Seeing Mary all over again
Gregory Rodriguez -
Los Angeles Times December 18, 2005
A WEEK BEFORE last Monday's celebration of the Feast Day of Our Lady of
Guadalupe, CNN broadcast a story on a statue of the Virgin Mary near Sacramento
that appeared to be shedding tears of blood. In August, a New Orleans
funeral home billboard attracted crowds after Mary's profile was spotted
in the photo.. In April, thousands flocked to an expressway underpass
in Chicago to witness an image of the virgin that officials believe was
a stain created by salt runoff. Hokey or heartfelt, bizarre or sublime,
these sightings are a reflection of a contemporary revival in the cult
of Mary.
Devotion to the virgin is nothing new to American Catholicism. Each wave
of Catholic
immigrants brought along their own iconic images of the mother of Christ:
Italians revered Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Pompeii; Poles
favored Our Lady of Czestochowa. But by the 1950s, the assimilation and
upward mobility of Catholics led to a decline in old country devotional
Catholicism, and in the 1960s, the reforms of Vatican II sought to refocus
attention away from localized "folk" worship and onto the rites
and rituals of Rome. While "Marian" devotion never disappeared,
it declined significantly over the last 40 years.
But a combination of Mexican immigration, popular feminism and a growing
need among
spiritual seekers to make God more accessible has led to a resurgence
in the presence of the figure of Mary. By the end of the 20th century,
Mexican migrants had carried their Virgin of Guadalupe to all corners
of the U.S. and her likeness engaged non-Latinos and non-Catholics as
well. For many, Guadalupe may represent little more than ethnic kitsch,
but others appear to be sincerely drawn to her.
Many theologians have noted that Guadalupe, like so many other images
of the Virgin Mary,
represents a more tender, compassionate side of God. While deeply skeptical
of — and even annoyed by — the parade of recent apparitions,
Father Thomas A. Thompson of the Marian Library at the University of Dayton
in Ohio nonetheless believes that the current revival in Marianism is,
in a sense, a popular attempt at recalibrating a collective sense of the
divine.
"In Anglo-Saxon culture, God is talked about in masculine terms —
the omnipotent law-giver and judge," he said. "A yearning for
Mary suggests a deeper desire for a more feminine dimension of the religious
experience."
The times may play a role as well. Historically, Marian devotion has increased
during cultural crises or war. In the late Middle Ages, the church's depiction
of Jesus as punishing and uncompromising pushed many believers to Mary's
side. Her 1917 apparition at Fatima, Portugal,occurred during the Russian
Revolution. In 1531, Our Lady of Guadalupe spoke to an Aztec peasant during
a cataclysmic time for Mexico's Indians. As poet Octavio Paz observed,
the Indians "took refuge" in the Brown Virgin after the massacre
of their priests and the destruction of their gods.
And consider the source. More often than not, revivals of the cult of
Mary have been imposed on church authorities from the bottom up. Since
the earliest recorded sightings in the 4th century, the church has taken
a circumspect stance regarding Marian apparitions. The overwhelming majority
of the estimated 21,000 sightings have not been recognized.
Indeed, even the most celebrated official apparitions contain hints of
subversion. The primary elements of the classic apparition narrative include
the humble origins of the witness, the initial skepticism of the parish
priest, the hostile response from civil authorities and the ultimate,sometimes
begrudging, acceptance by the church. The ongoing tension in the church
between high and low, masculine and feminine, is reflected in the distinction
that is often made between "the Church of Peter," meaning the
hierarchy, and "the Church of Mary," referring to the most humble
of the faithful.
Bible-centered Protestants, of course, long have been skeptical of Catholics'
reverence for Mary. After all, the New Testament makes only passing reference
to her. Still, in March, Time magazine reported that the "long-standing
wall around Mary" in the Protestant world "appears to be eroding."
Beverly Roberts Gaventa at Princeton Theological Seminary has urged a
wholesale Protestant reexamination of the mother of Jesus. "We are
a lot more interested now in biblical characters who are women, and we've
talked about all the others," Gaventa said. "It might be time
to talk about Mary as well."
Of course, the impulse that stirs Gaventa isn't exactly the same as the
one that draws crowds to an apparently weeping concrete statue at a church
outside Sacramento, but both have a way of fitting history's patterns.
The more we see Mary, the more we're seeking the feminine face of God
— and answers for our own troubled times.
http://www.latimes.com/
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