, I’ll chastise,
She, I’ll berate,
Then brag to reporters
How I admonish sins great –
A mother and child,
Humbly…humiliate!
Father Blake I am not so sure about this. I did not like it one year when twelve women in the parish pumped their bottoms down on the sears but this happened only once. The way I see it is that Christ washed the feet of the disciples to show his love and service as ban example of how they were to be humble and show love and service to other. In a parish we have the priest who must show love and service to the people so is it not just possible that he would be instructing his people to serve others with the same humility. You are right that it is the law of the Church but surely there is a case for change that can be put forward rather than just shunning the practice.
If I was a Lutheran, I would accept your apology but, alas I remain a Roman Catholic and since by tradition, I am supposed to forgive ...I can not, since that would be too ritualistic.
Perhaps we could request the CDF to begin using this as an option for the Penitential Rite -- a priest's Confiteor, followed by a deprecatory Absolution given by all the Lay Ministers -- before the People's Confiteor or other option for their Penitential Rite.
It could be accompanied by a prostration during Advent and Lent, as well as at any Mass that featured readings or hymns that might be deemed offensive or exclusive to certain members of the community.
Perhaps we could sell this "Double Confiteor" as an example of "mutual enrichment" ?
With you, John Kearney.
When I heard the Holy Father's directive to serve women by washing their foogies, I called to mind the the spiritual pandemonium of relatives and friends caused by 50 years of lousy catechesis and a papacy curing this default by parading heretics and heresies around our wagons of mothers and children, and thought to myself, 'this is rich'.
"I have indeed been a Neo-Pelagian Promethean" Father, I hold you in the very highest regard but it seems to me that far too much is being made of this. Omit the washing of the feet and you annoy the St Vincent de Paul but the Maundy Thursday Mass does not cease to be a Holy Mass. The washing of the feet is not a sacrament and has, as far as I am aware although I am, of course, open to enlightenment, nothing to do with dogma. Try as I might, and I have tried because I am aware that many good people (and some priests!) are vexed by this, I just cannot see the problem. I have read and re-read the scripture but all I can see is that the people who were there happened to be the apostles who were, by choice of Jesus, all male. I cannot read, try as I might, it to say that if Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or any other of the female friends and disciples of Jesus were there then they would have been excluded. I have always been aware that the Last Supper is the proto-Eucharistic celebration. What am I missing?
"I apologise for quoting the Pope Emeritus, and the schismatic Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow in a sermon about this Rite."
To describe those patriarchs as "schismatic" is not only inaccurate, it is offensive to both the Orthodox and all Eastern Christian Churches in Communion with Rome. From the Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration of His Holiness Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I:
"They [Paul VI and Athenagoras I] likewise regret and remove both from memory and from the midst of the Church the sentences of excommunication which followed these events, the memory of which has influenced actions up to our day and has hindered closer relations in charity; and they commit these excommunications to oblivion." -December 7, 1965
https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/speeches/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19651207_common-declaration.html
I did not know there was a Cardinal Stead or any Cardinal with Christian name Royce.
I suspect when you did your STD you opted out of any Greek module. Schism means rent, division, split. I am quite happy to be regarded as schismatic by Greek and Russian Orthodox friends. Mutual excommunications have indeed been lifted but the schism that is the rent, division, split, even breach still exists in the Church, ignoring it does not help.
@ Father Blake,
I've never read of any Royce Cardinal Reed, but I have read about STDs.
Subscriber Trunk Dialling? Or something you go to the clinic for?
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