Marian controversy

 

If there is a controversial figure in Christianity beyond Jesus himself it is his mother Mary. I have found people who love her more than Jesus, people hostile to her as a distraction to faith and people who cannot understand the fuss about her. Mary rides on controversies about authority in the church, the nature of prayer and the experience of the supernatural. Shedding light on her is about opening closed doors between Catholic and Protestant and windows to the breeze of the Spirit of truth linked to Mary.

Sally came to see me because she could only pray to Mary. She knew as a Christian she should pray to Jesus but guilt about her son’s marriage breakdown prevented her. She felt Jesus was angry with her so it was better to go to Mary. In ministering to her I discovered something of a culture alien to me in which the saints rather than Jesus are go-betweens with God. Meeting Sally confirmed prejudice instilled in me about Catholics being on the wrong track about Mary as I was asked to put this Catholic right. The task was helped by Sally’s eagerness to seek forgiveness for wrong things in her life and her recognition that Jesus, not Mary, could accomplish this which he did as she opened up to the Holy Spirit. In talking to her I was careful to commend ongoing Marian devotion so she would see Mary as her prayer minister above as she had just been helped by my earthly prayers. 

Jim discovered heaven saying the ‘Hail Mary’. Of Protestant background he had been put off Mary, joking how she was taught to him as just another dead Roman Catholic! Bereavement got Jim thinking about the departed. Worshipping in an Anglocatholic Church using the ‘Hail Mary’ prayer got him questioning teaching about the Christian departed being absent from us as asleep. The dead, even if they had accepted Jesus, were not to be seen as present to us but in a separate realm. To talk to saints made you guilty of the spiritualism condemned in the bible. Led eventually to join in the ‘Hail Mary’ it dawned on Jim that Mary - heaven - was at his level and to be engaged with since all believers are ‘raised up with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 2:6). He felt the closeness of Mary seated beside him on Christ’s throne, privilege of believers, and it was now natural for him to invoke her prayers.

Christian controversy about Mary remains despite the scripture promise that ‘all generations will call [Mary] blessed’ Luke 1:48. It is biblical to magnify Mary because God himself honoured her in making her Mother of his only Son Jesus Christ sent to be the Saviour of the world. Week by week Christians honour Mary as they profess that ‘the only Son of God… for us and for our salvation… came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man’ (Nicene Creed). Salvation came into the world through the unique partnership of God and Mary. Though the choice of Mary is God’s, and her cooperation is inspired by God, it remains an astonishing truth that without that cooperation the cosmos would not be redeemed. The idea magnifying Mary diminishes Jesus seems strange, at least in principle. There is no competition between them in the Gospels where Mary repeatedly points to her Son as Saviour. She did this silently standing by his Cross where out of love for her Jesus gave Mary to John’s care: ‘“Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”’ (John 19:26-27). Many like Jim discover that gift as one going beyond John to all believers. As the opening lines of an Anglican hymn state: ‘Shall we not love thee, Mother dear, whom Jesus loved so well?’

Controversy around Mary links to controversy about authority in the Church. At the Reformation a section of Christendom prided itself in testing doctrine and devotion against the plain sense of scripture. St Paul, who has no mention of Mary in his writings, is a key influence. Roman Catholic doctrine, formulated from scripture and tradition by the consensus of bishops headed by the Pope, is seen by Protestants as weak in its biblical basis. The doctrines of Mary’s conception without sin, perpetual virginity and bodily assumption are rejected in consequence by many although none are contradicted by scripture. The 2005 Anglican-RC statement on Mary says ‘we agree that doctrines and devotions which are contrary to Scripture cannot be said to be revealed by God nor to be the teaching of the Church’ (44). This agreement captures the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) whose Constitution on the Church states: ‘This Synod earnestly exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word that in treating of the unique dignity of the Mother of God, they carefully and equally avoid the falsity of exaggeration on the one hand, and the excess of narrow-mindedness on the other… Pursuing the study of the sacred scripture, the holy Fathers, the doctors and liturgies of the church, and under the guidance of the church’s teaching authority, let them rightly explain the offices [roles] and privileges of the Blessed Virgin which are always related to Christ, the source of all truth, sanctity and piety’.

Over the years since Vatican II the importance of Mary as model Christian has been more recognised across denominations. In her ‘Yes’ to God given to the Archangel Gabriel and confirmed in the hardships she bore, Mary models unselfish obedience. Simeon prophesied her heart would be ‘pierced with a sword’ (Luke 2:35) and we see this fulfilled in Mary’s presence at the foot of the Cross, obediently following her Son in his sufferings. She is model Christian, one with us, exemplifying obedience to God in sorrow and in joy. At Cana she gives advice to the servants to be taken more widely: ‘Do whatever [Jesus] tells you!’ (John 2:5). Art over the centuries has attempted to capture the radiance of Mary as God-bearer. As the Archangel promised, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God’ (Luke 1:35). It is a widely accepted view, as expressed in the Church of England Prayer Book, that the Holy Spirit kept Mary ‘a pure Virgin’ freeing her from sin to be a fitting instrument of the Saviour’s birth. Through the Charismatic Movement Mary’s prayerful presence in Acts 1:14 associated with Pentecost has made her an icon of the Spirit-filled Christian life. The feast of Mary’s passing into heaven (15 August) is now kept across traditions even if its biblical base in the prophecy of John remains questioned: ‘A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars’ (Revelation 12:1).

As a heavy smoker I came to see a contradiction between filling my body with smoke whilst claiming to be filled with the Spirit. I found a devotion to Spirit-filled Mary kindled on pilgrimage to her Shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk. I knelt down in the Holy House sensing no one on earth or in heaven prayed for me as effectively as the Mother of Jesus. She knew what Jesus wanted. I asked to be freed from smoking thirty cigarettes a day and I was. From that day Mary’s intercession came real to me though I hold back from the traditionalist devotion to Mary as Mediatrix. ‘There is one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus’ (1 Timothy 2:5). Jesus made clear all Christians gain a share in that unique mediation so that ‘anything we ask in his name he will give to us’ (John 14:13). The only qualification we have as his intercessors is close abiding in him, an unquestionable quality of Mary, and expectation of the supernatural power of God. Such expectation has been much associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary over the centuries. These have come with prophetic messages calling for repentance and deeper trust in God in the face of hardship and persecution or of apathy and indifference towards God. Appearances to simple folk, often very poor as at Lourdes and Fatima, resonate with Mary’s own calling at Nazareth. Miracles associated with these apparitions amplify Mary’s thanksgiving to God recorded in her Magnificat: ‘the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name’ (Luke 1:49). Welcoming light on Marian controversy is helped by firsthand experience of the power of her prayer. Otherwise divisions about Mary can seem of little relevance reflecting institutional pride more than the humility Mary commends. If trust, obedience and Holy Spirit empowerment flow from Mary’s purity our own distrust, disobedience and spiritual apathy flow from our impurity. It is good to capture her warmth, joy and radiance which shine into all the questioning about her.