Disregard of church law is latest, biggest letdown for some
Pope Francis has provided evidence that he has little or no interest in reviving the pre-Vatican II traditions of the Catholic Church.
Posted: Saturday, March 30, 2013 12:00 am
VATICAN CITY Pope Francis has won over many hearts and minds with his simple style and focus on serving the world’s poorest, but he has devastated traditionalist Catholics who adored his predecessor, Benedict XVI, for restoring much of the traditional pomp to the papacy.
Francis’ decision to disregard church law and wash the feet of two young women — a Serbian Muslim and an Italian Catholic — during a Holy Thursday ritual has become something of the final straw, evidence that Francis has little or no interest in one of the key priorities of Benedict’s papacy: reviving the pre-Vatican II traditions of the Catholic Church.
A commentator in Francis’ native Argentina, Marcelo Gonzalez at International Catholic Panorama, reacted to Francis’ election with this phrase: “The Horror.” Gonzalez’s beef? While he served as a cardinal, Francis’ efforts to revive the old Latin Mass so dear to Benedict and traditionalists were “nonexistent.”
The night he was chosen pope, March 13, Francis emerged from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica without the ermine-rimmed red velvet cape used by popes past for official duties, wearing instead the simple white cassock of the papacy.
He also received the cardinals’ pledges of obedience after his election not from a chair on a pedestal as popes normally do but rather standing, on their same level. In the days since, he has called for “intensified” dialogue with Islam — a gesture that rankles some traditionalists because they view interfaith dialogue as a sign of religious relativism.
On Thursday at the Casal del Marmo juvenile detention facility in Rome, the 76-year-old Francis got down on his knees and to wash the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women. The rite re-enacts Jesus’ washing of the feet of his 12 apostles during the Last Supper before his crucifixion, a sign of his love and service to them.
The church’s liturgical law holds that only men can participate in the rite, given that Jesus’ apostles were male.
“The pope does not need anybody’s permission to make exceptions to how ecclesiastical law relates to him,” noted conservative columnist Jimmy Akin in the National Catholic Register. But Akin echoed concerns raised by canon lawyer Edward Peters, an adviser to the Vatican’s high court, that Francis was setting a “questionable example” by simply ignoring the church’s own rules.
Francis is opposed to women’s ordination. But by washing the feet of women, he jolted traditionalists who for years have been unbending in insisting that the ritual is for men only and holding up as evidence documentation from the Vatican’s liturgy office saying so.
The Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger who never has shied from picking fights with priests, bishops or cardinals when it concerns liturgical abuses, had to measure his comments when the purported abuser was the pope himself.
“Before liberals and traditionalists both have a spittle-flecked nutty, each for their own reasons, try to figure out what he is trying to do,” Zuhlsdorf wrote.
But he added: “What liberals forget in their present crowing is that even as Francis makes himself — and the church — more popular by projecting (a) compassionate image, he will simultaneously make it harder for them to criticize him when he reaffirms the doctrinal points they want him to overturn.”