Boston.com / News / Local / Linking evil to feminism:

"In Atlanta, Archbishop John F. Donoghue banned women from participating in traditional Holy Thursday reenactments of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, their inclusion in the symbolic ritual inappropriate, he said, because women cannot be "called to the priesthood." (O'Malley, too, restricted the ritual to men but issued no edict requiring others to do so.) Donoghue instituted a similar ban 15 years ago when he was the bishop of Charlotte, N.C. To their credit, many Georgia parishes canceled scheduled reenactments rather than restrict participation."

Actually, the ban goes back to the origin of the rite. The rubric calls for "viri selecti" that is "selected men" in the male not the generic sense of "men".

"No surprise there. Didn't O'Malley, his counterpart in Boston, tell the hundreds of priests gathered for Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross last Tuesday that "the breakdown of authority" is one of the great cultural threats to the Catholic faith? That would be male, clerical authority, one presumes."

Nope, it would be ecclesiastical authority, excercised in many instances by women.