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John A. ColemanApril 01, 2013

I came across a moving document which appeared on Vatican radio--letters from detained young prisoners in California organized by Mike Kennedy S.J. If the right wing Catholics did not get the pope's gesture, these young prisoners did. Quite lovely reading. You can find it here

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Olivia Lucas
10 years 12 months ago
This is the correct link. Last number is 8 not 9. http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/03/28/letters_from_prison/en1-677778
Beth Cioffoletti
10 years 12 months ago
Some of those letters are not just lovely, but the honestly of their pain is downright heart-breaking. On Holy Thursday, Pope Francis brought the Eucharist and healing to one of the darkest places of human suffering. He stepped out of the usual Church setting for this re-enactment of Christ's last supper. May we all follow him.
Bruce Snowden
10 years 12 months ago
That right wing so-called “Catholic” blog that spewed hate on Pope Francis for having performed Holy Thursday’s ritual bath, is anything but Catholic! To suggest that perhaps next year he’ll wash the feet of cats and dogs because this year he washed the feet of women, is grossly insulting to the Pope and to all who are truly Catholic. I certainly am “p o’d!” Those “former Catholics” have sinned against Charity and Justice, in fact they are multi-morally transgressive and need to go to the Sacrament of Penance seeking reconciliation with God whom they have gravely offended and insulted by vicious attacks on his Vicar and through him on the People of God! Forty days following childbirth it was O.T. ecclesial practice for women to participate in a ritual bath in a “purification rite.” The Mother of Jesus did so following the birth of Jesus and our Church commemorates that washing on February 2. If God approved the public washing of a woman’s entire body following childbirth, why would Jesus, the Church, be offended by the N.T. ecclesial practice once a year of ritually bathing the feet of women, celebrating humanity’s non-segregative " redemptive new birth" in which through Christ, there is neither male or female, slave or free, Gentile of Jew? Therein resides the ecclesial authenticity of Pope Francis’ wisdom. It does not mean, however, that women may be ordained priests, no more than it meant within the Old Law that the ritual bath of women entitled them to function as priest. No one is entitled to be a priest. It is given by Christ as a gift to the whole Church in an ordered way, shared according to the design and intent of Christ in which the whole Church shares priesthood in a kingly and prophetic way. Faith in the Church, identical to Faith in Christ explains the “how” rooted in Christ’s command to Peter to “bind or loosen,” and linked to the Jesus’ assurance that, “He who hear you, hears Me!” When understood and accepted by the Baptized the Spirit’s Gift of Joy permeates the hearts and minds of Believers. As an interesting aside, speaking of women as ordained priests, it’s not a new idea, but dates back to at least 494, when Pope Gelasius I, ordered an end to the practice of ordaining women to the priesthood, an unauthorized practiced that arose in Southern Sicily. Also, Canon XI of the Fourth Laodicean Council a forbade the practice. In our time Blessed John Paul II speaking “definitively” as he said, also supposedly laid the idea of women priest to rest saying that it wasn’t that the Church didn’t want to ordain women, but “definitively” lacked the authority to do so. But the “kettle” still simmers but without purpose - "SHEKINA" has spoken and the case is closed.
Marie Rehbein
10 years 12 months ago
I wonder how far above cats and dogs and below men women rank in the conservative Catholic's estimation.

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