We continue our deep dive into THE HEART OF CATHOLIC PRAYER.
***
Those of us struggling with or in recovery from Mariaphobic Response Syndrome have certain passages and prayers that fill us with a nameless dread. The title of this chapter is one of them. Here, more than anywhere, there’s a certain gynecological something that sends people from my Evangelical background hurrying to the Bible to look for ways to diminish Mary by any means necessary. The fear, though we seldom get around to articulating it, is a sort of mishmash of fretfulness about idolatry, the power of the feminine, and just the frightened apprehension that all this “blessing Mary” stuff is just bound to lead to goddess worship. As we’ve already seen, we tend to dwell on Selected Bible Verses to emphasize that Mary isn’t special or anything. Indeed, so zealous is the tendency of some Christians from my old Evangelical neighborhood to diminish Mary that we even liked to bang away at things scripture does not say about Mary.
Take for starters these little samples from various anti-Catholic web sites laboring to purge Christianity of Mary:
Please note that Mary is NOT the “Mother of God,” as God was around long before Mary was born. Mary is the mother of Jesus (Acts 1:14), she is never called the “Mother of God.” Jesus never called Mary “mother,” but “woman.”[1]
The divine nature of Jesus existed from before eternity, and this cannot be said of Mary. Jesus never called her “mother.” He called her “woman.”[2]
Remember, Jesus never called Mary Mother.[3]
By this strange method of reading scripture, such anti-Marian logic also “proves” that Jesus never sneezed, never sweated, never laughed, and never blinked, since these, too, are not recorded in scripture. But this appears to be a small price to pay to shove the threatening Virgin into the closet and away from polite company.
Indeed, the deeper you go into the psyche of the determined anti-Marian, the stranger things get. As we see above, one of the oddest tendencies of those bound and determined to get rid of Mary is the peculiar insistence that Love Incarnate somehow had a relationship with his mother that was more alienated and cold than Joan Crawford’s daughter had with her Mommie Dearest.
This weird portrayal of the relationship between Jesus as the icy and aloof Son who won’t call his mother “Mother” can result in the complete dehumanization of the Virgin. The sheer gynecological disgust of the critic grows . . .
Mary did what women do. What animals do. There is only one command that mankind at large obeys, and that is to reproduce. It requires no brains, no nobility, no courage, no faith, no virtue.[4]
. . . and grows . . .
Mary was just an incubator. All she supplied was a virgin womb. God was both Father AND Mother of Jesus, Who was the Word, NOT Mary’s ovum made flesh.[5]
. . . and grows . . .
Jesus COULD NOT in any way have proceeded from the genetics of the fallen, degenerated human race. The undeniable truth is that the chromosomes of the child Jesus did not come from Joseph, but they also did not come from Mary . . . . Mary’s womb was chosen by the Creator to give form to His Human Image. The initial cell of that Human Image, with its 46 chromosomes, originated from the Throne of “the Majesty on High” (Hebrews 1:3). Mary’s womb was the special “incubator” used by the Eternal One to initiate and form the “Word of God” which was “made flesh.” The blood from Mary’s womb was used by God to protect and feed the embryo, which then became a fetus, which then became the holy child that was born. However, the blood that began flowing through the veins of that Special Human Being had absolutely nothing to do with the blood of the womb from where He was formed throughout the gestational period. For many centuries, the spirit of the deceiver has presented Mary as divine, blasphemously converting her into the “Mother of God.”[6]
Finally. in the effort to save Jesus from contact with Mary, he is ultimately “saved” from membership in the human race and becomes instead the sole member of a brand new species, born of an egg created ex nihilo and implanted by divine in vitro fertilization into an Incubator Unit he coldly refuses to call “Mother.” Of course, that means he can’t save us from the death that Adam brought into the world since Jesus is no longer a member of the human race capable of undoing what Adam did. But that is a small price to pay for some Christians if only the terrifying specter of Mary can be dispelled.
Now most Evangelicals don’t go to quite these lengths to exorcise Mary from the Christian faith, but most Evangelicals do feel keenly the desire to, at any rate, keep Mary at arm’s length. I matured as a young Christian in an environment that constantly taught me to assume that Jesus had an awkward and cold relationship with his Mother; a relationship that looks rather like the awkward and cold relationship most Evangelicals have with her.
Of which more on Monday.
[1] Available at http://www.biblefortoday.org/PDF/33_Errors_of_Rome.pdf as of March 8, 2011.
[2] Available at http://www.holybiblesays.org/articles.php?ID=199 as of March 8, 2011.
[3] Available at http://www.reachingcatholics.org/hailmarymd.html as of March 8, 2011.
[4] Available online at http://new.carmforums.org/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=107&topic_id=213665&mesg_id=213686&page= as of May 2, 2008.
[5] Available online at http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/radio006.htm as of March 8, 2011.
[6] Available online at http://www.evalverdeministries.org/The_Humanity_of_the_Lord_Jesus.htm as of May 2, 2008.
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