Read an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story from April 2, 2004 about Archbishop John F. Donoghue order of priests from that archdiocese to not wash women’s feet.

Read an April 10, 2004, Boston Globe story describing how Roman Catholic Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley declined to wash the feet of women on Holy Thursday, saying that Jesus had only male disciples.

Read an article on the history of foot-washing (and the connection between this ceremony and baptism) from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Thomas Cahill, an Irish Catholic, is author of How the Irish Saved Civilization (Anchor, 1996) and served for a time as the North American education correspondent for the Times of London.

Lawrence J. McCaffrey is author of The Irish-Catholic Diaspora in America (Catholic University of America Press, 1998) and professor emeritus of history at Loyola University in Chicago.

Erik P. Goldschmidt is director of the Church in the 21st Century Initiative at Boston College. Its research includes the state of Catholic ministry in America.

John T. McGreevy is a respected historian of U.S. Catholicism. He is history professor and dean of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters at Notre Dame University in Indiana.

James O’Toole is a history professor at Boston College who specializes in American Catholic history and popular devotional practices.

Read a September 2005 Christianity Today article on New Monasticism.