When I think of Mary, mother of Jesus, I think of my grandmother and her sister saying their rosaries at night. This was the first example of any extended meditation that I ever saw. The repetition of the Hail Mary prayer underscoring their contemplation on day-specific mysteries seemed to put them in an engaged trance. We knew better to bother them when in reflection, which was probably a good enough reason on its face to undergo it.
Rather than view the figure of Mary as indicative of a paternalistic scheme to keep women subservient within the community of the church, and—by example—expected to take a secondary role in society, I see her as a faithful interlocutor; one of us who is willing to put in a good word with the Big Guy. I like the idea of a mediatrix, a go-between, channeling ordinary human wants and cares upstairs, so to speak.
The current Defense Secretary of the United States, who likes to go around calling himself the Secretary of War, invited a self-described Christian nationalist pastor to lead a service at the Pentagon this last February. Before speaking at the seat of military power in the United States, Pastor Doug Wilson offered his view of a “Christian Nation™” in an interview with John Papola, host of the Dad Saves America podcast. Under Wilson’s idea of a Protestant Nationalist state, Catholic parades in honor of Mary would be banned, along with public displays of Marian statues and icons. This raises the punk rock spirit in me which has resulted in giving deep, reflective thought toward the Virgin for the first time in years. Mysterious ways indeed.
In many ways, the veneration of the Marys, both the mother of Jesus and Magdalene, brings a female face back into the story, albeit, briefly considered on both accounts. Revisiting the Synoptic Gospels, I was kind of shocked at how little Jesus’s mother was actually mentioned. Mary of Magdala is treated historically worse, culminating in being branded a prostitute by Pope Gregory I in 591, mixing her story with an unnamed sinner in Luke, and the sister of Lazarus, both who anointed Jesus’s feet. In this way, the church, either purposefully, or carelessly, created the dichotomy of Virgin/Whore that has helped to strengthen a patriarchal “dominator mentality” outlined by writers like Riane Eisler (explicitly in The Chalice and the Blade) and Marina Warner (obliquely in Alone of All Her Sex).
It never dawned on me as a child growing up in the Catholic Church that an argument existed that the Virgin Mary remained a virgin after giving birth to her son, i.e., the tenant of Perpetual Virginity outlined by Augustine in 411. I must have skipped that day in catechism. It seems to me that taking the real-life miracle of childbirth from her disrespects the experience of all mothers and does promote the patriarchy.
The painful, yet necessary act of childbirth was disregarded as far back as the Book of Genesis, where women were supposedly saddled with it as a punishment for causing the banishment from Eden. I think the early church missed a chance to redeem the experience by acknowledging a true nativity and by doing so, elevating, not only Mary, but all women to their rightful place as bringers of life.
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