Does Catholic veneration of Mary serve, as Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza says, to “deter women from becoming fully independent and whole human persons”? Patricia Noone likewise asks whether Mary is “a Trojan horse raised to ambush women’s aspirations for personhood, human dignity, and co-responsibility for the Church and society.” Do the “signs of the times” demand that we reject Marian devotion as a product of patriarchal clericalism which imposes on Catholic women unattainable, even frustrating, ideals of virginity, motherhood, and subordination?
What feminists are demanding, writes Newsweek columnist Kenneth Woodward, is “a thorough and comprehensive transformation of the language, symbols and sacred texts of the Christian faith—and therefore of the faith itself.” For them, Mary is a powerful symbol manipulated by a male hierarchy to maintain women in subordinate roles. Rosemary Radford Ruether thinks that Mariology “has been used as a vehicle to express certain dominant cultural motifs that reinforce the traditional subjugated status of women in patriarchal society.” Thus, for feminists, devotion to Mary is an instrument of oppression promoted by a male and celibate clergy with, a large investment in the ecclesiastical status quo.
Since Vatican II, woman’s self-perception of her nature, capabilities, and relations to “male-dominated” structures has, undoubtedly, been radically altered. Almost overnight the Blessed Mother ceased to be Catholic women’s model and became for the feminists a symbolic oppressor. Although aware of this new perspective, Paul VI surely underestimated the gravity of the situation when he noted in 1973 that the traditional image of Mary “cannot easily be reconciled with today’s life style” (Marialis cultus, 34). More than a decrease in Marian piety, however, is at stake; the Church’s entire theology of Mary is on the line.
That the women’s movement has led to a re-evaluation of the role of Mary is neither surprising nor a cause for alarm. Had this not occurred, it would have meant that she was simply irrelevant and had no significant influence on how Catholic women understood their role in the Church and society.
In her fascinating, if sometimes annoying, book Alone of All Her Sex, Marina Warner argues that the traditional exaltation of Mary does not bring with it the exaltation of women, but precisely the opposite—their denigration. From the Middle Ages onward, Marian devotion grew in direct proportion to disparaging theories and practices directed to all women, except Mary. As “feminine perfection personified,” comments Warner, “no other woman was in her league.” Mary’s perfection inevitably invites invidious comparison with other women; compared to Mary, every other woman falls short.
Novelist Mary Gordon captures the strain created by such a schizophrenic view of women in which “disgust-filled thinking about woman” is combined with great veneration accorded to the Virgin Mary. Measured against the Marian ideal, “what hope is there for the rest of us,” she asks, “who eat, breathe, menstruate, make love, bear children? How do we bridge the gap between ordinary woman… and the Tower of Ivory, the House of God?” The more the Church celebrates the glories of Mary, so runs this feminist complaint, the less all other women are esteemed.
How, in fact, has the Marian tradition abetted this “Madonna/whore” syndrome in which men have supposedly placed Mary on a pedestal and at the same time ignored or disparaged other women? From the days of the early Church, Mary has been venerated as Virgin and Mother. As Virgin Mother she is the model for all women, the standard against which all others are measured. As virgin, Mary is portrayed as disembodied from her female sexuality. As mother, she is submissive to her husband and beholden to her child. Women are caught betwixt and between. Motherhood is the fulfillment of a woman’s life, yet virginity is more prized than maternity. This glorification of Mary’s virginal motherhood presents women with an “impossible dream.” Only Mary—and Mary alone—could manage such a combination.
Furthermore, emphasis on Mary’s virginal purity shields her, according to the feminists, from the corruption attached to her femininity. Because the ancients frequently identified women with the evils of sex, Mary has to be de-sexed in order to be blessed. Freed from sex, she is, therefore, in a certain sense, “more manly.”
With Mary as their model, the Fathers of the Church extolled virginity for women since, according to Anne Carr in her recent book, Transforming Grace, it made them “capable of spiritual personhood, of becoming like men through the transcendence of their natural female humanity.” Virginity allows women to overcome their natural inferiority linked to the body and sex.
In the Virgin Mary the stigma of being female is overcome—but the cost is high. Believing women are frustrated by her accomplishment and example.
Even Mary’s motherhood, the female experience she shares with most other women, is not a liberating symbol for feminist Mariologists. By concentrating on the divine maternity as the reason for Mary’s greatness—and as the raison d’etre for her life—traditional Mariology has reinforced the idea that women are fulfilled through motherhood alone. According to Elizabeth Johnson, this stress on Mary’s motherhood has “legitimated domesticity as the primary vocation for women.” Again women are put on the horns of a dilemma: their vocation is childbearing, but the way this is brought about—through sexual relations—is considered degrading. Only Mary can have motherhood without sex.
In addition to being inherently frustrating for women, a traditional, privilege-centered Mariology also shapes, or at least reinforces, female subordination to men, say feminists. Here the principal target of the feminist critique is Mary’s passivity in her fiat. Many feminists claim that Mary’s “let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) has justified women’s acceptance of a subordinate role—not just with respect to God, but also with respect to man. Mary was “used” by God in a way which simply ravaged her. The Marian fiat symbolizes, they say, women’s acceptance of a passive role, a willingness to be obedient and subservient to men.
Is God a Sexist?
This misunderstanding begins with a theologically accurate proposition about the relationship between Creator and creature: God initiates, the human person responds; God is powerfully active, the human person is receptive. What the feminists claim has happened, however, is an erroneous transference of this God-to-human-person pattern to social relations. Instead of God and the human person forming the partners of this duet, this fiat model was falsely applied to concrete male-female relations. And traditional Mariology has fostered this error. Mary’s obedience and passivity before God are interpreted as the prototype not only of God-human person relations but also of male-female relations as well.
One could, of course, simply discount the feminist reading of the Marian tradition and return unfazed to conventional piety. But such an unexamined and wholesale rejection of the feminist critique is imprudent. Have the feminists not raised some challenging questions that deserve our careful consideration, if not agreement?
A Mariology relevant to North American women—and men—can, indeed must, be written, and the feminist complaints can help to ensure that such an undertaking is sensitive both to their concerns and to the Catholic tradition. An authentic Mariology can be presented which is more carefully formulated so as to be less liable to charges of promoting the denigration of women, of holding out the impossible dream of simultaneous virginity and motherhood, of legitimating woman’s submissive roles with respect to men, society and the Church.
It is impossible to prove or disprove the sweeping feminist interpretations of the history of the Marian tradition. Whether or not Mary is a symbol which disparages or honors women will be debated for years to come. Unquestionably, misogynist biases, such as those of Tertullian, can be documented from the tradition. But do these records of contemptuous remarks tell their whole story about women? Tertullian, for example, did not refer to women just as the “devil’s gateway” but also as “handmaids of the living God, my fellow slaves and sisters.” Two millennia of Church life have undoubtedly produced numerous statements hostile to women, but it is a misuse of responsible historical methodology to highlight certain texts while rejecting others, and to identify one strain of mistaken thought with the Church’s tradition on Mary and women.
With respect to the Marian tradition itself, is it reasonable to “suspect” it of being simply the product of a patriarchal ecclesiastical culture? It is unwarranted to think that only feminists can come to know historical truth. How is it that they can so clearly determine the motives of male celibates, when they so vigorously reject the possibility that men can come to any similar conclusions about women?
Marian piety, that of both women and men, has been the principal motor behind the Church’s development of a sophisticated Mariology. To imagine that women are either too ignorant or too downtrodden to resist a Marian devotion they find to be enslaving is unfounded. The glories of Mary are not foisted upon helpless women; they are as much their creation, perhaps more so, than that of the men who articulated such piety in homilies, devotional tracts, and theological treatises. Indeed, is it not more likely that the motherhood of Mary is far more accessible to women than the fatherhood of God, especially if male dominance and brutality is identified with a Father-God who appears merciless?
Quite simply, men take their Marian cues from women. As studies of popular religion demonstrate, Marian piety thrives outside the “official” (male) Church. The principal promoters of the Marian tradition have been women acting on their own initiative, not women victimized by manipulated symbols.
The Historical Miriam
Traditional theology esteems Mary because of her immaculate conception, virginal conception, divine maternity, and assumption—privileges that other women did not receive. Her humanity is obscured in favor of her exaltation. With the renewal in Scripture studies, the time has come for a return to a “Mariology from below.” If we follow Vatican II’s lead in chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium, our point of departure will be the flesh and blood Miriam of Nazareth, the maiden, mother, and wife. By beginning with a sober look at the Mary revealed to us in the Scriptures, we have a firm foundation upon which to build our Marian devotion. Any contemporary theology of Mary that forgoes this initial scriptural portrait builds on sand.
The Pax Christi movement’s suggested new litany of our Lady reflects the insights of this Mariological vision. Instead of the Litany of Loreto’s titles of exaltation—Mother most chaste, Virgin most renowned, Queen of angels—they invoke Mary as “Refugee woman with child, Widow alone, Mother of a Son executed as a common criminal.” Such invocations capture the pain of the historical Mary. The biblical picture of Mary encourages solidarity with her. Mary is our sister who lived a life of faith, who had to believe and “ponder in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 2:51) precisely because she did not understand why separation from her Son during his ministry was demanded of her nor why His cruel execution was the ultimate manifestation of the love of God. In her earthly pilgrimage of faith, Mary is an example to be imitated by women and men alike.
A renewed Mariology must refrain from idealizing Mary as the woman whose greatness lies only in her singular privilege of being the virgin-mother of Jesus. Her virginal motherhood is to be praised, not—strictly speaking—imitated. It can be drawn into the realm of women’s experience in such a way that her uniqueness does not separate her from her sisters. Mary as virgin and mother does not put women in an “impossible double bind”; rather, as Anne Carr observes, she serves “as a central Christian symbol that signifies autonomy and relationship, strength and tenderness, struggle and victory, God’s power and human agency—not in competition but in cooperation.” Mary’s virginal motherhood should encourage authentic liberation, not lead to despair.
In a similar vein, Pope John Paul II writes in his recent apostolic letter on women that Mary’s virginity and motherhood coexist in an exceptional, but non-contradictory, manner: “they do not mutually exclude each other or place limits on each other.” Furthermore, these two paths of every woman’s vocation “explain and complete each other.” According to the Holy Father, “this consent to motherhood is above all a result of her total self-giving to God in virginity.” Because Mary gave herself to God in all things, says the Pope, “she accepted and understood her own motherhood as a total gift of self, a gift of her own person to the service of the saving plans of the Most High” (Mulieris dignitatem, 39). Mary’s consecrated virginity and her willing maternity both manifest her surrender to the divine will.
Nor is Mary’s virginity to be interpreted as a put-down of sex. Instead, it is a positive expression of her direct relationship to God. Virginity expresses radical independence. Mary does not receive her identity from a relationship with a man but through her utterly unique relationship with God. She is not defined in terms of being a daughter or wife. Her choice of perpetual virginity was a continuing manifestation of her true freedom.
Although popular devotion has assumed that Mary’s virginity exempted her from sexual desire, no theological reason justifies this opinion. If Jesus “was tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned” (Hebrews 4:15), it is reasonable to assume that Mary, too, was tempted. As fully human, she would have experienced the whole gamut of human feelings, including desire. Undoubtedly she would have had to cope with her longings just like anyone else who has offered his or her chastity to God.
What Kind of Role Model?
To consider Mary’s motherhood as the exclusive or even primary cause of her blessedness does not square with the scriptural data. Rather, her fidelity to God’s Word and her faithful discipleship are the principal reasons for her greatness. The temptation to follow the woman in the crowd who extolled Mary’s womb and nursing breasts as the basis for her blessedness is countered with Jesus’ own reply: “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28).
Jesus challenged the Jewish belief which attributed special prerogatives to blood relationships. Indeed, during his public ministry he is quite blunt that his “mother and sisters and brothers” are “those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8;21). Jesus’ new family is constituted by discipleship, not blood. No one has been more direct than St. Augustine in pointing out this shift in principles. Because Mary did the Father’s will, “it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother,” Augustine says, “and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood.”
Mary is the model disciple for all men and women who wish to follow Christ. As the perfect disciple, she cannot be exploited to legitimate female subordination to the male, since discipleship is not to be equated with passivity. This emphasis on her discipleship complements a Marian piety which focuses on her motherhood. For Mary’s maternity is a fruit of her discipleship.
Classical Mariology curtailed men’s ability to identify with Mary. They admired her, put her on a pedestal, and compared other women to her—but they were not often drawn to imitate her. Virginal motherhood is even farther from their experience than from women’s! Perhaps the time has come for Mary to lead men to discover their own need to learn spiritual receptivity.
Mary, then, is the archetypical symbol of the feminine in every human being; we all come fully alive when we give expression to the “feminine” in us. A contemporary Mariology, therefore, should break through the stereotypical role-differentiation which has frequently marked our past, and introduce us to a Mary who “does not disillusion any of the profound expectations of the men and women of our time but offers them the perfect model of the disciple of the Lord” (Marialis cultus, 37).
Still, Mary is a symbol and model for women in a way that she is not for men. In their 1973 letter, Behold Your Mother (142), the American bishops state that Mary is “the model of all real feminine freedom.” And John Paul II is convinced that women are related to Mary in a singular way; they have “a unique relationship” with Mary; she “sheds light on womanhood as such.” Consequently, the Pope concludes that “women, by looking to Mary, find in her the secret of living their femininity with dignity and of achieving their own true advancement” (Redemptoris Mater, 46). Mary is “for” women.
Although Christ reveals to all men and women what it means to be human (see Gaudium et Spes, 22), nonetheless, as the New Adam, he also reveals the meaning of masculinity to men. In the same way, Mary speaks first to all of us. But as the New Eve she specifically reveals the meaning of femininity to women. Indeed, the Holy Father—in one of his forays “back to the beginning”—takes us there to find “the ‘woman’ as she was intended to be in creation and therefore in the eternal mind of God: in the bosom of the Holy Trinity. Mary is ‘the new beginning’ of the dignity and vocation of women, of each and every woman” (Mulieris dignitatem, 11). Because Mary unveils the profound depths of womanhood as planned “in the beginning,” she is the sign and the cause of authentic liberation.
Like her virginity, Mary freely chose her maternity by her own fiat. When she accepted the invitation to motherhood, Miriam did not first ask her father or fiance. With his usual insight, Paul VI noted that modern women can find in Mary a model of one who “taken into dialogue with God gives her active and responsible consent” (Marialis cultus, 37).
One of the errors of many Catholic feminists is their Protestant understanding of grace that leaves little room for human cooperation in salvation. From this mistaken premise follows their negative evaluation of Mary’s fiat. Luther venerated Mary because she was an exemplar of the saved person’s passive reception of God’s overwhelming grace. In Protestantism, Mary is a model of self-negation and passivity.
But authentic Catholic Mariology does not present Mary merely as a passive receptacle of grace. Rather, by stressing the necessity of her fiat it emphasizes woman’s participation in salvation. She gives creation’s “yes” to the divine offer of redemption.
Mary’s Informed Consent
Mary’s fiat was not merely a passive act but the radical decision of a young woman willing to risk her life on a messianic venture; hers was a free and active consent. Mary made a real choice; motherhood was not foisted upon her reluctantly. No act of sullen obedience nor even of humble submission, Mary’s fiat is a joyful prayer of love and cooperation. Like her Son, who “took the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7), Mary was a “slave” only of the Lord (Luke 1:38). Indeed, Mary’s consent is an act of the highest freedom, of the deepest self-realization. Otherwise, what value would it have? Her fiat is the greatest example we shall ever have of a human person with a will of her own who gave informed and joyful consent to the will of God.
Although it is fitting to praise Mary’s receptivity to God, it does not follow from her fiat that women should be submissive to men. Mary’s wholehearted “yes” to God’s plan is proper, before God, to the human person as such. Too often we describe Mary’s relationship to God in a way that erroneously confuses her response to God with what is by no means exclusively feminine. Mary’s active fiat is a model for all of us—women and men—not of female passivity before male activity.
Undoubtedly, Catholic feminists have provided us with much food for thought. We cannot continue to preach blandly about Mary if we do not at least take into account the feminist critique. Those who have rejected Mary on the grounds that devotion to her impedes their “liberation” have jettisoned something essential—both dogmatically and culturally—to the Catholic tradition. Those others who are struggling to re-appropriate the Marian tradition and Marian piety into their lives are to be commended.
If Mariology can be freed from accusations which link Mary with misogyny, with the frustration of the impossible dream of virginal motherhood, with passivity and subordination, then this Lady can shine forth as the model of the intelligent, apostolic, inquiring, faithful, obedient, contemplative, courageous and compassionate woman—and human being.