Mary

Mary of Nazareth, biological mother of Jesus believed by Christendom to be the Messiah, Savior, and Son of God, is indisputably historical. She is, as well, a complex tapestry of history, legend, cult, the ology, spirituality, liturgical feasts, piety, and artistic imagination. Mary has been the subject of intense devotion and dispute for millennia. In a universal way she can be considered part of the ancient goddess tradition of the archetypal Great Mother, like the Indian goddess Kali, the eternal feminine principle of life.

By the 2nd century in the Christian Church East and West, Mariology, the study of Mary, produced traditions in which the Church fathers idealized Mary. Mary—the New Eve—was viewed as the obedient female who reversed the disobedience of the first Eve, and makes possible the coming into the world the New Adam, Christ, or Emmanuel. History is replete with scholarly writings and Marian iconography, including paintings by great masters, Michelangelo's Pieta, popular devotions such as the 13th-century Angelus, the 15th-century Litany of Loreto, Hail Mary, and Rosary. The granting to Mary in 431 C.E. the title of Theotokos, meaning Mother of God, at the Council of Ephesus is but one of the many Church councils to theologically advance the importance of Mary.

There is a long history of Marian apparitions or visions of Mary appearing to ordinary people, such as the vision of Mary at Guadalupe, Mexico, in 1531 or Bernadette's visions at Lourdes in 1858 to the later 20th-century phenomena of apparitions of Mary [Page 276]reported in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia. The titles of Mary—Queen of Peace, Mirror of Justice, Mother of the Disappeared—reveal an enduring influence across generations, races, and cultures.

Contemporary critiques, articulated by feminists, find the patriarchal and misogynist influences in Western culture and religious tradition often provided a distorted vision of Mary. Passive female characteristics of submission, humility, and docility were projected onto Mary, and in turn, onto all women. Such representations offer an incomplete interpretation of both the historical Mary and the symbol that Mary is as a timeless model of courage, faith, and discipleship. Renewed interest in Mary, explored across religious and ancient spiritual traditions alike, is best exemplified in the title of the book Mary Is for Ever one(1997), a publication of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary established in 1967 for the purpose of enhancing understanding of Mary across faith traditions.