Why do Catholics place so much more emphasis on Mary than other Christian denominations? More important, what is it that they see that others don’t seem as interested in? Sure she is important, but Catholics seem to hold her in a place almost equal to Jesus in prominence. How did that come about, and why was it downplayed by Protestants?
Well (and Card-Caring Catholics, please jump in here to correct me) as it was explained to my by my Religion Prof., the veneration of Mary came about, in part, as a role model for good, pious Catholic women - women could emulate Mary rather than some other female bible character. (Thecla, for example).
Secondly, the Catholic religion seems to strive for a little more separation between the people and God than do Protestant religions. Mary is seen as a go-between of sorts - you know, speak to Mary about your problems or concerns, and she’ll pass the word to the big guy.
I don’t know how valid either of these points are, but they were two used by my Prof. to explain this particular phenomenon.
Al.
Catholics also believe in the immaculate conception (which means conceived without original sin, not the actual Virgin Birth). I originally thought that meant Jesus.
But apparently they believe Mary was also conceived specially, without original sin, because she had to be totally pure to be the vessel of God, etc etc.
(Forgive me any Catholics if I’m wrong, it was a Catholic who told me this).
Many (all?) also believe that Mary stayed a Virgin, ie she never slept with Joseph. This is despite a reference to “Jesus’s brothers and sisters” or something in the Gospels, which they take to mean as his close friends.
I can’t see why it would lessen Mary in any way to consummate her relationship with Joseph, as it was a proper marriaged urged and sanctioned by God. I understand that it’s perhaps related to the extreme emphasis on virginity and female purity that Catholicism tends to extol.
I’ve remembered something else. I think Catholics believe that Mary ascends (does the straight-to-heaven thing that Jesus? Saints? do - no purgatory??) and the immaculate conception might also have to do with that.
There’s just something about Mary…
Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? -Morons!
~Can you be so warm? Can you know what I feel? -Better Than Ezra
Catholics do believe Mary was a life long virgin…and wait, it gets weirder than that. According to Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Catholic dogma is that Mary’s hymen was never broken, a Jesus emerged from her without passing through the birth canal. I’ve never found support for this in the Catechism though, so I’m not sure how true this is (and I think most Catholics would gaffaw if you presented them with this as a tenet of faith).
Mary provides a female point of identification. She allows the Catholic faith to tie back to some pagan religions that were more Goddess related than Protestant Christianity. She has some beautiful prayers and festivals associated with her. Many Catholics believe Mary has a special relationship with humanity (i.e. Our Lady of Lourdes or Our Lady of Fatima).
I think a much more interesting question is how Protestantism became so successful while ignoring this female aspect of faith.
Because while I accept the validity of almost all your points in favour of her usefulness as a divine symbol, there’s still no scriptural basis for it. And we would tend to see a tie-back to pagan religions (you’re right, she just replaced goddesses in many instances) as a BAD thing.
The trick is to realise that God is not male or female, He’s spirit. And in heaven there is neither male nor female, nor are we given in marriage. Unfortunately people still have trouble bringing that concept to earth, so shortcuts like goddesses become useful… then over the years become doctrine.
What I really like is that Mary spoke in tongues along with everyone else on the day of Pentecost. Hallelujah!
I’ve heard that Christianity absorbed a lot of local worship/local religions, and that Mary became a convenient way of assimilating Mother Goddess features into the new faith.
It makes sense. Mary is revered as ever-virgin,and as Queen of Heaven. That sounds like a lot of goddessses (not necessarily the same ones).
I suspect Mary also absorbed a lot of Christian figures, too. There are several characters named “Mary” in the NT. There’s no indication that they’re the same person, but most groups seem to condense them down into two – Mary Magdalene and Mary, Jesus’ mother. One Mary (usually identified as Magdalene) gets a lot of air time in Gnosticism and in the odd sort of Apocrypha you find at Nag Hamadi. The “official” Catholic Mary might get a lot of emphaasis as a counterweight to this “heretical” individual.
Finally, I think that Mary is a popular figure with women, in large part because there are so few strong female characters (or weak ones, for that matter) in both the OT and the NT. A Mary got to be the Mother of God! That’s impressive, any way you look at it. (In a parallel development, the Mormon women have a movement to revere the un-discussed “Heavenly Mother” who is the logical ciunterpart to their Heavenly Father, and whose existence is required by Mormon theology. Mormon male authority figures don’t want to talk about her.)
I think you are missing my point…which isn’t whether there is a scriptural basis for Mary as the next best thing to Divine (and she is definately NOT Divine in current Catholic dogma - and since I’m not even Christian, scriptual basis isn’t a point I give much credence to), but how a faith (and there are many - Islam comes to mind) can have such appeal and success while leaving half the population without gender identification.
Did the 1000 or so years between emerging Christianity (i.e. Catholism) and Protestantism have such a change in gender politics to make it unnecessary? Were the early Christians that dependant on women? Was it simply necessary to appeal to the Pagan structures? Did people jump on the Protestant bandwagon and abandon a beloved Mary and the Saints out of an greater understanding of Scriptual purity? I’m not sure I buy any of the above completely - although I think all the questions get at small parts of the whole. What need did (does) the Cult of Mary fullfill, and why isn’t there that need in Protestantism?
How about the feminist theory that the recent rise in Goddess based religions (i.e. Wicca) is a backlash to the Protestant removal of the feminine from Christianity? Once again, not a theory I believe tells the whole story, but I do know Wiccans and other Goddess worshipers who left Protestantism and went looking for a woman affirming faith, so there is some truth.
I’d agree God is genderless - whichever form you choose to believe in him (or her). But I’ve been in very few Christian churches (but a few) where God is ever referred with anything but a male pronoun. It can be limiting to be left out of your own faith.
You’re thinking of the Assumption.
Basically, Mary disappeared and everyone figured that she was assumed bodily into Heaven. I think she just got sick of the 80-hour weeks headlining as Mother Of God, faked her own death/Assumption, and took off to Tahiti.
To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry:
I know ex-Catholic Pagans, so it isn’t motivated entirely by Protestants.
While you do have a point that early (and I mean pre-Constantine) Xtianity was very female based, and that Mary served as a Goddess surrogate, I would say that she’s not a perfect role model. With the immaculate conception and ascension, the Catholic Mary is only very barely human. She’s an eternal virgin and is sometimes pointed at as an example of why women should submit to the will of God, and by extention, men. These aren’t values that my Goddess-Worshipping Pagan friends hold dear.
A human, sinning, non-virgin, but very pious and good Mary, to a certain point of view, makes for a better role model. It should also be pointed out that many protestants veered away from personification of good, especially in art, in general. Mary was dropped, but God (the father and the holy spirit, at least) became less explicitly masculine.
In any event, the other factors that led to the rise of protestantism (sola scriptura, political justification for casting off Rome) would work on women just as they did on men.
Dangerosa:
Protestantism displays misogyny in different ways than Catholicism, and erasing anything even vestigially female from the Godhead is one of them.
(Not that much that is female remains of Mary once you’ve eliminated lust, sex, and childbirth of the ordinary sort. Gotta give the Catholic church credit for the ultimate antifeminist female iconography)
I dunno. My grandmother can’t have kids, isn’t having sex, and as far as I know, isn’t that lustful, but she’s still pretty obviously a woman.
I recall reading something about Paul and the other apostles trying to sell Christianity in the Mediterranean area, and not having much luck emphasizing Jesus in Ephesus (I think) where Athena was revered. When they emphasized Mary, they got a lot more takers.
I have no cite for this - does this ring a bell for anyone else?
touché 
Actually most of the grandmothers I’ve known have been a lot lustier than their kids & grandkids would suspect, but that’s not relevant to your point…
[hijack]As usual, I have to jump in whenever the world ‘Mormon’ is used. I think the main reason we don’t talk about our Mother in Heaven much is because we know so little about her. There’s virtually nothing in scripture–Joseph Smith mentioned it, and that’s it. We dislike speculation; we’ve seen where that gets us. (OK, well, really rumor and speculation is rampant among many Mormons, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.) In this way it’s similar to some other beliefs we hold that we don’t talk about much–because we don’t know much.
I once heard a woman speak on Mother in Heaven. She had pretty much made everything up, and I disliked it very much.
I think, also, that that particular belief is rather personal for a lot of people. It is for me, anyhow, and I don’t want to discuss it in public; it feels wrong. I know she’s there, and that’s enough for now.[/hijack]
You may now return to your regularly-scheduled discussion of the Virgin Mary, who I understand was particularly popular with women in medieval times, who felt that she was more accessible than Jesus, being a woman who had borne a child and endured maternal pain, just as they did. I forget where I learned that, but I took a lot of medieval lit in college, so it was probably somewhere in there.
I once asked my dad about that, and he said yes, they probably did consummate their relationship, since, in the Church, a priest once told us you aren’t considered fully married UNTIL you do so. And apparently, they were married, they loved each other, so what’s the harm?
I don’t really believe in Immaculate Conception, either.
But I think the thing about Mary as I always understood it was at the cross, when Jesus told-who, John?-that Mary would now be his mother, and he would be her son. Almost like, -Hey, look after my mom, would you? And our first grade teacher, Sr. Frances (one of the coolest little old nuns you would ever meet!), told us then that Mary became EVERYONE’S mother, so that Mary is technically our Heavenly Mother.
Plus us good little Catholic girls always wanted to be May Queen so we could crown the Mary statue in our classrooms (I got to do it in First Grade-ha!)
Dangerosa wrote:
Just like on that episode of Star Trek: Voyager where they locked on to the baby with the transporter and beamed it out of the womb!
Well, a Catholic friend of mine in grad school…who took a course from a professor who used to teach at Catholic University until they threw him out (or at least no longer allowed him to teach the Catholic theology course)…put it this way:
Above all else, Catholicism reveres two things in women: virginity and motherhood. Mary is the only one who managed to embody both of these ideals (or at least…potentially did).
I just realized that some smart-ass is probably going to ask, “Well, what about women who adopt…Can’t they embody both of those?”
Okay, I admit that the theory isn’t perfect…But if we consider motherhood in the context of “procreation” then in some sense Mary procreated while remaining in some sense a virgin. You know, you gotta be a little flexible with this religious stuff.