Saturday, February 28, 2015

What the Holy Father plans on NOT doing Maundy Thursday?

Fr. Z writes today
Will Pope Francis be the only able-bodied diocesan bishop NOT to celebrate [the] Mass of the Last Supper with priests and people?
From the marvelous Fr. Hunwicke.  I had to smile.  HERE  [Emphasis Fr. Z's]
Job Sharing?
Why don’t people swap roles occasionally? Fr Lombardi could go riding around in airliners making remarks to journalists; then the Holy Father could do the News Conferences explaining what the remarks had really meant.

This year’s Vatican Liturgical Schedule doesn’t include the Holy Father presiding at the Mass of the Last Supper. Is Cardinal Burke, il Cardinale volante, still free to step into this breach? If, by then, the Swiss Guard has been abolished, he could bring his Knights of Malta to the Lateran to provide Security. Juventutem could waggle flabella over the sedia gestatoria....

I wonder if the Bishop of Rome will be the only able-bodied Latin Rite diocesan bishop in the world not to celebrate the Mass of the Last Supper openly with his priests, deacons, and people? There will of course be sound precedents galore from the much more flexible age of the Renaissance papacy … it’s praxis within the rather more rigid post-Vatican II dispensation that I’m curious about.
If the Holy Father wants a substitute for the sacred rites in St. John Lateran, and if Card. Burke is otherwise engaged… I volunteer.
Apparently no foot washings for Muslims and women in prisons this year.

[Hat tip to L.S.]






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