Well, 10 months to be exact (*).
Today seems as good/bad a day as any to do so, though.
We noted on Maundy Thursday last year that His Grace The Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon OP, ninth Archbishop of Liverpool, took it upon himself to break with a tradition that had been quite remarkably upheld always in the mother church of this territory.
We checked our sources on this one several months ago and what we suspected was indeed true. Specifically that even in the most liberal of days, under His Grace's two immediate predecessors, the all-male presentation of those whose feet were to be washed in the mandatum (without here getting into the discussion about the optional nature of this rite: link to CanonLaw.info on the matter) always remained steadfastly intact at the Mass of the Lord's Supper each year at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King.
Such wasn't the case across many of the archdiocesan parishes, of course, from as early as the 1990s, if not earlier.
But at the local mother church it was always something that could be relied upon.
What was even more remarkable, we thought, was that at the Maundy Thursday Masses of 2013 and 2014 – i.e. the Easters overseen by the temporary archdiocesan administration of the ultra-liberal local Auxiliary, the Rt Rev. Thomas Williams, between the archbishoprics of the then recently retired Archbishop Patrick Kelly and that of Archbishop McMahon – the all-male tradition still remained untouched.
We dared to hope, then, that if this last remnant of Tradition, however flimsy, had managed to somehow stay protected even under the supervision of Bishop Williams, then it likely always would, especially given that at Easter 2014 we already knew of the impending arrival of the apparently Tradition-leaning archbishop-elect.
It was then almost a year before His Grace celebrated his first Easter with us (he was "installed" in May 2014).
By last Easter, of course, we already had our doubts about just how "Tradition-leaning" His Grace really was.
Nonetheless, it was still a surprise to learn that, at the very first time of asking, i.e. his first Sacred Triduum with us, His Grace not only completely broke with Tradition at the cathedral's rite of mandatum but actually invited women - well also several college girls, it must be stressed - to be in the immediate majority. At a stroke, then, not only were males accompanied by females on the seats around the perimeter of the cathedral sanctuary but they also found themselves in a minority, by the count of (we stand corrected)
So, His Grace anticipated His Holiness' decree today by almost a year. Of course, Pope Francis had already sounded the mandatum dog-whistle two years earlier in the very earliest days of his pontificate as he infamously washed the feet of both girls and Muslims in a Roman prison.
Anything goes was his immediate signal in 2013. Yes, but Pope Francis is an arch liberal, of course.
Unlike His Grace...
Moving on.
We'd be amazed if His Grace returns to an all-male mandatum line-up several weeks from now. A majority would be nice, mind. Parity, even.
In the likelihood that such won't be the case, then we would in all humility, but in absolute necessity, offer the following prudent advice.
If college girls are again insisted upon as being among those invited females to the mandatum, then make sure that this time they either wear maxi-skirts or even trousers (yes, we know).
An informant of ours who attended last year's Maundy Thursday Mass:
"They were young girls from a local college wearing navy blue uniforms. They couldn't have been much older than 17, if that. They were all wearing short pleated skirts and were sat, facing outwards to the congregation, on raised seats upon the sanctuary.
"Naturally they each had to lift their legs up to remove their shoes and socks and indeed hold their foot out. Equally naturally His Grace and the attending Deacon had to kneel down underneath this open show of flesh. Two grown men basically having to do everything they could to avoid inadvertently looking up a young girl's skirt! During Mass!! Have we learned nothing!
"I'm afraid one poor girl was completely lacking in any sense of decorum – not that it would have made any difference to be honest – and the old phrase that you could 'see tomorrow's laundry' was never more apt! Every last one of the poor things that we could see, from where we were sat, blushed terribly as they realised just how ungainly the whole unthought-out mess was.
"It was disgusting."
As a footnote (no pun!) to the above, our sharp eyes noted that the archdiocesan brochure for the infamous - and ultimately cancelled, due to lack of numbers – weekend of lectures last November to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the closure of Vatican II featured a photograph of His Grace at the mandatum last year (as shown at the top of this post - and here is a link to the whole publication for the "conference that never was").
It was an image of His Grace washing the foot of a woman. But it was carefully cropped not to show as much. Lack of confidence? Instead, the image was cropped to give the impression of "gender neutrality" as we believe the modern phrase has it. Or is it "gender ambiguity"?
We still wonder why it was cropped. Hmm. We also noted the very conveniently juxtaposed caption alongside the cropped gender-neutral photo, which quoted the words of Pope St John XXIII at the opening of Vatican II. The caption read:
"...the Church should never depart from the sacred treasure of truth inherited from the Fathers. But at the same time she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and the new forms of life introduced into the modern world." - Pope John XXIII, Opening Speech to Vatican II, 11th October 1962
Anyway, we'd directly show you the images here of last year's mandatum, but the archdiocesan communications practice is not to share them.
Nevertheless, in the interests of the New Evangelisation, just below is the official Flickr photo-link, which we're certainly allowed to share with you, and we're surely serving the archdiocese in doing so, which not only shows the full image of the aforementioned "gender neutral" cropped photo, but also the uniformed young girls from Bellerive FCJ who were invited to the mandatum and put in a very awkward position (at least they hailed from a Catholic college; Year of Small Mercies and all that!):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/liverpoolcatholic/sets/72157651436631289
And, finally, of course, it goes without saying that Tradition is alive and well in this archdiocese...for the FSSP has been invited to save St Mary, Warrington don't you know?
Enough.
(*) ADDED ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 22nd, 2016:
We refer you to the antepenultimate paragraph of THIS much-delayed post of ours (indeed like many things on this blog), which was eventually published in June 2015 and which implicitly refers to the events of the previous Maundy Thursday. We have been waiting for an appropriate moment to publish today's post in respect of what we had learned about the Mass of the Lord's Supper celebrated at the Metropolitan Cathedral last year.
