From religious icon to ‘our mother from heaven’: The appropriation of the Virgin Mary by Catholic women in Quito

In this article I look at the cult of the Virgin Mary in terms of its practices and its meanings. I did fieldwork in Quito, Ecuador, where I interviewed more than 20 women, aged between 30 and 50, who belong to Catholic groups or are active members of the parish. I found out that these women strongly identify with the Virgin Mary; they view her as a protector and a mother. Furthermore, the Virgin is not regarded as an afflicted figure or victim, but instead as a brave and empowered woman. The image they have of the Virgin contrasts with the Church's views that emphasise her obedience and sexual purity. Thus, I argue that the Virgin has become the property of these Catholic women and an icon of resistance of male-imposed Catholic rules.     

The Mother-child Relationship as an Archetype for the Relationship between the Virgin Mary and Humanity in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation

Following the work of Stevens Rogers (2002), this article starts with the premise that humanity can be seen as a child growing in changing relationship with his or her mother. With Jesus representing humanity, the relationship between a mother and a child can be an archetype for understanding the changing relationship between the Virgin Mary and humanity as narrated in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. With the Annunciation by the Angel, the Boy Jesus in the Temple, the wedding at Cana, and Mary at the foot of the cross as developmental stages, this article shows the changing relationship between humanity and the Virgin Mary. Pierre M. Balthazar is a student in the PsyD program in Clinical Psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology.     

Agency and the Annunciation

Prior research has revealed that when healthy participants, who are not artists, are asked to draw a person who is performing an action, they are more likely to position the agent on the left and the person or object receiving this action, the patient, on the right. Thus, the goal of this study was to learn whether in works of art, such as those portraying the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary, artists would be more likely to place the angel, who is the agent, on the left of Mary, who is the patient. We found that in our sample of 604 paintings of the Annunciation by different artists that the agent Gabriel is significantly more frequently portrayed to left of Mary. Whereas this result supports the left-agent, right-patient hypothesis, the reason for this spatial bias is not entirely known, but may be related to several factors such as the learned left to right direction of reading/writing in European languages, left-versus right-sided emotional facial expressive asymmetries, a left-sided spatial attentional bias and a spatial motor-action preference of upper extremity for making abductive (left to right) movements when using the right upper extremity. Additionally, biblical explanations and theological principles may have influenced the organization of this scene.     

Towards a popular queer Mariology: rediscovering the virgin through popular religiosity

ABSTRACT

In the dominant theological production of Mary as holy “Virgin,” theological discourses have ironically hyper-sexualized the Mother of God. This article explores the sexuality of the Virgin, introducing a Popular Queer Mariology. Engaging with Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s treatment of Guadalupe/la Chingada/la Llorona, as well as veneration of Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, this article contends that popular religiosity provides resources for queering the figure of Mary in ways that destabilizes whore/virgin binaries and affirms death, finitude, and the materiality of the body that dominant theological discourses have attempted to negate.     

Battered women venerating a vicious Virgin: Reconsidering Marianismo at a Bolivian pilgrimage shrine

Scholarly literature on domestic violence in Latin America often relates it to machismo and marianismo. Within this gender paradigm, women are understood to embrace the values of the Virgin Mary as a passive submissive role model. However, these studies omit facts relating to the actual role of the Virgin in daily practices. This article investigates whether women indeed view Mary as encouraging them to passively accept gender-related suffering by relating Bolivian women's experiences of domestic violence to their daily interpretations of the Virgin of Urkupiña in Quillacollo, Bolivia. We have found that the influences of religious syncretism have been largely ignored. In daily religious experiences of battered women the Virgin of Urkupiña's association with Pachamama is of great importance. We argue that women do not accept their situation in a marianistic way. Rather, rage is a central concept in their religious experiences. As their economical, social and physical means are limited, women draw on spiritual powers, among which is the Virgin of Urkupiña. The Virgin of Urkupiña is not only venerated for her capacity to endure suffering, but also as a powerful goddess of vengeance.     

The Uncanny Self in Love: Divorced Catholic Women Remember Abortion in Romania

This essay presents an ethnographic account of two divorced Catholic women's memories of praying to the Virgin Mary while seeking illegal abortions under the Romanian socialist regime. These women's stories focused on troubling memories of being in love, reflections that were retrospectively shaped by divorce. Drawing on Sigmund Freud's notion of the uncanny, I call these recollections uncanny memories of the self in love. Uncannily remembering one's self in love combines experiential self‐examination and ethical assessment of actions. The notion of the uncanny self in love thus helps bridge the divide between experience‐ and action‐oriented approaches to lived ethics. I argue that the ethical significance of the Virgin Mary's actions depended on my acquaintances’ approach to love. For one woman seeking to stay estranged from her ex‐husband, the Virgin Mary's actions accentuated his ethical immaturity. My other acquaintance harbored more ambivalent feelings toward her ex‐husband; for her, talking about the Virgin Mary helped her relativize feelings of ethical indignation. As a core implication of this argument, I urge greater awareness of the problematic tendency to include the need for greater awareness of tendencies in theories of lived ethics to reify socially situated perspectives on love.     

Mary and the Vocation of Philosophers

Pope John Paul II, in Fides et ratio #108, states that there is a deep harmony between the vocation of true philosophy and the Blessed Virgin Mary. This intriguing claim, so different from the usual link of Mary with faith, is developed in this article. Drawing analogical implications from selected events in Mary's life, two questions will be asked: How do philosophers "philosophize in Mary?;" and how could this way of philosophizing help us today to renew the vocation to be a philosopher? The following authors are considered: Thomas Aquinas, Edith Stein, Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Josef Ratzinger, Mary Daly, Robert Sokolowski, Norris Clarke, Søren Kierkegaard, Karol Wojtyla, John Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Judy Chicago, and John Henry Newman.     

Religious experience and public cult: The case of Mary Ann Van Hoof

This study focuses on the first year (1950) of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary reported by Mary Ann Van Hoof of Necedah, Wisconsin. It argues that Van Hoof's experiences met not simply the needs of the community-at-large, but also helped the seer draw meaning from an emotionally-deprived and abusive childhood. The study concludes by suggesting that public serial apparitions are complex events that should be examined for the light they shed on the interaction between the seer's personal characteristics and experiences and the public events that take shape around those experiences.Support for this article was provided by the General Research Fund of the University of Kansas.     

Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary

Book reviewed:
Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary by Francis Xavier Clooney (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) xiv + 264 pp. Reviewed by Michelle Voss Roberts Graduate Division of Religion Emory University 687 Cather Court Stone Mountain, GA 30088 USA     

Explicating Those "Troublesome" Texts of the Creeds: The Promise of Realistic Fiction

Understanding what appear to be outdated creedal commitments can be enhanced by reading "realistic fiction." The creedal "conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" is dramatically underscored by showing how a birth can be salvific in a sterile society as portrayed in The Children of Men by P.D. James. "The Resurrection of the Body" is underscored by miraculous healings after death in Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.     

On the V(I)Erge: Jean‐Luc Nancy,Christianity, and Incompletion

This article explores how Jean‐Luc Nancy attempts to gain critical traction on Christianity by proscribing thinking of completion. First, it describes Nancy's deconstruction of Christianity as stemming from his aesthetic redirection of Heidegger's thinking of finitude. Second, it further details Nancy's noetic declension of Heidegger via Kant and Lyotard, where the imagination and aesthetic communication are deemed impossible. Third, it examines Nancy's treatment of paintings of the Virgin Mary who, for Nancy, exemplifies his brand of incompletion. Nancy's work on Mary reveals both the oversights and the insights of his deconstruction of Christianity, which Catholic theology should seriously engage.     

A Rose Blooms in the Winter: The Tradition of the Hortus Conclusus and its Significance as a Devotional Emblem

The hortus conclusus, or the “garden enclosed,” is a motif of biblical origin that images the Virgin Mary as a cloistered garden. Gaining popularity in the early medieval period, the Marian hortus conclusus remained the property of the Catholic church after the Reformation. There it briefly thrived, reaching its apogee in the early modern period as the eponymous subject of Henry Hawkins’ emblem book, Partheneia Sacra. The Virgin in (and as) the garden still lives a half‐life today, continuing to appear without our recognizing it in medieval and Renaissance artwork, in hymns, in the names of flowers, and in prayers. Where it is known, the Marian hortus conclusus is usually perceived as a Catholic object of adoration, but its enduring nature suggests that it holds promise as a catholic subject of devotion as well.     

Introduction

Abstract

The introduction to the special issue situates the five following essays in the context of historical and contemporary theological reflection on maternality. It addresses the fraught connection between sexuality and maternality in the Christian theological imagination and argues that the maternal body has often functioned as a bridge between the opposed arenas of Word and flesh, God and humanity, and eternity and time. The introduction concludes by using the figure of the Virgin Mary as a lens to consider the theological themes of birth, grief, the incarnation, sacrifice, and Eucharist. Mary’s body, site of the incarnation, allows connection, mediation, contiguity, and congress to occur. As such, it also functions as a bridge between theology and sexuality.     

Recent Books in ... New Testament Studies

Books reviewed Gerd Lüdemann, Virgin Birth? The Real Story of Mary and Her Son Jesus C. E. B. Cranfield, On Romans and Other New Testament Essays Joseph A. Fitzmyer, To Advance the Gospel Walter Schmithals The Theology of the First Christians William J. Larkin Jr and Joel F. Williams (eds), Mission in the New Testament: An Evangelical Approach     

Scientology and Catholicism Do Mix: A Note on Teaching New Religions in a Catholic Classroom

Abstract. This note from the classroom explores teaching new or alternative religions within the context of a Roman Catholic Liberal Arts College. The essay will specifically focus on a section of a course entitled “Modern Religious Movements” in which students were asked to consider different methodological approaches to the teaching and study of Scientology and the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. This note from the classroom details how this rather unexpected comparison prompted students to reconsider the category cult and argues that encouraging self‐reflexivity in a largely Catholic classroom can become a crucial means for engaging a broader discussion of new religions, cult discourse, and the academic study of religion itself.     

SHORT NOTICES

Sin, Guilt and Forgiveness: The Hidden Dimensions of a Pastoral Process, Mary Anne Coate The Future of Judaism, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, T. & T. Clark Church and Society in Late Medieval England, R. N. Swanson The Book of Acts in Its First-Century Setting. Vol 2: Graeco-Roman Setting, David W. J. Gill and Conrad Gempf (eds) The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah's Role in Composition and Redaction, H. G. M. Williamson Language, Theology and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr, Samuel E. Balentine and John Barton (eds) St Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Truth, Francis Selman, T. & T. Clark Veritatis Splendon A Response, Charles Yeats (ed.) Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of the Death of Christ, M. D. Hooker This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah, Marcus Bockmuehl, T. & T. Clark Doctrine and Speculation in Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre, Thomas H. Curran, Walter de Gruyter Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian Constantinople, Vasiliki Limberis     

Leonardo's Mona Lisa: Iconic Center of Male Melancholic Religion

In previous writings, I have argued that a three-to-five-year-old boy's emotional separation from his mother is the key experience in his development of a melancholic orientation to life, and that men's religious proclivities (based on honor, hope, and humor) reflect this emotional separation. In the present essay, I argue that Leonardo da Vinci's {Mona Lisa} is the iconic center of the religion of male melancholia, and thus displaces the Virgin Mary of traditional Christianity in this regard. I provide evidence in support of this argument by focusing on Walter Pater's essay on Leonardo da Vinci, and interpreting Vincent Peruggia's theft, Hugo Villegas's stoning, and Marcel Duchamp and others' humorous assaults on the dignity of Mona Lisa as expressions of male melancholia. I conclude that the painting aids in the difficult task of transforming melancholia into mourning.     

Deconstructing the Linearity of Grace: The Risk and Reflexive Paradox of Mary's Immaculate Fiat

Abstract: Beginning from Pope Pius IX's doctrinal definition in Ineffabilis Deus, this article explores the circular paradox of the Virgin Mary's immaculate fiat. Fully contingent on Christ's work of reconciliation (and ‘immaculate’ by virtue of it), Mary's fiat paradoxically precedes that work and consents to it. The article suggests that this circularity is integral to the intimate bond that unites Mary's fiat to the Son's kenosis on the cross. Her fiat thus points the way of redeemed creation into the reflexivity of God's own intra‐trinitarian communication. Mary is hereby read as ‘the way to prayer’, the ‘epiphany’ of the Holy Spirit (as Alexander Schmemann names her) who cries ‘Abba, Father’ on behalf of those who do not know how to pray.     

Knowledge Argument: Scientific Reasoning and the Explanatory Gap

It is easy to accept that scientific reasoning cannot determine the characteristics of subjective experiences in cases like Broad’s archangel or Jackson’s Mary. The author questions why this seems to be evident and discusses the differences between these cases and ordinary scientific work, where future states of studied systems can be predicted in phenomenal terms. He concludes that important limitations of scientific reasoning are due to the inadequacy of human sensorial apparatus for representing physical reality. Such inadequacies were more evident in Mary’s case, but are always present, and entail the existence of the explanatory gap.     

Examining the Assumption

Many believe that at the end of her life Mary was assumed bodily 'into heaven' where she remains exalted by her divine son. This claim, magisterially entitled The Doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary , strikes some as absurd. Even many traditional Christians are opposed to, or have doubts about this aspect of Catholic doctrine (as they do of its non–defined equivalent among the Eastern Orthodox marked by the feast of the koimesis (dormition) of the Theotokos [the one who 'gave birth to' God]).
Typically critics regard the doctrine as being at best a sentimental piety and at worst a neo–Pagan accretion entirely lacking in support from any appropriate quarter. Others go further, however; suggesting that it is not simply without biblical or other evidential warrant but is in some way incoherent. Here I explore some of the sources of difficulties that confront any attempt to present and defend the doctrine.
Ancient and mediaeval accounts often relate narratives of Mary's final days. Significantly, however, they also reason that given Mary's unique status the Assumption must have happened because it should have done. I consider this style of deductive theology before examining certain historical presentations, in which I argue that there may be material evidence of the tradition as far back as the end of the persecution of Diocletian around the time of the Edict of Milan.
Thereafter I take up the philosophical problems, exploring various possibilities and suggesting that acknowledging Aquinas's insistence on the impoverished nature of disembodied human souls, and their need of resurrected embodiment is consistent with Mary's unique role that the mode of her present existence is of a different order to that of other separated subjects.