Letter to the Editor from Oxford, GA

Published: April 15, 2004

To the Editor:

This letter was addressed to Archbishop John F. Donoghue.

I write in response to your recent directive to exclude women from the foot washing during the Holy Thursday liturgy. Obviously, you have the authority to issue such a directive, and although many, myself included, disagree on the theological basis for the directive, my purpose here is only to make you aware of the increased pain you have caused laity, and I assume the good men who serve as pastors in this archdiocese.

I learned about this exclusion not from The Georgia Bulletin but from the morning newspaper. It is beyond my imagination why you would issue this directive at this time given the battering every American Catholic has experienced during the last two years. I wonder as well if you have ever looked out into the congregations of this archdiocese. Who is there is those pews? Women—who cannot help but be insulted and humiliated further by this exclusion, and the many men who know for a fact that these women attempt to live as Christian disciples. Are women not called to be servants, disciples? If each of us is not called, then the Church will indeed wither away. That is not my hope or yours. I cannot imagine that your action, hurtful to women and to men, is the one you want to stand as your final legacy as archbishop of this diocese.

Dana Greene, Oxford