Portrayals of Virgin Mary reflect cultural cross-currents

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-In the Gospel of St. Luke, it is written: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. “The virgin’s name was Mary.” Mary-the humble […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-In the Gospel of St. Luke, it is written:

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.


“The virgin’s name was Mary.”

Mary-the humble girl to whom Gabriel delivered the message that she would bear the son of God; the obedient girl who, Luke tells us, answered: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

In our own time, as throughout Christian history, Mary is seen as a powerful force whose strength radiates from her exalted status as the mother of Jesus. She is protectress and mediator, interceding between humankind and God; she is patroness of the downtrodden and the displaced, the one whom those in danger, sick or dying implore.

Every age has imprinted its own image upon Mary and it is no different now. Marian apparitions, which date to A.D. 40, are as telling about the people, places and times in which they occur as they are about Mary.

As the 20th century ends, there is the Mary of Medjugorje, whose reported apparitions in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina have been interpreted by believers as a force for reconciliation and peace. There is the Mary that feminist theology declares it is reclaiming-a strong, assertive Mary who is much more than the submissive handmaiden of God. And there is a so-called “New Age” interpretation of Mary-the mother warning her children about the ecological disasters they are imposing upon “Mother Earth.”

Theologians, sociologists and psychologists, in accounting for what draws people to Mary or what they believe she represents, inevitably call her “the female face of God” or the “feminine face of the divine.”

To the surprise of modern religious scholars who believed that the secularization of society would dim devotion to Mary, there continues to be intense interest in both Mary and Marian apparitions.

This interest also is found outside of the Catholic tradition, where there are theological differences concerning Mary’s role and significance.

“It seems to some a surprising remnant of an era that had supposedly passed us by,” observes Thomas A. Tweed, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina and author of the forthcoming “Our Lady of the Exile,” which documents devotion to a Cuban image of Mary in Miami.


“The stubbornness of the vigorous devotion to Mary is extremely interesting and revealing,” Tweed says. “To me, it testifies to … the impulse toward the sacred.”

Or it may be that for humans-yearning throughout the ages to ease life’s fears and anxieties-Mary fulfills an even more basic need.

“We need to see the face of our mother,” speculates artist Meinrad Craighead, a former Benedictine nun whose work includes images of the Black Madonna.

“In the best of all possible worlds,” she says, “the mothers could save their children from abuse, hunger and all the terrible threats.”

As Michael S. Durham writes in his recently published book, “Miracles of Mary: Apparitions, Legends and Miraculous Works of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Mary has “many guises”-as “healer, builder of churches, dispenser of mercy, intercessor with God, Queen of Peace, repository of world sorrow and herald of calamities yet to come.”

Durham writes, “This picture of Mary as we know her today is as much a creation of mankind as of scripture. … It is as if the gospels provide a rough sketch of Mary and we are left to fill in the details.”


Over the past two centuries, the details have been somewhat troubling. Durham documents that, beginning in the 19th century, Mary’s messages during apparitions were said to convey warnings to humankind “to mend its errant ways or face the wrath of an angry God.”

“In the 20th century,” Durham writes, “the ominous messages became stronger, more explicit, and more relevant to world events.”

Implied in these various warnings is Mary’s own strength. Indeed, according to Durham, the impression from 19th- and 20th-century apparitions is that “her power to `restrain’ the arm of her Son might soon fail her …”

It is a strength with roots in the biblical history of Mary. There are only a handful of references to Mary in the New Testament, but theologians argue that they are nonetheless instructive. In one reference, Mary meets with her cousin Elizabeth-both are pregnant, Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth with the child who would be known as John the Baptist.

Luke has Mary speaking in a bold voice to Elizabeth in what is known as the “Magnificat”:

“Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly …”


The Mary of the Magnificat is filled with “a certain power, force and affirmation,” in the words of the Rev. Thomas A. Thompson, who directs the Marian Library-International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton. Early church fathers, in fact, apparently recognized this in Mary when they forbade artists from depicting her as swooning at the cross.

“It seemed instinctive and, I think, right that this was not somebody who was going to fall apart,” says the Rev. James A. Wiseman, a Benedictine monk and associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Very early in Christian history, believers invoked what they believed to be Mary’s power of protection, asking in one third-century prayer that she “deliver us from all danger.”

By the Middle Ages, Mary often was represented with an enormous, protective cloak. This image of Mary as a protectress persists today, whether it is from danger or injustice. Hispanics in the American Southwest, in a demonstration of this belief, often carry Mary’s image on banners while protesting for workers rights.

It is this ancient, strong Mary that feminist theology responds to today.

“The image of Mary that most of us have been given has been shaped to men’s specifications to convince us that we are incapable of independent thought and action,” says Patricia Lynn Reilly, who writes about Mary in her book, “A God Who Looks Like Me: Discovering a Woman-Affirming Spirituality.”

“But Mary continues to break out,” Reilly declares. “Her willfulness is all about controlling our own lives and destinies.”


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Mary’s status and role in Christianity has been a matter of theological debate for centuries and continues to be reinterpreted and redefined. It wasn’t until the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 that the Catholic Church officially declared Mary to be the mother of God. And not until the mid-19th century did the church recognize as dogma what is known as the “Immaculate Conception” or the doctrine that Mary was pure and without sin from her own conception.

Protestants during the Reformation rejected the Catholic idea that Mary was an intermediary to God.

By the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council attempted to temper Marian devotion among Catholics by portraying Mary not as an independent force but, as Thompson of the Marian Library puts it, “a way of leading people to Christ.” Rather than have Mary portrayed as all that stands between sinful humankind and a wrathful God, the Catholic Church teaches that Mary derives her compassion from Jesus.

“You don’t want Mary as a substitute for what is good in God,” says Anthony Tambasco, chair of the theology department at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington.

Yet there is, as the artist Meinrad Craighead described it, a compelling connection to Mary as a mother and to her own humanity.

Mary’s faith despite her puzzlement over biblical events-especially when the angel Gabriel appeared to her-made its impression upon Christian consciousness and endeared her to generations, Wiseman says.


And so she appeals to everyday women and men as a powerful and even independent force who can intervene on their behalf. This is especially clear in the reports of Marian apparitions and in the allure of Marian shrines.

“She is no mere passive figure,” says Tweed, the North Carolina professor of religious studies. “She’s an agent, an actor who does things for devotees, granting favors and miracles for those who bring their concerns to her.”

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But alongside Mary’s image, there is also a very human imprint.

“To me, personally,” says Durham, whose book is a compilation of Marian apparitions and legends, “the more specific the messages got, the less convincing they were.

“There have been apparitions in the 20th century warning about Russian submarines. … While that’s interesting and certainly reflects the time, they were being politicized to a certain extent.”

“There was a strong anti-communist message at the apparition at Fatima (in 1917),” he says. “If you really knew your stuff, you could probably trace it throughout history-that people were using the apparitions to make political points as well as moral ones.”

With so much of what is human imprinted upon Mary-a society’s fears, struggles and even politics-what of her can be known with any assurance?


Phyllis Zagano, who serves as co-chair of the Roman Catholic studies group of the American Academy of Religion, believes it may be this:

“There is a beautiful strength and graciousness to the true story of Mary … her acceptance of herself as she is and was.

“When she said, `Let it be done,’ she was saying, `Let me be as I am as created by God.

“That’s very hopeful.”

MJP END RIOS

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