More On The Liturgy Theatrical Reenactment or Evangelical Experience

Palm Sunday often is
another "reenactment"
liturgy

Well, let’s go back to another response to my posting about Liturgy as reenactment or theatre as opposed to Liturgy as being an act that involves the entire community.  I received the following response to the post:

A different Anonymous: The old rite's view of itself has to be understood in context of the entire rite. It cannot be conceived primarily as theater because there does not have to be an audience! It's indifference to the congregation is partly a historical accident and partly an emphasis on the objectivity of the sacrifice being wrought or the praise being rendered, neither of which makes good theater, which is always audience focused. As for the point about "mixing with the players," it's well and good that in our modern dramaticized liturgies certain laymen get parts, too, but how well would it go over in most parishes if a member of the congregation actually did toddle onstage and decide to do a reading, or add a petition? As to this idea that the "re-enactment" mentality is limited only to those in favor of the Old Rite, cf. the USCCB's website: " For this reason, the priest who presides at the Holy Thursday liturgy portrays the biblical scene of the gospel by washing the feet on 

Good comments. Let me respond piece by piece.

I understand your argument that the Old Rite cannot be conceived of as theatre because there does not have to be an audience, but I think we need to look at it from a different angle.  While the private Mass, invariably a Low Mass, could be done with only a server in attendance, even in the Old Rite the normative celebration, that is the standard from which other levels of celebration were derived, was the Solemn Mass with a full complement of liturgical ministers, including a schola cantorum.  This does not mean that the normative was the most common—it was fairly rarely done even in the best parishes except at Easter Midnight and Christmas Midnight, though some parishes did it for funerals or weddings.   But the Missa Cantata and the Missa Lecta (low Mass) were accommodations made to what the rite presumed to be the standard.  The lack of audience was irrelevant—the rite was fixed in stone in every detail, more fixed than a kabuki performance.  In the case of the private Mass, it may not have been performed for an audience—or at least an earthly audience—but it was done for the Emperor of Heaven and in the sight of his Court.  It was total Rite, pure libretto.  Any subjective or personal dimension was totally irrelevant and not to be exteriorly displayed.  You had your script and you were to stick to it, both for text and stage direction.  Granted while this rigid and static approach does not work for modern drama, it was the heart and soul of classic Greek theater as it still is today in classic Asian theatre.  So while I agree with the commentator that the old rite displays the objectivity of the sacrifice being wrought, I disagree that such does not make good theatre.  It is not good for contemporary theatre—or even Shakespeare—but it does fit well many theatrical traditions. 

As for “mixing with the players” I have not suggested that the liturgy become a free for all where anyone can “toddle onstage to do a reading or add a petition.”  The Liturgy is a well-organized event.  It has a structure.   (It actually has several structures as the various Rites follow the same general pattern of Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist, but are within that general pattern often quite different in their various litanies and prayers and antiphons etc.) What we need to do is to move from a mentality where those around the altar and ambo are actors and those in the pews are audience to a mentality where all are intrinsically involved—according to their various functions and roles—but with no one left as a passive participant, except perchance the stray curiosity-seeker from another faith.  And even they should be welcome cordially enough to feel included to some degree in the community without being forced to “worship.” 

I remember attending Evensong at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue.  This goes back thirty-some years.  It was a Palm Sunday; I can still see the processional cross bedecked with palm and pussy-willow and the clergy in their heavy copes carrying sheaves of palm tied up with daffodils in red ribbon.  It was all very, well, let’s just say that it was quite festive.  (That shouldn’t get us a rebuke for hate speech from the Southern Poverty Law Center.)  You may or may not be familiar with Saint Thomas, Fifth Avenue but even in the Episcopal/Anglican world it is somewhat ethereal.   The word is that they applied to the English chapter of the Hitler Youth and found the perfect sidesman (we call ‘em ushers): six-three, 185 lbs, blond, blue-eyed.  Then they cloned him to get a perfect dozen exactly identical, dressed them in morning coats with lavender pocket-squares and striped trousers and set them about the church with silver alms basins for the offertory.  Everything at Saint Thomas is done in a way that makes the Chapel Royal look like a tawdry Methodist chapel.  Anyway, I remember this magnificent Palm Sunday Evensong with the choir of men and boys performing incredible music by Poulenac and Williams (among others) and clouds of incense and coped priests going up steps and down steps as we sat in silent awe save for one hymn, The Royal Banners Forward Go.  It was lovely—I won’t deny it.  But in the end it was about choirs and vestments and daffodils—oh, and the sidesmen.  I mean there was the occasional reference to God and even to Jesus once or twice.  And we all went home feeling justified, or at least feeling the better for it.  But what did God ask of me and what did I give him?  Six verses (the choir did two by themselves with descants) with a croaky throat coming out half a tone flat and five bucks in the alms dish when the sidesman handed it to me. (I didn’t want him to think I was cheap.)  I don’t think that is what Christian worship is about.  I do think there is plenty of room for good choirs and times for us all to sit and listen—and even to watch.  But we aren’t an audience.  There are different roles in the liturgy and not all are equally prominent or even vocal, and not all may require us moving from our place—but it does require that each of us be intimately engaged in the entire act of worship.  The bassoonist in the orchestra at the Met is fixed in his chair and is not tooting his horn throughout the entirety of La Bohème  but he is engaged from the first note of the overture  until the curtain comes down.  So too Liturgy must be something in which we all play our part. 

As for the USCCB website saying that the priest reenacts the Gospel of the Washing of the Feet, I might suggest one of three understandings. The first possibility is that the writer just thoughtlessly carried over the reenactment model from all the crap we have been handed over the years that Liturgy is about reenactment.  The second possibility is that the writer actually buys that philosophy and espouses a mentality more suited to the old rite than the current rite.  The third possibility is that whoever is responsible for the website, or whoever that person reports to, understands the theological/political stakes of theatrical model vs worshipping community model and is trying to advance a theology of liturgical celebration that will reinforce a clergy-centered worship as opposed to a community-based liturgy.  The battles between competing ecclesiologies—which is ultimately what this reenactment model vs fulfillment model is all about rages at the USCCB as much as it does elsewhere in the Church.  I just know that I am more comfortable worshipping in a community that is inclusive of all its members rather than have someone take on themselves the responsibility of being my mediator before God.  Jesus does that well enough for me.  

The Problem With The "Old Mass" --or, The Lazy Krazies

Medieval Bas Relief at Lucca
Cathedral showing Mass celebrated
facing the people.

Well, Holy Week has come and gone another year, but I noticed something in the Krazy response to Pope Francis and his manner of performing the washing of feet on Holy Thursday that I had previously missed and which gave me a clue to the problem, not only of why the Krazies go sooooooo kraaaazy about Francis washing the feet of women, but why so many have issues with the current Liturgical Rites in the “Ordinary Form.” 

What I noticed this year and had somehow missed in previous years, is the complaint that “because the Rite of Washing the feet reenacts Christ’s washing the feet of his apostles at the Last Supper…”  Wait a minute.  The Rite does not reenact anything.  The Rite fulfills the command of Christ that as he washed the feet of his disciples, so too should the greater among us wash the feet of the lesser.  This Rite has from ancient times been referred to as the mandatum, the commandment.  It is not a sacred play in which an actor—the pope, a bishop, a priest—is Jesus and 12 other guys are the apostles.  It is the leader of the community washing the feet of 12 (or six or thirty-two or whatever) members of the community because Jesus has told us that whoever is the greater among us is to become servant to the rest. 

But the problem is not simply the foot washing; the problem is seeing the Liturgy as some sort of a piece of sacred theater in which things are “acted out.”  When one sees the Liturgy this way, it makes all the sense that the sanctuary becomes a stage, vestments become costumes, choirs are the chorus, the sacred ministers become actors, and the rest of us sit back and enjoy the show.  This describes the “Extradordinary Form” perfectly.  I have always noted the similarities of that final scene of Tosca to the traditional Liturgy, that scene in the Church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle with the magnificent procession with the “Blessed Sacrament,” which is no more than a cardboard cut-out placed in an antique monstrance but which makes the pious swoon in faux-ecstasy as they recall the “good old days” of the Latin Mass.  Now I realize why that scene always has impressed me as it has.  It is the “Old Church”—where faith is reduced to theatre—good theatre, great theatre, but theatre. The Mass as performance can be great, it can be moving, it certainly can be beautiful when it is done well, but it is not what Christ gave us.  In the Liturgy we are all called to be “actors.”  There are no spectators.  I don’t mean simply that we are not to sit back and watch, but I mean that in the Liturgy we are all called to be directly and intrinsically involved in the sacred action.  We are all “actors” as it were.  In the Reforms of Vatican II, the “stage” is not the sanctuary—it is the entire worship space.  In the “old Mass” we were to sit there (or kneel or stand as the rite dictated) while the “sacred ministers” performed the Rite on our behalf.  Oh, sure, we were to “spiritually join” ourselves to them in the rite—but in the way that members of a high-school musical audience are swept up into Oklahoma or The Mikado.  We certainly weren’t to go up on the stage and interact with the players. But in the liturgy we are to do precisely that.  The word liturgy comes from the Greek and is derived from the word λαος—(the people) and the word εργο—a work or project. (“Laity” also comes from the word, λαος, the people.)  In our modern churches where we are comfortably seated facing the “stage” sanctuary, it is all to easy for us to fall into that audience mode but in the ancient and medieval churches where people stood throughout the liturgy and where much of the liturgy happened in the middle of the assembly—the processions for the gospel and the offertory, for example—there was a stronger sense of the people being participants and not merely spectators.  This can still be experienced in the Eastern Rites, especially in the old churches of Eastern Europe where there are still no seats and where the clergy move easily among the congregation for the various incensations and processions.  In fact in the Byzantine Rite, with which I am very familiar and which I much admire, the entire liturgy is a sung dialogue between the priest at the altar and the people gathered in the Body of the Church. But what some nostalgia freaks want is the old days where you could sit at Mass and engage in some sort of pious reverie that made you feel “spiritual” but was more a quasi-devotional fantasy than genuine prayer. 

The Liturgy is not a play or a historical re-enactment.  It is profoundly mystical but not in an esoteric way.  It is a living engagement with God in Word and Sacrament, an encounter with Grace.  Gone is the railing that once marked stage from audience and for a reason.  Gone is the arcane language that kept the people at a distance from what was taking place.  Gone are the separations and distinctions that urged us into passivity.  “full, conscious, and active” participation is now required so that we too can both make our sacrifice and emerge changed to the heart from this encounter.   

Bishops (and a Pope) Who Remember That They Are Called To Be Apostles

Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas

giving communion through the

fence at the border to would-be

immigrants on the other side.

Well the Katholic Krazies are all over the blogosphere again about how Pope Francis “set a bad example” by “profaning” the Holy Thursday Mass by including women in the mandatum—the ritual foot washing.  Part of the problem is understanding what the mandatum is about.  (By the way, the word Maundy—as in Maundy Thursday—is a corruption of the Latin word mandatum which means “commandment” or “mandate.”  You can see this Latin root in in the word commandment.)  Some understand this to be a ritual portrayal of Christ washing the feet of his Apostles.  Others see it as fulfilling the command Christ gave to his disciples that night before he died of washing the feet of others in humble service.  For those for whom it is a ritual portrayal, the idea of including women as “Apostles” is dangerous because it remotely opens the door to women’s ordination.  For those who see the ceremony as fulfilling the command of Christ that the Apostles (represented in the ordained clergy) should was the feet of others—it is no problem.  Actually the best practice I have seen is when the clergy wash the feet of several congregants who then turn and wash the feet of their fellow parishioners who then take up the towel and basin and wash the feet of still others until all have both washed feet and had their feet washed.  When Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper to wash the feet of others, he did not intend to create a liturgy to be done once a year, but rather a humble service that would be part of everyday life.
For centuries the mandatum was a ritual that was not limited to Holy Thursday but part of regular life.  In some medieval monasteries, the abbot (or when he was not there, his representative) would wash the feet of pilgrims and guests.  Abbesses would do the same in women’s monastic houses.  Bishops often performed this service for the sick or the lame.  Clergy might do it in their parishes.  This might be done not just on Holy Thursday but at various times of penance—ember days, the beginnings of Great Lent or St Martin’s Lent (the period from St Martin’s Day, November 11^th until Christmas).  Sometimes Kings or Nobles were commanded to wash the feet of the poor as part of a penance—and sometimes Kings (and Queens) or nobles did it voluntarily out of their own holiness.   In pilgrim centers or monastic guesthouses it might even be a regular feature of hospitality.  Nowadays it is a much sanitized sort of thing as congregants present a well-scrubbed foot, with nails freshly clipped, out of a sock without holes and from a well-polished shoe to the priest to have warm water scented with lemon poured over it and be rubbed try with a nice fluffy towel.  Jesus probably just rolls his eyes at how we have sucked the need for humility out of the whole process. 
By the way, as this was not part of the Holy Thursday Mass but a separate service usually carried out in the monastic refectory or the cathedral chapter house, there were not normally restrictions about the sex of the participants.  (In monastic houses, however, it would generally be seen as improper for a man to wash the feet of a woman or a woman that of man unless the recipient of the deed was quite elderly.)        

The real problem with those who want to keep the Foot-Washing to be a ritual reenactment of Christ washing the feet of his disciples is that they want to overly spiritualize things.  We keep it Jesus and his disciples: no problem for us, they’re all dead—well except for Jesus of course, but he doesn’t count, he’s God.  It doesn’t have to bring us face to face with Christ-in-our-world.  There is a firewall between our religion and the exigencies of everyday life.   Ultimately such spiritualization of our faith is a denial of the Incarnation.  Everything is in the realm of the (pseudo)spiritual so it doesn’t impact on me and the choices I make in this world.  When Pope Francis goes to a youth-detention center or to a center for the disabled to wash feet on Holy Thursday (or any other day) it brings Christ and his disciples into the nitty-gritty every day realities that I must confront.  I can’t keep Jesus locked away in a tabernacle but run the danger of seeing him in the least of his brothers and sisters and being reminded of my responsibilities to him in those same brothers and sisters.

Just over two weeks ago Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson led a delegation of American Bishops to celebrate Mass at the fence that marks the border with Mexico—you know, that fence we have put up to keep Latino immigrants out of the United States.  The Blogosphere exploded with the Katholic Krazies talking about how the Mass had been “profaned” by this “little bit of episcopal nonsense.”  George Weigel—whose own brand of Catholicism has been shredded by the papacy of Pope Francis—declared “It’s not clear to me how holding Mass in these circumstances can be anything other than politicized…. To turn the Mass into an act of essentially political theater is something I thought we had gotten over in the Church, no matter how noble the cause might be.”   Of course what Weigel and the Krazies both overlooked is that Pope Francis had done precisely this same thing when he journeyed to the Italian island of Lampedusa and celebrated Mass to call attention to the plight of the thousands of Africans entering Europe illegally.  Like that Mass wasn’t political?  But then for some there is a difference between “their problem” (Africans coming into Europe) and our problem (Latinos coming into the United States).  For O’Malley and Kicanas—and Pope Francis—it is one and the same: “I was a stranger and you gave me welcome....  Whatever you do for the least of my sisters and brothers, you do for me."  What George Weigel overlooks in his somewhat monophysite Catholicism is the Incarnation is the most political act of all. God has chosen to enter history and history is forever changed.  For those of us who believe that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us (John 1:14), nothing can be more political than the Eucharist.  Every time we encounter Christ in his Body and Blood we must also encounter him in his Body, the Church.  And when we encounter him in  his Body the Church, we cannot escape coming face to face with the least of his sisters and brothers: the immigrant (legal or illegal), the AIDS patient (gay or straight), the abused (sexually, physically, emotionally, bullied), the aged, the poor, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped—whomever.  If you don’t believe in political Christianity you are caught in the heresy of denying the Incarnation.  So nothing proclaims our Orthodoxy more than Pope Francis washing the feet of the disabled or Cardinal O’Malley handing the Body of Christ through the fence to communicants on the other side.  A Blessed Good Friday.    

The Obamazation of Pope Francis

Pope Francis and Barack Obama should form a mutual support group.  Neither one can get a break from the extreme right ends of his constituency.  The criticisms are often not founded in fact and reflect a paranoia more than knowledge and understanding of our institutions and their histories—whether the United States or the Catholic Church.  And it is often the same voices that are raised against each.  I am not going to get into the President and his problems,  but I do want to look at the irrational fears that keep making their way into criticisms of Francis who, for many of us, is the breath of fresh air in what was getting to be a far too stuffy Church. 

  From when his election was first announced and he appeared on the balcony of Saint Peter’s basilica without the traditional ermine-lined papal mozetta favored by his more traditionalist predecessor Pope Benedict, Francis has aroused at first the fears and later the contempt of those who believe that he has changed the direction of the Church in deleterious ways.  The semi-schismatic website Rorate Caeli http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com published the following report from Marcelo González, a critic of Vatican II Catholicism the  very day the new pope was elected:

Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral seem to have been irrelevant to him.

A sworn enemy of the Traditional Mass, he has only allowed imitations of it in the hands of declared enemies of the ancient liturgy. He has persecuted every single priest who made an effort to wear a cassock, preach with firmness, or that was simply interested in Summorum Pontificum.

It didn’t take long for the fears to be confirmed.  Only two weeks after his election, on Holy Thursday, the Pope celebrated Mass not in his Cathedral of Saint John in the Lateran or in the Vatican Basilica as his predecessors, but in a juvenile prison.  And he not only broke the tradition of a grand pontifical liturgy in one of the patriarchal basilicas, he “broke the law” that insisted that only men are to be included in the washing of feet by washing the feet of two young ladies, one of whom is a Muslim.  (Actually, we should say that the Pope shattered the law as he set an example that lets the rest of us know that the liturgical guidelines on this need not be interpreted strictly. And for some that is even worse than breaking the law because it obviously gives permission to “go and do likewise.”)    A blog out of Gaithersburg Maryland run by a particularly dyspeptic woman by the name of Janet wrote:

I refer, of course, to the now-infamous and yes, scandalous conduct of the Holy Thursday service at Rome's Casal del Marmo prison for minors. The Holy Father washed the feet of twelve minors - including two women, one of them Muslim. This is in direct contravention to canon law that stipulates that only the feet of men be washed, if that ceremony is included in a Holy Thursday liturgy.

So the Holy Father caused scandal.  I am not sure for whom.  For Janet, certainly, and probably a half dozen or so of her friends.  For most Catholics this was the first clear sign of hope that we are back on track with a Christian faith that is free of the control of the scribes and the Pharisees who have taken it on themselves to police liturgies and make sure every little infraction is reported and punished. 

But Janet, like the foes of Jesus in the Gospels, is not concerned only with the weightier matters of the law, but even the jots and tittles.  She worries, for example, about his sartorial simplicity. 

This current Holy Father seems to have a disregard for some of the traditions of the papacy, most particularly that of the vestments. In perhaps a misguided zeal for "simplicity".

Misguided zeal for simplicity?  Frankly the liturgical fashion shows of his predecessor were becoming an embarrassment in a world that has moved beyond renaissance costuming.  This is not to say that Pope Benedict did not have exquisite taste in matters of apparel—he does—but we need a Pope who reminds us that the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters are too often homeless, naked, and in want.  Francis is a constant nudge to our consciences. 

As to this point, there were mainly matters of ritual and style that disturbed people about Francis, but the criticism began to pick up steam at and after World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in the end of July.  The papal liturgies were wildly enthusiastic but there was much criticism of a “dance” that had bishops and kids alike in a sort of flash mob scene.  It was hugely popular among those present, but not among the neo-trad bloggers who were “appalled” at “this lack of gross decency and respect for the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”  What set of the alarms bells for many, however, was not the dance, but the papal interview on the plane back to Rome when the Holy Father said “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”  Who is he to judge?  The bloggers were quick to tell him who he is to judge.  After all, if he can’t judge, they can’t claim that right and with that comment Francis became for them the Grinch that stole Christmas.  Not judge?  The Catholic blogosphere would shut down if we can’t sit in moral judgment of one another.  Fortunately, we still have Phil Robertson.  Maybe we should dig out the old tiara and put it on Phil—he does look a bit like Pope St Pius V. 

Pat Buchanan, the good Catholic and evangelist for the Republican Right, wishes the Holy Father “would judge gay people more.”  The American Spectator called Francis “The Poster Boy for Gay Marriage.”

The problem is this—Francis’s new approach—while not altering doctrine—is altering practice. 

Well, we will do more on this in future posting as we are only beginning with the criticism of Pope Francis and as every day goes by—and Cardinal Burke falls further from grace—the crazies get crazier and crazier as they see the Church that reinforces their prejudices and dreams fade in favor of a very new—but also very old—vision of what Christ calls his Church to be.   A lady named Pamela wrote in to Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-life-leaders-shocked-by-removal-of-cardinal-burke-from-important-vatica/ about the distress she is finding with Pope Francis and his leadership as it trickles down to everyday life in her parish,

My uneasiness is turning into outright fear of what is happening to our Church. I am seeing this same theme play out in my local parish, where the new pastor says we have to be more accepting and tolerant of every single social ill I've been fighting to stop. I'm praying for our clergy daily and also praying for discernment to see the Truth and the Good in all of this (because I sure as heck can't find it on my own). Please, everyone, pray with me!

Well, Pamela, we are praying with you but most likely not for the same end result.  Where you find fear, we find hope.  

Neo-Trads Hoisted By Their Own Petard

Well, The Triduum and Easter are past with the beautiful liturgies and life is beginning to return to normal but the hornet’s nest that Pope Francis stirred up by including two women, one a Muslim, among those whose feet he washed is alive and buzzing.  A check of the usual suspects and their blogs show that the neo-trads are running scared and not without reason.  The entire structure of the “Reform of the Reform” which has given them such joy over the past fifteen or twenty years is teetering as it slowly begins to implode.  It is not that the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass, aka Tridentine Mass or Extraordinary Form) will no longer be celebrated—it will, but clearly no longer at the alleged bequest of the Holy Father.  Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos who long claimed that the Pope wanted an Extraordinary Form Mass in every Parish every week clearly can no longer make such a claim.  While Cardinals like Burke and Pell who delighted in marching around in long trains of watered silk with large furred hoods look no more ridiculous now than they did two months ago, but now they are clearly out of step (and out of harmony) with the Pope himself.  The feeling in the Church is new and fresh, like when an old house has been renovated and everything that was dark and heavy with closed curtains and lunky old overstuffed furniture is open and airy and bathed in sunlight. 
The neo-trads are outraged that the Pope “broke Canon Law” by including women in the washing of the feet ceremony.  But, in the first place, the prescriptives for the washing of the feet are not in Canon Law, they are in the rubrics.  And secondly, whether it be Canon Law or rubrical “law,” it is beyond the Pope’s power to break.  I did not say “beyond the Pope’s power to change” but “to break.”  You see to break the Law you must be subject to the Law, but the Pope is not subject to the law, rather he is the law.
In our American system of law, drawing from the legal traditions of England, the Lawgiver is himself subject to the Law.  So the President is subject to the Law.  The Congress, collectively and individually, is subject to the Law.  The judiciary is subject the Law.  The Legislature, Congress, can change the Law.  The Judiciary, the Courts, can invalidate the law.  But unless and until a law is changed or ruled unconstitutional, the Government itself is subject to the Law.  In England, in the same way, the Monarch is subject the Law, as is Parliament, and as is the Judiciary.  But this was not always so.  The matter was settled by the English Civil War in which the King was judged to have broken the law and to have been guilty of treason.  Poor King Charles could not understand this.  How could he, the King, have been guilty of treason; treason was a crime against the Crown and he, the King, was the Crown?  But by the changes that came about in the English Civil War the principle was established that the Crown is something greater than the person of the King.  The person of the King is subject to the authority of the Crown, that is “the Law.”  Up to that point in the development of the British Constitution (in which American Law is rooted) the King had been seen as the Personal Embodiment of the Law.  The Law is whatever the King declared it to be so.  This declaration did not have to be written, or even spoken: the King, by his actions as well as his words, “shewed” what the Law is.  Thus it was from time immemorial.  The Law is in the heart of the Lawgiver: Whatever the Lawgiver declares, is the law.  In England it took a long period of time to change from this absolutist principle to the democratic one.  King Henry VIII traded many of his royal prerogatives to Parliament to win their support for his religious policies.  His children, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth too had had to make compromises with Parliament to win support for their varied changes in the English Church.  By the end of the Tudor dynasties, English absolutism had given way to the rudiments of constitutional government.  The Stuart Kings, James I and Charles I, had not understood this and this being on very different pages from their subjects would lead to Civil War and Charles’ execution.  The same evolution of Law came about in France through its 1789 Revolution.  Louis XIV had declared “Je suis l’Etat, (I am the State)—again, declaring that he personally was “the State;”  the law is whatever he declared it to be and as King he was not subject to the Law for he was the Law.  Like poor King Charles, belief in that principle would cause Louis XIV’s great 3x grandson, Louis XVI his head.  When Louis XVI’s younger brother became Charles X many decades later and insisted on reverting to this theory that he, not a Constitutional Government, was the supreme lawgiver and as such was not subject to the Law, he found himself tossed out of the palace, though with his head still attached.  He was lucky.  Russia saw this evolution with the murder of the Czar in 1918.  Over the centuries—from the sixteenth through the twentieth—constitutional governments have come to accept the principle that they and their leaders are subject to Law.  Of course governments like Israel—or South Africa in the days of apartheid—make no assurances that the laws to which their governments are subject are just; nor do, or did, plutocracies such as the old Marxist republics of the Iron and Bamboo curtains, nor the Islamic “republics” that have adopted Sharia Law.   And Wacko dictators like the fellow in North Korea propose that they are above the Law.   But that is the nature of dictatorship and that is also the nature of the Papal Monarchy. 
The Catholic Church is not a democracy.   The Pope is absolute Sovereign in the Church.  Whatever he declares to be Law, is Law.  All authority in the Church comes from his authority.  Vatican II taught that the Bishops hold their authority over the Church committed to their care directly from Christ, but that is window dressing.  Whatever was given at Vatican II was gradually taken back by the Papal Administration under John Paul II.  This is not to say that the Pope is above the law, but he is certainly not subject to it.  Rather, he is the embodiment of the Law.  Whatever he declares to be law, is law.  What he binds is bound; loosens, loosened.  It does not take Canons or rubrics or any formal declaration.  His doing is sufficient.  Of course he is not saying that you must wash the feet of Muslims and women--but he is saying that one may.   
I remember when I was preparing my doctorate.  I was living in a religious house in Rome.  A huge fuss had been created one day when one of the young monks had read the refectory reading in English rather than in Italian.  The statutes of the monastery said that Spanish, English, and Italian were each official languages, but the refectory reading had always been in Italian.  All official business in the house was conducted in Italian.  The monastery was upside down.  People were rallying to one side or the other of the conflict.  Some were demanding that the local superior punish the young Irish monk who had dared to break the law and read in English.  Others were threatening that if any action were taken against him, they would absent themselves from refectory and chapel.  (This is the problem with celibacy, without the occasional sick child people lose all sense of perspective.)   The local superior, a bewildered Spaniard, did not know what to do.  He called for the Order’s Master General to come and settle the issue.  The Master General did so very nicely.  He arrived in time for dinner and, as was his right as the ranking prelate, said grace.  He said it in English.  The issue was settled without further word. 
Pope Francis settled the issue whether women can be included in the ritual washing of the feet.  There is no question now.  The Law has been amended.  And this is why the neo-trads are so alarmed.  The Pope is sweeping away the Reform of the Reform without saying a word.  Gone is the Mozetta and rochet.  Gone are the red shoes.  Gone are the antique vestments.  With his having an altar facing the Cardinals set up in the Sistine Chapel, gone is the “ad orientem” nonsense.  Gone is the aloofness that permitted the rampant revival of an obscene clericalism.  Gone is the message that we are heading back into the seventeenth century. I am not saying that a future Pope can’t bring it back, but it won’t be easy, especially with the mass approval Francis is winning.  Like Paul VI’s tiara, it will be difficult for future popes to turn back to the palace and the pomp.  Now we are back on track as the Church of Service, the Herald of Good News to the Poor.