How do they possibly get from here to there?
After the Pope washed women’s feet during the Holy Thursday mass, traditionalists have been howling, but they aren’t the only ones..
While traditionalists have been upset by the change (for my part I think washing women’s feet is fine, I just don’t care for disregarding the rubrics) Church progressives have been howling too. Or rather I should say crowing.
Look how the Telegraph reports on the actions of the Holy Father and how they interpret them.
The lede for their article says this “Pope Francis continued his gleeful abandonment of tradition by washing the feet of a young Muslim woman prisoner in an unprecedented twist on the Holy Thursday tradition. “
Gleeful abandonment of tradition? Wow. Honestly, even the Pope’s critics would not go so far as to say that. Gleeful abandonment of tradition, even with a small t, implies much more than a few liturgical changes. It implies changing Catholicism itself.
This ludicrous inference is confirmed in a Ruth Gledhill editorial entitled “Washing of girls’ feet ‘opens door to women priests” saying the action “raised hopes among liberals that he might one day relax the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on female ordination”.
Seriously? How do they get from here to there?
This is just another reason that it would have been better had the Pope changed the rubric first and issued some instructions about what the change means and what the change emphatically does not mean. Doing it this way, on the fly and in disregard of the rubrics, leaves the Pope’s actions open to misinterpretation and over-interpretation.
There is no way that the Pope’s actions have any bearing on female ordination, which will never happen. Because one thing you can count on, the Pope is still Catholic.
