The key distinction between law and legalism

One of the most distressing things for religious people reading the Gospels is Jesus defying the religious leaders of his time. There is no other group with whom he has more trouble than the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, the Sanhedrin and temple priests. He is friendlier to collaborationist tax collectors and prostitutes and Good Thieves, the bad company of his time. You’d think that if he were trying to start a new religion (he wasn’t), he would build on the foundations known to his audiences in Galilee, Samaria and Judea, respecting whom the people respected. And remember, the Law of Moses was justly revered for a thousand years before him in Israel. We today still consider it to be vital to the inspired Hebrew Scriptures, found in the first five books of our Bible.
This is distressing because we know we may not be flippant about God’s law. We rightly teach our children this law, patiently correcting and punishing when warranted. We teach them, for instance, that sex outside of marriage is wrong, and we point to the sixth and ninth commandments of Moses. We might point to the pandemic proportions of sexually transmitted sicknesses in the U.S. But we promote the law, and for their own good. Yet when they cite Jesus’ attitude toward law and the law enforcement officials, traditionalists feel undercut. In fact, the sharper kids quote back to grown-ups that Jesus gave a new commandment, to love God, neighbor and self as being the greatest of commandments, even if these two are already found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
Granted, Jesus speaks kindly to the Samaritan woman of many husbands, and to the woman caught in adultery, whom he tells to go and sin no more. He cannot be accused of favoring serial marriage or infidelity. But why can’t he add a little muscle with the threat of the fires of Gehenna, the way he did with those people who deprive the poor of their fair share of God’s gifts? No worries there about too much severity.
Lawyers make the key distinction between law and legalism. The first is good: drafting and following laws deemed by an intelligent legislature to be needed for basic order in the community. The second is the “gagging on a gnat while swallowing a camel” method of the Pharisees who connived ways to evade responsibility while appearing to be law-abiding stalwarts. They finagled something called qorban, whereby someone could exempt personal property dedicated to God just so that they would be legally free of caring for their elderly parents. Do the letter of the law, forget about the spirit.
Which brings me to some modern-day legalists chiding Pope Francis for breaking liturgical laws by his Holy Thursday washing and kissing the feet of non-Catholics and – would you believe? – women. Rubrical laws specifically state that priests may only wash the feet of men because, it is supposed, only men attended the Last Supper, perhaps a seder meal which even today takes place in the home and not the synagogue. Women there take the parts assigned them by the seder ritual. Forget that the unnamed disciple on the road to Emmaus on the first Easter might have been Cleopas’ wife. Both together recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so both had been at the Last Supper.
So why are the critics worried, presuming to upbraid the pope on so insignificant a rubric? It seems that if they allow the nose of the camel into the tent, the rest will follow. People might invoke this to argue that women can become priests. It seems that they do not know that if the supreme lawmaker abrogates a rubrical law, it does not bind any more. So if Pope Francis abrogates the one law, he might abrogate the second, too. I do not think that follows logically, but fear knows no logic.
As a student priest in Rome I concelebrated Mass in St. Peter’s with Pope Paul VI during Holy Week. There were several hundred of us priests to distribute Communion to the thousands of attendees. Each of us held a ciborium of hosts all during Mass despite the fact that the rubrics say all ciboria have to be on the corporal, the linen cloth atop the altar. A legalist among us noted this. But a liberal told him the pope by his direction made the whole sanctuary carpet the corporal.