This debate is raging everywhere in the Catholic online community. There’s no point ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room when popular commentators such as Fr. Z are even expressing grave concerns.
I must confess that I haven't been paying much attention to all this. For the sake of the willfully ignorant (me), could you briefly describe just what Pope Francis did with the washing of the feet that violated the rubrics, other than washing the feet of women?
Were these all done in the context of the Holy Thursday Mass, or were there events that weren't precisely liturgical where he washed some feet?
Thanks,
sitetest
This was the question asked me:
“Doesn’t Gods Spirit transcend racial, national and geographical boundaries? I think you place God in a small box of your own construct to make a statement like that.”
To which I responded and was excoriated for by certain Freepers:
“Well, what percentage of Africa is Roman Catholic? Where are the bulk of Catholics to this day? It’s in the Western culture, because that is where it primarily started. If you pick a Latin American or African Pope, you are going to get lots of social justice philosophy mixed in, just wait and see. I don’t want to chance it. I want a conservative Western Pope. He can then minister to the whole wide world, including Africa and Latin America and the Orient, but I want the Pope to be a Westerner.
And I’m sick to death of political correctness (or in this case, spiritual correctness). Some of you can continue to try to guilt trip me with your PC ecumenical, globalist philosophy by ceding a western church and its spiritual culture to other foreign lands for the Head of the Church, but you won’t succeed. And I’ll bet a Pope’s chalice that there are a bunch of readers on this thread that agree with me 100 percent, many of whom may be afraid to admit it though. So sad that it has come to this.”
It looks like I’m being proven right in my first assessment, in particular re the Latin American propensity towards “social justice”. I’m starting to get very bad vibes here. There is such a thing as the ostentatious display of how much one emphasizes ministering to the poor to the exclusion of other aspects of the faith that are also important. And the decorum and majesty of the Church being minimized. I want Pope Benedict XVI back. He realized the mistakes of Vatican II that he had a hand in, and was trying mightily to backtrack on a lot of what came out of it. I’m afraid Pope Francis will not do the same. No emphasis on the Latin Mass is my guess. Oh dear, I so much wanted a traditionalist, and methinks Pope Francis may not fit that mode well at all.