When the Council placed its declarations on Mary in a
context of the Church and of salvation history, it
eliminated the perspective of an autonomous marian discourse and any
mariological isolation. From the time of the council onwards, mariology could
no longer be a catalogue of marian truths or privileges, because Mary belongs
to the history of salvation and has a functional character with regard to the
mystery of Christ and of the Church. This clear orientation means a radical
change in direction and methodology; from now on it will no longer be possible
to discuss mariology in isolation, as in the posttridentine approach, which,
with Suarez (1585) and Nigido (1602), produced a separated “mariology”
that came down to our days.
From
the hermeneutical viewpoint it must be recognised that Chapter VIII of Lumen
gentium bears the marks of the historical and cultural moment at which the
text was produced, and therefore also of its conditioning. It tried to
“combine opposing mariological orientations,” and can thus be seen as
…
an attempt at conciliation between the traditional current that wanted a
return to its origins, with a view to the cause of ecumenism… although it
has normative value as the expression of such a broad and authoritative
consensus, it is not written in a normative style. It does not intend
crystallizing the faith and piety of the faithful, but simply ensuring that
what is essential is safeguarded while research and ecumenical dialogue
continue.
Because
of the thorny history – and going back further, because of its theological
and cultural grounding – Chapter VIII has limitations that have been
observed by the various commentators. H. Muhlen criticized the effects of the
pneumatological vacuum of conciliar theology in attributing to Mary, without
the necessary clarification, “identical functions to those that according to
Scripture are attributed above all and univocally to the Holy Spirit.”
It is equally easy to notice the absence of a patrological theology that
brings out all the consequences of the relationship of Mary to the Father. The
most glaring omission in the main marian text of the Second Vatican Council is
of an anthropological and cultural nature, inasmuch as it does not refer to
the problems of daily life and the legitimate aspirations of men and women of
our days, the relationship between mariology and anthropology, and its
encounter with the various cultures so as to make the figure of Mary
meaningful. The omission has an effect both on the conciliar instruction based
on the negative criterion of “not leading the separated brethren or any
others whatsoever into error” (LG
67) when speaking of Mary, and also of the conservative-sounding
recommendations (that ignore any renewal or creative impulse) with regard to
devotional practices and cult images (cf. LG
67).
The
Apophatic and Parenthetic Period: The Crisis in Mariology (1964-1974).
Despite
the spur provided by the positive conciliar presentation of Mary and devotion
to her, the immediate postconcilar period saw what had been referred to as
“the decade without Mary”:
…it
is surprising that the conciliar innovation found no answering echo in the
Church.Mariology and marian devotion are disturbingly close to nil. The choral
praise of the mother of God in the days of Pius XII has been succeeded by a
deep silence.
Apart
from the verbal exaggerations of this description of the postconciliar period,
which ignores both the various marian publications and also the continuation
of devotion to the Virgin in the majority of the faithful, the atrophying and
stagnating effect of Vatican II on mariological development cannot be denied.
Indeed, in 1970, a good number of mariologists from various cultural areas
jointly recognised the crisis situation of mariology and marian devotion.
While Pastor Richard Molard could note that the Council “acted as a great
damper on mariology,”
the Catholic R. Laurentin had already declared that “the marian movement is
finished” and that in 1972, we were
observing a “slow and above all relative recession, but one that goes hand
in hand with a rise in the quality level” in the field of publications on
the Virgin.
When we consider the absence of any reference to Mary either in ecumenical
dialogue or in the large treatises on christology and ecclesiology,
we cannot deny that there has been a tendency to place her in parenthesis and
marginalize her.
The
various authors consider factors to have been decisive in bringing about this
apophatic and parenthetic phase in mariology; however, they do not agree on
the influence of Vatican II with its choices and omissions
The
Council in fact rightly gave priority to the most vital problems in the
contemporary crisis of the faith, proclaiming a “hierarchy of truths.” In
this listing, pride of place is given to God, Christ, the Church, and man;
interest in Mary, therefore, tends to be pushed into the background, because
her mystery does not appear to occupy a primary position.
In particular, “the establishment of the new ecclesiocentric mariology led
to the temporary collapse of mariology as such” and to an “absorbing of
mariology into ecclesiology.”
A.Muller
sees the causes of a weakening in marian interest in the “second illuminism”
or the assimilation of critical thought that led Vatican II to oppose “the
expression of a Christianity that was above all ritual, sentimental,
introverted, impregnated with popular piety, and supported by a theology that
was conceptually very rigid but that even so was ingenuously realistic.”
With the Council,…the ritualistic tone, with its religious manifestations of
veneration, gave place to an ethics characterized by “the Sermon on the
Mount and the preaching of the kingdom of God.” In ritual in the strict
sense, the liturgical aspect is highlighted, with popular devotions receiving
less emphasis.
Apart
from this falloff in affective religiosity, W. Beinert notes a deeper cause:
the new theological way of thinking, which explores the sources according to
the historical-critical method, and moves from a mariology of privileges to an
more functional and ecclesial view of Mary.
While from the viewpoint of content a certain type of exegesis and theology
throws doubt on the traditional fact of the virginity of Mary, doubt is also
thrown-also for hermeneutical reasons-on the legitimacy of the mariological
construction itself:
From
the methodological viewpoint, mariology has suffered a great many
consequences; the tendency to submit magisterial pronouncements to a
hermeneutical reading that relativizes their significance seems to rock one of
the most basic elements of the entire mariological structure; the fashion for
“demythologization” entails a risk of reducing a good part of the
“Mary-event’ to the status of symbol; the acclaimed need to place mean at
the basis and conclusion of the theological task gives rise to a shift of
interest toward subjects and sectors in which the figure of Mary of Nazareth
seems to have no meaning.
H.
Muhlen remains within the sphere of ecclesiology ad
intra when he states that “the deep crisis in mariology…is a
pneumatological crisis,” which proposes a reorientation of people’s
attention from Mary to the Holy Spirit.
With greater intuition, Paul VI seeks the root of the crisis in the cultural
sphere, in the “discrepancy existing between some aspects of this devotion
[to the Mother of the Lord] and modern anthropological discoveries and the
profound changes which have occurred in the psychosociological field in which
modern man lives and works.”
The Council is certainly not responsible for this discrepancy, because the
latter existed prior to the Council; indeed, “the split between the gospel
and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time.”
Vatican II resolved the “marian problem” very well by offering a synthesis
with regard to Mary that was capable of reestablishing the consensus of the
various movements within the Church. It must still be regretted that
the spirit of Gaudium et spes, which was orientated toward dialogue with the
contemporary world, did not enter into Chapter VIII of Lumen gentium. The time
had not yet come for this dialogue with a view to inculturation- something
that would later be seen as one of the primary tasks of postconciliar
theology.
Because
the marian crisis has cultural roots, it is clearly not enough to seek a
balanced solution of the requirements of the various movements within the
churches, Undoubtedly, “the ultimate reason for the overcoming of the crisis
in marian piety is to be found in the respect that the Church owes to the free
and wise plan of God.”
The sensus fidei that accepts the
biblical revelation, and the mission and person of the Virgin within it, and
lives this on a deep level in its daily experience, is indispensable and
cannot be replaced by any acculturation. Even so, if mariology is to overcome
the “rejection phenomenon” and the “lack of meaning” of Mary for our
times,
it must open itself to the just perspectives, requirements, and acquisitions
of culture, and express itself in a way that is suited to it. Thus, a new
mariology is needed-one that is faithful to God and to man, vivified by a
creature impulse, and integrated not only into the present ecclesial universe,
but also into the symbolic and cultural one.
The
Conciliar Path of Renewal
Postconciliar
mariology does not move along some independent path, but takes its place
within the framework of the great theological trends, thus overcoming its
period of eclipse. As for theology, three paths sometimes cross one another
and sometimes move forward side by side. They are those of renewal, recovery, and cultural
encounter.
The
path of renewal was inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council, which, with its
spirit of renewal. led the way to an overall review of the life of the Church,
especially as regards the liturgy, canon law, ecumenism, and theology, under
the prudent leadership of Paul VI, who “immediately demonstrated an
intuitive and precise grasp of the fact that one cannot turn back.”
Theology in particular has been renewed in its methods and content,
returning to its biblical foundations, reinterpreting texts of the Fathers and
of the magisterium, and reworking the various treatises on the basis of a new
ecclesial awareness.
The
mariological renewal was neither immediate nor universal, but has moved
forward laboriously and in a relatively disjointed manner.
A
“Reentry” of Mariology into Theology?
The
hoped-for “reentry” of mariology into theology, from which it broke away
in 1602 with P. Nigido,
has only taken place to a small degree. In the postconciliar period, there
have been at least thirteen completely separate treatises on mariology,
and out of eight courses on theology, five devote a separate volume to Mary,
which is divided from the other treatises and has no organic link with them,
whereas only three include the subject of Mary within the context of
christology, eccesiology, and anthropology.
Two great shortcomings are very clear to see in all this treatise production:
not one of the postconciliar mariological manuals adopts the methodology
indicated by the Council in Optatum
totius 16; and even when they are part of a series on theology or one of
its branches, not one of them is structurally and logically linked to the
whole theological corpus.
The
sole exception is represented by K. Rahner’s Foundations
of Christian Faith, where two pages are devoted to the “new” marian
dogmas in the section entitled “ Christianity as Church.”
In
this context, Rahner is concerned to show that the developments in marian
dogma (the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption) are not some “addition
to the real and ultimate substance of Christianity,” nor something that
“would basically contradict the real substance of the faith.”
In
a positive perspective, the author applies to recent marian definitions the
postulate (that is established elsewhere) of presenting every individual
statement “in its coherence both with the one totality of faith and with the
original and unifying center of the reality of faith”:
…the
“new” Marian dogmas…have to be seen within the context of the total
understanding of Christian faith, they can be understood correctly only if a
person really believes in what we call the Incarnation of the eternal Logos
himself in our flesh, and counts this as part of Christianity’s very
existence.
Rahner
relates understanding of Mary and of mariological developments to the initial
– but decisive and definitive – moment in the history of salvation, in
other words, the incarnation, where “God communicates himself and man
accepts the divine self-communication, and they thus become irrevocably one
single individual (that is, Jesus Christ).”
And Mary, the believing mother of Christ, is linked in a unique way precisely
to this fundamental event:
From
this perspective it has to be said immediately and according to the witness of
scripture that Mary is not simply and only an individual episode in a
biography of Jesus which has no theological interest, but rather that she is
someone who has an explicit historical role in this history.
For
Rahner, Mary cannot be considered either solely from a biological viewpoint,
or in an individual and privatistic perspective, the open and responsible
attitude she assumed at the annunciation with her assent of faith gives her a
formal place in the history of salvation. It must, therefore, be stated
…that
Mary was not only the mother of Jesus in a biological sense. Rather Mary is
seen as someone who assumes a quite definite and indeed unique function in
this official and public history of salvation.
While
this maternal function of Mary plays a decisive role in the salvation of
mankind, it constitutes her own salvation in a supreme manner inasmuch as it
represents full acceptance of Christ in body and spirit. In other words,
“Mary is…the highest and the most radical instance of the realization of
salvation…”
Rahner
relates the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to this principle, as
explanation of the special redemption of Mary. Further, by uniting the
perspective of original sin to that of a contemporaneous and more intense
redemption of mankind on the part of Christ, Rahner thinks that he is
smoothing the way to ecumenical acceptance of the marian dogma:
Take
the case of an Evangelical Christian today who says that he sees a great
problem with original sin itself if today more than ever, and quite biblically
at that, we understand Adam’s sin to have been transcended and encompassed
by God’s salvific will and by the redemption of Christ. Consequently we have
to say that we are always sanctified and redeemed insofar as we have our
origins in Christ, just as we are sinners without the Spirit insofar as we
regard ourselves as having our origins in Adam. From this perspective there
really is no special difficulty with the statement that the mother of the Son
was conceived and willed from the beginning by God’s absolute salvific will
as someone who was to receive salvation in faith and love.
The
application of the principle of the perfect redemption of Mary in the context
of the assumption is equally detailed but clear. Rahner does not go into the
question of the source of this belief within the Church; nor is his intention
that of defending the timeliness of the definition of the dogma of the
assumption. Rather, he is concerned with the aspect of theological coherence
and consistency that he sees as fulfilled in it:
The
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, body and soul, into heaven says nothing else
about Mary but what we also profess about ourselves in an article of faith in
the Apostles’ Creed: the resurrection of the body and eternal life… But in
any case it is at least a possible opinion in Evangelical theology that the
fulfillment of the single and whole person does not necessarily take place on
a temporal axis which is our own, but rather it takes place for a person with
his death and in his own eschatology. If, then, as Catholics we assert that
Mary has reached fulfillment because of her quite special place in the history
of salvation and because we profess that she is the most radically successful
instance of redemption, then at least from a theological point of view it is
impossible to see why this dogma has to contradict the basic substance of
Christianity.
Despite
its brevity, Foundations of Christian
Faith provides a valid attempt to integrated Mary within theology, as
involved at the same time in anthropology, christology, protology,
ecclesiology and eschatology.
With
a View to an Ecclesiological Understanding of Mary
The
first axis of postconciliar theological reflection is “the subject of the
renewal of the Church as proposed by the Second Vatican Council.”
Strange, to say, the patristic teaching on Mary as “the type of the
Church,” which was used in Chapter VIII of Lumen
gentium, is completely absent from the various treatises on ecclesiology
and in the articles on “The Church” in various dictionaries.
This means an impoverishment of the Church, which is deprived of one of its
specific and highly evocative images; it also leads to a mutilation of
mariology, which is deprived of its ecclesial dimension and therefore runs the
risk of being reduced to a marginal and unconnected chapter.
The
timelessness of an in-depth comparison between the Church and Mary was pointed
out by O Semmelroth at the International Theological Congress that took place
in Rome in 1966. Semmelroth had previously worked out a system of mariology
that took as its starting point Mary as the type of the Church.
For this theologian, the union between ecclesiology and mariology eliminates
in both the twofold danger of mysticism
(or monophysitism) and naturalism:
Whoever
venerates Mary as the personal type of the Church cannot identify the Church
with Christ himself. Indeed Mary, and thus the Church, is intimately united to
Christ, although they can never be identified with him… Whoever venerates
Mary also avoids ecclesiological naturalism, since in all her mysteries the
Blessed Virgin prefigures the grace of Christ, through which the Church
becomes the Bride of Christ, within whose maternal womb individuals are
children of grace.
Similarly,
the fact that Mary points toward the church enables us to avoid both the mariological
mysticism that tends not to see Mary as a member of the redeemed Church,
and also the mariological naturalism that forgets that she has been raised up to
the position of a daughter of God through grace.
The
relations between ecclesiology and mariology are explained by C. Journet in L’Eglise
du Verbe incarne (three volumes: 1940, 1962, and 1969), which was judged
by Y.M.-J. Congar to be “the most profound dogmatic work to have been
written on the Church in our century.”
Journet takes as his starting point the grace of Christ, which is communicated
to the Virgin and to the Church, and thus discovers a “deep relationship, a
necessary involvement, and mutual inclusion”
between the two. It follows, in an approximate manner, that “mariology and
ecclesiology can be seen as two parallel treatises,” although, more strictly
speaking, it must be said that “mariology is a part of ecclesiology – the
part that studies the Church in its highest and never equalled point.”
Mary
is thus within the Church not as a shared fulfillment, but as its privileged
part: the Church “finds in the Virgin its highest success… Mary is the
purest and most intense fulfillment of the Church.”
To put it simply, “Mary is the prototype of the Church,” a title that
signifies
…that
within the Church, Mary is more mother than the Church, more bride than the
Church, and, through her exemption from original sin, more virgin than the
Church… Mary is mother, bride and virgin before
the Church and for the Church; in
her above all, and through her,
the Church is mother, bride and virgin.
There
is a corollary of immense ecclesiological significance: “The whole Church is
marian,” in the sense that “Mary is interiorized in the Church, to whom
she communicates her spirit.” She is indeed “the intrinsic modalizing
form, …the model, the type of the Church,” so that imitation of Mary is
necessary, because “the more the Church resembles the Virgin, the more it
becomes bride.”
Journet
continues along this line of argument, and draws on the Orthodox theologian V.
Lossky, calling Mary “the mystical personification of the Church,” and
explaining this description in relation to the Spirit.
The
typological relationship that unites Mary and the Church is accepted and
studied in greater depth by authors such as H.U. von Balthasar and L. Bouyer.
It will find its fruitful soil in the history of salvation, which places the
Church and its archetype Mary not only within the ancient people of God but
also within the Trinitarian mystery,
where the exaltation of Mary-and-Church is kept within the limits of the
created and does not usurp the divine glory.
As
regards the reciprocity between Mary and Church, it is clear that any
unilateral or constricting analogy must be avoided. Nor can the image of Mary
be fixed for all time, because it is actualized in every age, drawing on the
inexhaustible sources of the biblical and ecclesial tradition, on the
experience of faith, and on history and culture. Nor again can Mary be seen as
the only icon of the Church, because it has other archetypes (starting with
the supreme one of Christ) and other hermeneutical spectrums (including the
historical one) in which to discover its reality and vocation.
The
following are among the postconciliar tasks of ecclesiology: “reflection in
the understanding of Mary in an ecclesiological key, and of the Church in a
mariological key”;
clarifying marian typology, with particular attention to the use of metaphor;
and carrying our an in-depth study of the title “Mater Ecclesiae,” which
was discussed at the Council and proclaimed by Paul VI.
Mary
in the Postconciliar Christological Approach.
From
such intense investigation of the Church that there was even fear of
ecclesiocentrism, postconciliar theology soon moved to christology, which is
still the fulcrum of reflection on the Church.
Here
another undeniable observation must be made; an overwhelming majority of the
vast number of books on Jesus seems to ignore the fact that he is the son of
Mary, or at least does not attribute any importance to this element, despite
the fact that, as M. Bordoni observes, mariology and christology are so
closely interconnected that one draws benefit from the other.
Indeed, as can be seen from an examination of contemporary christology,
“where there is the greatest christological richness, there we find the
greatest mariological richness, and vice versa.”
1.
The “metadogmatic”
christology of E, Schillebeeckx and H. Kung, who set out to study
Christ “by moving beyond the dogma of the Church” or “without dogmatic
bias,”
interprets the virginal conception of Jesus as “a functional christological
statement,” which dictates the messianic dignity of the Son of God, but does
not transmit anything in the way of biology or physical fact.
While
the theologian from Nijmegan eliminates Mary as virgin from his formula of
faith, the theologian from Tubingen also takes his distance from the other
marian dogmas. Kung criticizes the title “Mother of God,” saying that it
has no biblical basis, that it was historically approved at Ephesus because of
“Cyril of Alexandria’s successful manipulation of the Council” under the
influence of the people and of the mediterranean religion of the Great Mother,
and that its it theologically ambiguous inasmuch as it “might imply a
Monophysite conception of divine sonship and incarnation, hypostasizing
God.”
As
regards the most recent dogmas (those of the Immaculate Conception and the
Assumption), Kung is convinced that they should be subjected to an honest
evaluation, on the basis of which we can discern the basic intentions that we
may possibly share and the concrete formulations that are to be rejected.
Kung’s
critique of mariology eventually accepts only a small nucleus formed of two
statements that have their basis in the Bible:
Mary
is the mother of Jesus. She is a human being and not a heavenly being. As a
human being and as a mother, she is witness of his true humanity, but also of
his origin from God… Mary is the example and model of Christian faith. Her
faith, which feels the sword of scandal, dissension and contradiction, and is
required in face of the cross, according to Luke,… provides a pattern for
Christian faith as a whole.
A.
Amato reaches the following conclusion as regards this archaizing
reductionism:
The
metadogmatic perspective is revealed to be in fact a metaecclesial perspective
if not indeed an antiecclesial one, impoverishing both theological
consideration of Mary and also her exemplary aspects as authentically human
and Christian. And is it really true that in order to enrich the image of
women we must impoverish the biblical and ecclesial image of Mary?
2.
The “transcentebtal”
christology of K. Rahner, on the other hand is anchored in the ”creative
acceptance of tradition’ (J.-B. Metz) and thus in the marian dogmas, which
the theologian relates to the Theotokos and thus to christological dogma:
Mary
is only intelligible in terms of Christ. If someone does not hold with the
Catholic faith that the Word of God became man in Adam’s flesh so that the
world might be taken up redemptively into the life of God, he can have no
understanding of Catholic dogma about Mary either. It may indeed be said that
a sense of Marian dogmas is an indication of whether Christological dogma is
being taken really seriously; or whether it is being regarded
(consciously of unconsciously) merely as a rather outmoded,
problematic, mythological expression of the fact that in Jesus (who is
basically just a religious man) we undoubtedly feel God (here again a cipher
for an unexpressed mystery) particularly close to us. No, this Jesus Christ,
born of Mary in Bethlehem, is at once, as One and Indissoluble, true man and
true Word, consubstantial with the Father. And so Mary is in truth the Mother
of God. It is only to someone who truly and unreservedly confesses this that
the Catholic Church can continue to speak meaningfully about her other Marian
dogmas.
When
Rahner brings discussion of Mary back to transcendental christology, which
sees Christ as the definitive fulfillment of man’s movement of transcendence
toward God, he highlights the theological function of Mary in the incarnation.
Her acceptance of the will of God, which makes her mother
in
a personal and not only a biological sense, not lonely constitutes “an event
in the public and official history of salvation, “ but also represents - and
supremely so – the role of man in accepting redemption: “Since Mary stands
at that point in salvation history at which through her freedom the world’s
salvation takes place definitively and irrevocably as God’s act, she is most
perfectly redeemed.”
In
its turn, Rahner’s mariology, with its details and explanations that range
from the title of Theotokos to the dogma of the Assumption, can act as a
criterion for discerning authentic christology.
3.
Latin-American christology attributes
new value to the figure of the Virgin. At its meeting at Puebla in 1979, the
Conference of Latin-American Bishops carried out an evaluation of the
christologies of liberation elaborated by J. Sobrino and L. Boff, and referred
to the Christ of popular religion, who is the Christ of the Tradition of the
Church, true God and true man, who must not be
…distorted,
factionalized, or ideologized… either by turning him into a politician, a
leader, a revolutionary, or a simple prophet on the one hand; or, on the
other, by restricting him, the Lord of history, to the merely private realm.
Christ
is a “living presence” within the Church, leading people “to their
liberation.” Nor is this a reductive liberation, inasmuch as it
…is
gradually being realized in history, in our personal history, and that of our
peoples. It takes in all the different dimensions of life: the social, the
political, the economic, the cultural, and all their interrelationships.
Although
she is not inserted directly into the context of the truths concerning Christ,
but into that of the Church and man, Mary is always linked to the Son as the
foundation of her motherhood and her status as example:
She
becomes the Mother of God, of the historical Christ, with her fiat
at the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. She is the
Mother of Church because she is the Mother of Christ, the Head of the mystical
body. She is also our Mother… Mary shows quite clearly that Christ does not
annul the creativity of those who follow him. She is Christ’s partner, who
develops all her human capabilities and responsibilities to the point where
she becomes the new Eve alongside the new Adam. By virtue of her freely
proffered cooperation in Christ’s new covenant, Mary is the protagonist of
history alongside him… Her whole life is one of complete communion with her
Son… Her divine maternity led her to total self-surrender. It was a
clear-eyed, generous gift that was consistently maintained.
Mary
belongs “to the intimate identity’ of the peoples of Latin America, and,
with Christ the Liberator she stands at the side of those who want to
cooperate with the liberating energies of mankind and society. With the
spirituality of the Magnificat,
which is “the culmination of the spirituality of Yahweh’s poor,” the
Virgin
…presents
herself as the model for all those…who do not passively accept the adverse
circumstances of personal and social life and who are not victims of
“alienation”…, but who instead join with her in proclaiming that God is
the “avenger of the lowly” and will, if need be, depose “the mighty from
their thrones.”
4.
Orthodox christologies reserve
a privileged place for the Theotokos, and this is of very deep significance.
In the sophiological current of Soloviov, Bulgakov, and Florensky, the mother
of the Lord is the first ontological point of contact of the Logos and the
Holy Spirit, and thus possess a “cosmic power” and a “radical sophianity”
to purify the world.
In
the ecclesial and neopatristic christologies of Evdokimov and Lossky too, the
Virgin is seen as consanguinous with Christ and as the “mystical center”
of the Church.
Orthodoxy sees mariology as a chapter of christology, or, rather, states with
N. Nissiotis that “there is no Christian theology without continuous
reference to the person and role of the Virgin Mary in the history or
salvation.”
Two
ancient titles attributed to Mary – Theotokos
and Panaghia – ensure her
proper position in the divine economy in relation to Christ and the Holy
Spirit:
The
two terms point to the fundamental truth that one can think, speak and write,
or one can meditate, worship and pray with Mary at the centre of the Church
community only when one thinks of her always as in inseparable unity with the
Christ-event in the Spirit and the ecclesial gathering as communion of saints
and the sanctified people of God.
The
Theotokos does not allow any detachment of the discussion of Mary from the
incarnation, inasmuch as she not only gives a body to the word, but is
‘fully involved because a distinctive and elect person sharing…in the
hypostasis of the Logos.” This cooperation is articulated through reference
to the early christological controversies and through the title of Theotokos,
without which we fall into the old errors:
The
insistence of early Christian theology on using only the term Theotokos
is important and is a result of the appropriate understanding of
Christology, i.e., in terms of the union in one person of the two natures,
divine and human. Either one affirms by faith that this mystery occurred fully
right from the beginning or one risks all kinds of deviation: dyophysitism
(separating the two natures), monophysitism (accepting only one in the birth
of Christ), or docetism (endorsing the idea of an “appearance-like,” but
not the happening of the event itself). Behind this insistence there is the
firm and self-evident conviction of faith in regard to the incarnation of the
Logos that one cannot speak of nature (physis)
outside a concrete person (hypostasis)
without failing into an abstract or negation of one of the two (in Christotokos,
the divine nature) and thereby destroying the full understanding of the
incarnation.
Fidelity
to the Council of Ephesus is the guarantee of Orthodox christology, so that
acceptance of the Theotokos is not optional but necessary:
The
third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) used a Christological term that
preexisted in the Eastern patristic tradition, and so placed Mariology within
Christology for ever. In the right Christology we affirm what happens in the
incarnation of the Logos, i.e., that “He who was from the beginning as the
eternal Logos, the Son of God took flesh from the Virgin Theotokos
Maria and become fully man also” (Athanasius, PG, 26, 383) and therefore “if one does not accept and recognise
the Holy Maria as the Theotokos one
is without a sense of divinity (in the incarnation)” (Geogory of Nazianzus, PG,
37, 177).
This
leads to a corollary of great importance: that “the Theotokos stands within the right Christology as the proof and the
guardian of the reality and fullness of the divine-human hypostatic union.”
Having
noted “an organic link between Mary and the eucharistic event,” and also
the anthropological typology of the Theotokos, Nissiotis concludes with the
following positive statement:
It
is clear what great importance the word of Mary has for Church life, theology
and especially for Christian anthropology today. It becomes imperative to
speak today of a Mariological anthropology if we are to deal Christologically
with the place of the virgin Mary in the economy of salvation and of her
motherhood in the Church.
Our
overview of christology has shown that there has been a certain degree of
recovery of Mary with regard to the Christ event. Future mariological
reflection will not be able t avoid taking account of certain vital points of
contemporary christology, and drawing new orientations from these, While “a
return to the earthly Jesus is fruitful and necessary today,”
equally to be hoped for is a rising mariology that takes place below and that
restores to Mary her historical, human, and creaturely dimension. If
present-day judgement of Chalcedon has had to accept the “inalienable
significance” of its christological formula, this does not mean that the
latter is necessarily exhaustive and cannot be developed along narrative,
soteriological, and eschatological lines, involving also the Theotokos. The
real character of the incarnation and its kenotic aspect make it possible to
overcome certain reservations of traditional mariology, seeing in Mary the
pilgrim of faith, who is subject at least as much as Christ to temptations and
above all to cultural conditioning. Similarly, mariological conclusions must
be drawn both form the fresh presentation of christocentrism, and also from
the various soteriological interpretations of our times.
Mary
in Ecumenical Dialogue
The
question of Mary has not yet been officially faced by the mixed commissions,
although such discussion has been strongly recommended from various quarters,
and at Nairobi in 1975, the World Council of Churches envisaged a future study
“on the significance of the Virgin Mary in the Church.”
Far from being relegated to a marginal position in ecumenical dialogue or
postponed until the future, the subject of Mary has in the meantime been
seriously considered by individual theologians belonging to different churches
at a number of the ecumenical meetings at which joint declarations are worked
out, and in publications of considerable interest that helped discussions move
forward. The most important contributions in this field concern the new
approach to dialogue on Mary and some elements of dogma and worship.
1.
The Relaxation of Rigidity and
the Ecumenical Reopening of Discussion on Mary. The preconciliar
atmosphere of closure and defense of one’s own confessional positions with
regard to the mother of Jesus is slowly giving way to an atmosphere of
authentic dialogue in a shared search.
On the Catholic
side, an increasing need is felt for a critical study of marian theology and
its history”
– indeed, for a ‘catharsis’ of mariology,
which must free itself of maximalistic rigidity, give up its structural
independence, reduce the “degenerative hypertrophy” of devotionalism,
submit marian dogmas to honest criticism, and steer clear of any parallelism
between Mary and Christ. As regards the procedure
for dialogue, the steps to be taken together can be listed as follows: to
start with the points on which there is agreement, to become aware of the
changed ecumenical climate, to establish the relationship between devotion and
doctrine, to return to the sources, and to respect the hierarchy of values.
Among
the Evangelicals, alongside certain expressions of resistance to dialogue,
there have been some contributions based on a new approach to Mary that is
both more critical and deeper.
At
a meeting of the Protestant Faculties of Theology, which took place in Rome in
1981, Jean-Paul Gabus would draw attention to “the eclipse of the marian
theme in Protestant theology” since the seventeenth century. He suggests two
explanatory causes: the development of the historical-critical
method, which, when applied to the biblical texts, strips the virginal
conception of its basis; and puritanism,
which surpasses any reference to sexuality and to the female archetype. He
states that present-day Protestant theology should shake off its twofold
scientific-liberal and puritanical heritage in order to “reopen the marian
file.”
Having
come to the defense of a “theological poetics” that would give space to
the fundamental imagery of male-female and to a concrete anthropology (as
Choan-Song Song does in Third-Eye
Theology), Gabus examines the disputed mariological questions and makes a
notable effort to move in the direction of a solution.
The
title Mother of God was not viewed
with a kindly eye by Calvin because it can lead people into error. Even so,
the thinking of the Reformer is opposed to Nestorius and in line with Ephesus,
and will be more acceptable in the measure in which we believe in “the
corporality of revelation” (W.Stahlin) and in God as truly made man. Virginity, Immaculate Conception, and Assumption can be recovered through archetypes and symbols of
purity, holiness, and nuptiality, not retrospectively, but in an
eschatological perspective that looks forward to the new reality that is still
being accomplished. As regards human
cooperation in the work of salvation, Gabus rejects the idea of the
self-glorification of man and of the “parity” between divine initiative
and human response. Even so, he wonders why the Protestant theology of
salvation should not include “the free response of man, the ‘Yes’ of
Mary and of every believer to the offer of divine grace.”
And as regards Mary’s intercession,
he says that
…to
the extent that the Church dialogue partner agrees to confirm the unique
mediation of Christ, and the Protestant partner the reality of a communion
between visible Church and invisible Church, dialogue and mutual understanding
have become possible.
Lastly,
while refusing any mariolatry and autonomous mariology, Gabus fully agrees
with “the criteria for a healthy mariology” proposed by Marialis cultus : the essentially christological character, the
pneumenatological dimension, the ecclesiological significance, the importance
of biblical emphasis, the integration of praise of Mary into liturgical
renewal, ecumenical concern, attention to the contemporary social conditions
of life, the elimination of risks (credulity, sterile sentimentalism,
narrowness of mind, exaggerations as to content, the appeal to legendary
elements).
In
the interesting document Maria, produced
by the Evangelical-Lutheran German Churches, we would recall the statement
that “Mary is not only Catholic but also Evangelical” and that “for the
Christian faith Mary performs an illuminating role and not a normative one.
Mary can illustrate Christian existence but is not its foundation.”
A
great understanding has been carried out by Pastor W. Borowsky, who discerns
three areas for ecumenical dialogue on Mary: common
ground in which all parties agree is that of the biblical figure of Mary,
the believing, suffering, serving mother of the Lord; the area of pluralism – in
other words, that of unity in diversity – also includes the last two marian
dogmas, which do not necessarily have any biblical standing but are something
more than Catholics claim to know, and do not threaten unity; and lastly, the area
of disagreement covers the titles given to Mary in parallel with Christ,
and devotion offered to her. In order to work together, the disagreement must
be gradually brought into the area of pluralism, and pluralism into the area
of unity.
While
G. Maron holds that Protestant theology performs an important role in the
search for “the true image of the mother of our Lord, hidden behind the
luxuriant overflowing mass of a mythical ‘mariology,’”
J. Moltmann points out three types of prejudice that would compromise
mariology and prevent Mary “from being a figure in the liberating history of
the gospel of Christ”: (1) the link with celebacy
when this is not lived out evangelically in the mixed community of
believers; (2) the connection between mariology and politics,
which transforms the apocalyptic Mary into a symbol of struggle against
reform or attack against the established order; and (3) the link between
mariology and popular religion, which
has made of marian devotion “a storehouse of the most varied needs and
religious aspirations,” and of the sensus
fidelium, the criterion of new mariological dogmas.
Moltmann’s
observations challenge Catholics to reconsider their own assumptions
(and not only those of the Evangelicals) and to work out a mariological
approach that is biblical (expressing
the “true Mary”), ecclesial (in
the context of other believing women), pneumenatological
(oriented toward the presence of the Spirit), and above all christological: “Without Christ, no Mary; and without christology,
no mariology!”
M.
Thurian sets himself outside any rigid patterns with his further movement in
the direction of an encounter with the person of Jesus and with that of his
mother, who “lives to day in the communion of saints” – an encounter
that is to take place through contemplation and liturgy, and not only through
exegesis and theology. Having highlighted the links between Scripture and
Tradition (“Scripture alone” is not the same as “ Scripture
isolated”), and between grace and freedom, Thurian distinguishes five forms
of marian prayer (memory, recollection, acclamation, request for intercession,
direct request), placing the last two within the sphere of Christian freedom.
Some
important ecumenical progress with regard to mariology can be seen on the part
of the Anglicans. Anglican theologians play an active role in the Ecumenical
Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was founded in 1967 by the Catholic
layman Martin Gillet. Articles and addresses submitted to this association
have been published in a thick volume.
J.de Satge’s book, Mary and the
Christian Gospel, is noteworthy for its serious approach and ecumenical
openness; the author writes that it was “written in an attempt to find an
attitude towards the Lord’s mother which will include the essentials of
Catholic teaching about her, and at the same time do justice to the central
impulses of evangelical Christianity.”
The
Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission (1982) contains a page
on Mary. This notes the Anglican difficulties with regard to the last two
Marian dogmas, but also expresses considerable agreement in other areas:
We
agree that there can be but one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ,
and reject any interpretation of the role of Mary which obscures this
affirmation. We agree in recognizing that Christian understanding of Mary is
inseparably linked with the doctrines of Christ and of the Church. We agree in
recognizing the grace and unique vocation of Mary, Mother of God Incarnate (Theotokos), in observing her festivals, and in according her honour
in the communion of saints. We agree that she was prepared by divine grace to
be the mother of the Redeemer, by whom she herself was redeemed and received
into glory. We further agree in recognizing in Mary a model of holiness,
obedience and faith for all Christians. We accept that it is possible to
regard her as a prophetic figure of the Church of God before as well as after
the Incarnation. Nevertheless the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the
Assumption raise a special problem for those Anglicans who do not consider
that the precise definitions given by these dogmas are sufficiently supported
by Scripture.
2.
Ecumenical Meeting Points with
Regard to Mary. Together with various subjects that are considered every
now and then, the thorny questions of the mediation of Mary and of devotion
to her are the object of debate and understanding between the
representatives of different confessions.
The subject of mediation
reappeared in 1974 in a basic text that the Calvinist H. Chavannes
proposed for ecumenical discussion. In the analysis of this
theologian, the different interpretations given by Catholics and Protestants
to the unus mediator springs from
“different metaphysical attitudes.” For Catholics, these are constituted
by the doctrine of participation, according to which there is both radical
difference and also similarity between God and the world; Mary can share in
the one unique mediation of Christ in an analogous sense, that is, with a
shared dependent mediation that is oriented to that of the sole Mediator. On
the other hand, the metaphysical presupposition of Protestants is nominalism,
which reduces the analogy to a distinction of reason, placing God and man on
the same plane of action, and thus in competition, because “if cooperation
between man and God belongs to the same order it is clear that God’s action
within man diminishes the latter’s part.” In practice, Chavannes
concludes, we should return to the thomistic concept of participation in order
to overcome the disagreement on conceptions of the relationship between man
and God.
Chavannes’
text received the formal agreement of the Catholic S.C.Napiorkowski in the
name of the creeds of early Protestantism (Confessio
augustana, Liber concordiae, etc.), which accept a salvific mediation in
things and in persons, but “in Christo.”
R. Laurentin also accepts Chavannes’ proposal, recognizing that the key to
the present disagreements and confusion is to be found in the different
philosophical presuppositions and in the questioning of
“the philosophy of participation.” However, he does not align
himself with the notion of “mediation,”
which “has many meanings, and is ambiguous and full of traps, so that it
must be used with the utmost circumspection.”
While
the Anglican E.L. Msacall states that he is “in virtually full agreement”
with the views of Chavannes,
certain reservations or radical criticisms are voiced on the Protestant side.
The
subject of mediation remains open to further study.
As
regards the place of Mary in Christian worship, the most valuable contribution
is offered by the International Mariological Congresses of Zaragosa (1979) and
Malta (1983). The first deals with the problem of terminology, bearing in mind
“the psychological difficulties…which many Christians experience…in
particular over the use of the word ‘cult’ (worship or devotion) in
relation to created persons.” Thus, the twenty-two
signatories of the ecumenical declaration of Zaragosa prefer to speak of
“the facts in which our worshipping attitude reveals itself” (No.5). AS
regards the fundamental attitudes of praise, imitation, veneration, and
invocation of Mary, the text is nuanced by generally positive:
1.
We recognize together that all Christian praise
is praise of God and of Jesus Christ. If we praise the saints, and, in
particular, if we praise Mary as the Mother of God, our praise is essentially
to the glory of God, who “in glorifying the saints, crowns his own gifts”
(Latin Preface of the Saints). This praise is expressed in the liturgy, in
hymns, and in the life of the faithful. In relation to Mary, it corresponds to
the words of the Magnificat: “Henceforth all generations will call me
blessed.” The practice of praise of the Mother of God has become an urgent
question for all Christians.
2.
We recognize the importance of imitation
as an element which is common to the traditions of our different churches
concerning Mary. As we find particularly in the Magnificat, Mary is seen as
the humble and most holy servant of the will of God. This imitation involves,
in a special way, the Gospel understanding of poverty before God. The
spiritual attitude of Mary was her total response to the Word of God, and,
thus, she became the temple of the Holy Spirit who accomplished in her the
Incarnation of the Son of God (Lk 1:35-38).
3.
The veneration of the Mother
of God, which is lived in our churches in different ways already mentioned, is
never the adoration which is due to God alone. The distinction made by the
Second Council of Nicaea, that is, between the adoration (or worship) of God
and the veneration of the saints (proskunesis-latreutike/proskunesis-timetike)
remains vital for all of us.
4.
The problem of the invocation and
intercession of Mary was examined
afresh in this congress. We have considered it against the background of the
communion of saints. As a Christian can and should pray for others, we believe
that the saints, who have already entered into the fullness which is in Christ
(amongst whom Mary holds the first place), can and do pray for us sinners who
are still suffering and struggling on earth. The one and unique mediation of
Jesus Christ is in nothing affected by this. The meaning of the direct
invocation of the saints who are alive in God, an invocation which is not
practiced in all the churches, remains to be elucidated.
At
Malta, a further step was taken towards a marian piety inserted into communion
with the heavenly liturgy as centered on the Lamb. Within the communion of the
saints in heaven, Mary continues the prayer she prayed in the upper room while
waiting for Pentecost (Acts 1:14). If “praying to Mary” clashes with the
“Apologia” of the Confessio
augustana, it is possible to “pray with Mary,” as the ecumenical
declaration of Matla states in its central passage:
Mary
the Mother of God has a place within the Communion of Saints. It is precisely
the relationship to Christ which gives her a singular role in the Communion of
Saints, a role that is of christological origin. Further, the prayer of Mary
for us should be seen in the context of that worship of the entire heavenly
Church described in the Apocalypse, to which the Church on earth wishes to
unite itself in its own corporate prayer. Mary prays with the Church, as once
she prayed in expectation of Pentecost (Acts 1:14). There is no reason
preventing us, even with our confessional differences from uniting our prayer
to God in the Spirit with the prayer of the heavenly liturgy, and especially
with the prayer of the Mother of God.
It
is hoped that these ecumenical agreements on Mary will move toward official
approval and popular acceptance.
The
Complimentary Path of Recovery
During
the postcontestational period of a return to the private sector or the
reconstruction of its group identity, in the Church too there is a tendency to
turn to the past in order to recover some vital elements that were not
sufficiently developed by the Second Vatican Council. And the pneumatological
dimension of mariology, and popular piety, must be included among these
elements.
The
Pneumenatological Dimension of Mariology
The
Second Vatican Council undoubtedly contains “a precious, if incomplete,
series of orientations” on the relationship between Mary and the Holy
Spirit, although it “did not give details of this relationship in any
special paragraph.”
Two
particular cases of pneumenatological shortcomings with regard to the
pneumatological dimension can be seen in Chapter VIII of Lumen gentium. Number 62 attributes to Mary titles of “Advocate,
Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix,” without adding, as it did for Christ,
that these are to be understood “in such a way that it neither takes away
from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy” of the Holy Spirit.
Then, in number 68, which presents Mary in an eschatological perspective,
there is not “even the briefest of references to the Holy Spirit.”
In
the postconciliar period, various theologians filled the pneumenatological
vacuum that also involved mariology, considering the relationship between Mary
and the Paraclete in greater depth.
Among
the first to work along these lines was H. Muhlen. In the second edition
(1967) of his Una mystica persona, he
adds a broad study on Mary and the mediation of the Spirit, in which he sets
out “to prove that the Trinitarian-pneumenatological horizon of ecclesiology
must apply also to mariology.”
Although
Muhlen accepts that Mary is to be considered “the normative subjectivity of
the Church in her response as bride to Christ,” he takes his distance from
the position of von Balthasar with regard to the subject of the Church:
We
would thus not say that the Church, which proceeds from Christ, has its
“personal center” in Mary; Mary is, rather, the historical beginning
of the Church as bride of Christ – and this beginning also has an
“exemplary” power, since it is the highest and matchless point. We should
instead indicate that the personal center, in which the whole Church
(including Mary as “acts-of–us”) has its unceasing source, is in fact
the Holy Spirit.
Muhlen
goes on to discuss the legitimacy of the “mediation” of the Spirit, which,
although derived from Christ, has a biblical basis in the formulae en
and dia as referred to the Spirit (Eph 2:18; 4:30; 1Cor 12:4-11). The
mediation of Mary cannot, however, be compared with that of the Spirit, which
has a character of immediacy. Further, all exaggeration will be avoided if we
realize that mariology “must move through the crucible of pneumatology in
such a way as to be freed of those ‘theologoumenons’ that could give the
impression that Mary is de facto placed
in the position and function of the Holy Spirit.”
Among
these “theologoumenons’ we must include the “treasury of grace”
conceived of by Clement VI as a mass of graces entrusted to Peter or
distributed by Mary. This is a “quantitative” concept of declining
scholasticism, which tended to forget that “the Holy Spirit himself is that
storehouse of graces that Christ has won for us.” Muhlen says that we must
reject the idea that Mary can “authoritatively” attribute grace to us,
because this would mean conferring on her a power over the Spirit – although
she can, with her intercession, obtain the descent of the Spirit for us, as
she did on the first Pentecost.
On
the contrary, it is the Spirit who has power over Mary, because she “is
under the dominion of the Spirit like no other man,” both through the
biological processes necessary for the growth of Jesus within her womb (the
“personological” function willed by God), and also through her free and
conscious act of faith, and her cooperation in the redemptive work of the Son
(the “personal” function). Such cooperation must also be interpreted as
“first and foremost a collaboration in the collaboration that he Holy Spirit
gives to the redemptive work of the Son.”
In
Marialis cultus (1974) and I his
letter to Cardinal Suenens on the occasion of the Mariological Marian Congress
held in Rome (1975), Paul VI demonstrated great sensitivity to the
requirements expressed by Muhlen with regard to the theoretical and vital
recognition of the role of the Spirit, and also the possibility of a wrongful
substitution of the Virgin for the Paraclete. However, unlike Muhlen, Paul VI
denies that Catholic piety should be diverted from Mary to the Spirit:
We
consider, therefore, that the action of the Mother of the Church, for the
benefit of the redeemed, does not replace or compete with, the almighty and
universal action of the Holy Spirit, but implores an prepares it, not only
with prayer of intercession…, but also with the direct influence of
example, including, what is
extremely important, maximum docility to the inspirations of the divine
Spirit.
Theologians
of the postconciliar period have considered how best to express the intimate
bonds uniting Mary and the Holy Spirit from the moment of the Annunciation –
or, rather, from the Immaculate Conception – up to the Assumption. R.
Laurentin faithfully follows the conciliar choice, and refuses to accept
the title “bride of the Holy Spirit” because it ignores the Bible, in
which Christ is presented as bridegroom (Eph 5:25-33; 2 Cor 11:2) and the
Spirit as bond of love.
Other theologians hold, with Marialis
cultus, that “a nuptial aspect” can be discerned in the hidden
relationship between the Holy Spirit and Mary – as was seen by the poet
Prudentius (d. ca. 405) and St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), the first western
author to attribute the title “bride of the Holy Spirit” to Mary.
Alongside
this path of nuptiality, a number of authors follow that a certain
identification of the Holy Spirit with Mary on the level of activity or
synergy (Bertetto), visible mission (Manteau-Bonamy), transparency (Pikaza),
and even personal unity (Boff’s hypothesis).
D.
Bertetto reflects on the fact that Scripture speaks of the prayer of
Christians as an effect of the joint action (synergy) of themselves and the
Spirit (cf. Rom 8:15). He sees the incarnation as the most outstanding case of
such synergy, and says that in this mystery “on the level of action (not that of being) it can be said that the principle is one:
Mary and the Holy Spirit in synergy, so
that the same action is attributed to Mary and to the Holy Spirit.”
H.-M
Manteau-Bonamy holds that in the incarnation the Holy Spirit descended in
person on Mary, and it follows that the Virgin Mother becomes “the physical
manifestation of the personal presence of the Holy Spirit” and that her
motherhood is divine not only because its end is the person of the word, but
also because its source is the person of the Holy Spirit.
In1981,
X. Pikaza published a long study on “Mary and the Holy Spirit,” in which
he gives a careful interpretation of Acts 1:14, a text that mariologists have
tended to leave on one side. Biblical analysis of this verse leads us to a
distinction between the person of Mary as expressly named, and the group of
apostles, women, and brethren of Jesus (here the and is always disjunctive). Although Mary stands out because of her
importance, as witnessed to by the gospels, she is integrated into the
community of disciples and friends of Jesus. She is part of “all those”
who receive the Spirit at Pentecost and who speak in tongues (Acts 2:1,13).
In
order to understand the importance of Mary’s presence at Pentecost, we must
remember the angel’s promise to the Virgin and reread it with deep
attention: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you…” (Lk 1:35). This text
can be interpreted in three different ways: the approach of eschatological
creation (Barret), which sees Mary as the chaotic and infertile earth of
the beginning of time, but as made fruitful by the Spirit; the approach of sacred
dwelling (Laurentin and Feuillet), which sees Mary as the sacred place in
which the spirit dwells in order to pour himself
out over all people; and the approach of personal
transparency (Pikaza), which sees in Mary the encounter with God in
freedom and love, “the expression of the Spirit,” “a manifestation of
the power and reality of God among men.”
This
biblical interpretation is to be distinguished both from that preferred by the
Protestant tradition, which recognizes primarily the believer in the mother of Jesus, and from that of the Catholic
tradition, which emphasizes the Virgin as Christ’s collaborator. It is in line with the Orthodox interpretation, which
admires the Theotokos as the icon of the
Spirit. For the Orthodox Bulgakov and Evdokimov, Mary is “the instrument
and the place of the manifestation of the Spirit,” the “pneumatophore par
excellence,” “the hypostatic revelation” of the Spirit.
It
can be seen from this postconciliar overview that western theology is
overcoming the pneumatological vacuum and the tendency to christomonism. And
this has immediate applications to mariology.
The
movement to a mariology that is open to consideration of the Spirit does not
mean giving up christocentrism, because the Paraclete (and with him the
Virgin) has the primordial function of uniting us with Christ, who remains the
sole mediator of salvation. However, it means that Christ and Mary should no
longer be seen in a closed relationship but within the Trinitarian context.
Hence, the need not to neglect the Spirit (and, analogously, the Father) when
dealing with the function of Mary and of devotion to her. Clear symptoms of
pneumantological underdevelopment can be seen in the fact that discussion of
Mary is concentrated on Mary without reference to the Holy Spirit, on which
she in fact depends in her mission and holiness, and in the simplification of
the biblical taxis or “order”
(cf. Eph 2:18) to such an extent that no trace of the Father and the Spirit is
left, as is seen in the motto “Ad Jesum per Marian,” which should at least
be completed and expanded to: “Ad Patrum per Christum in Spiritu Sancto cum
Maria.”
Theological
research has established an area of agreement in which Mary is recognized as
the place of encounter, witness or sign,
and sanctuary of the Spirit: through her special acceptance of the
Paraclete at the Annunciation and at Pentecost, the Virgin became par
excellence “she who bears and is conformed to the Spirit.”
Theology
is trying to use this consensus as a base camp for moving toward new
frontiers, but it has met with some hesitation as to terminology and some rash
hypotheses. While theology rejects the identification between Mary and the
Spirit on the personal level,
it does tend to emphasize the unity existing between them on the operative
level. As the exemplary expression of a creature molded by the Spirit, the
Virgin becomes a pattern for the Church and for man, and her very
“presence” within history is seen as the effect of her pneumatic sharing
in the condition of the risen Christ.
Mary
in Popular Piety
After
the fierce criticisms of Protestant theology and prophecies and the end of
popular religion issued by sociologists and theologians of secularization,
various sociological and pastoral factors brought the subject to the forefront
in the seventies.
It
is of interest as a mass phenomenon that encompasses values such as community
openness, the sense of celebration, and a deeply felt relationship with Mary,
and which is rich in inspiration for theology, symbology, and culture. Indeed,
popular religion is identified with Mary, the symbol of the age-old tragedy of
poverty and suffering that is at present acting as a spur to liberation:
This
fundamental paschal dimension comes to us through devotion to the Virgin Mary,
especially by means of meditation and the recitation of the mysteries of the
rosary. The people of Latin America feel they are interpreted and absorbed
into Mary.
The
first Protestant theologian to take an interest in the marian aspect of
Latin-American Catholicism was H. Cox, who was impressed by two elements,
which he describes in his diary: the Mass of the Assumption as celebrated by
Bishop Mendes Arceo in Cuernavaca Cathedral in Mexico in 1971, and a fresco in
Sante Fe representing Christ and our Lady of Guadalupe together with national
heroes.
Bishop
Mendes Arceo’s sermon was vigorous and simple:
Mary
is poor like the oppressed people of the Third World. The “Assumption”
does not mean that she “goes up”… but that she is now united with
Christ, who is “the liberator in our midst.” Together at this very moment
they are “tearing the imperial powers from their thrones,”…sending the
rich away empty, lifting up the downtrodden, supporting “us” in our fight
against dependency and imperialism. Therefore, on with the battle!
According
to Cox, in almost all cases “through prescribed marian piety, the anger and
aspiration of women is sapped and deflected.”
Mariology
often functions, among poor men and women, in ways that are cruelly alienating
and repressive: Mary as royal benefactress, a cosmic lady bountiful; Mary as
virginal mother; Mary as sentimental pleader to Those Higher Up… Official
Mariology is a form of seduction, a calculated misuse of the Spirit.
The
sermon preached in Mexico has its place in another perspective, and performs a
process of consciousness raising and political radicalization, showing that
the religions of the downtrodden have moved from expression to protest, and
from protest to action. There is thus a hidden value in marian piety, which
must not be abandoned because of its official abuse: “Those who support
justice for the poor cannot spit on their devotions. They must realize that
the faith of the poor is not just opiate
but also cry.” And, continuing this line of reasoning, Cox recognizes that
“especially for millions of very poor women, Mary is the central religious
reality in their lives, the spiritual energy center that gets them through
many tiring days and trying years.” It is no coincidence that God “in
Hispanic popular piety is almost always pictured as dead: as Christ in a
casket, being lowered from the cross, being placed in the tomb. Mary on the
other hand is the radiant incarnation of life and flesh.” “As Queen of
Heaven, Mary is depicted without any child in view… Mary is not just a woman
but a powerful, maybe even liberated woman.” “If God is dead, Mary is
alive and well, and she deserves our attention.”
In
Santa Fe fresco, which shows our Lady of Guadalupe under the guise of Tonantin,
the Toltec goddess of fertility, suggests “another religious epistemology’
to Cox: “Mary allows us to plumb again, in ourselves and in our cultural
unconscious, that psychic sector which lies dormant but not dead beneath our
overdeveloped cognitive intelligence.” “Mary is so obviously an aggregated
of human fantasy, myth making, projection and all the rest” that she
“takes us completely away from our obsession with true-or-false games. She
puts us literally ‘beyond belief,’ “ carrying us into a perspective of
symbology and meaning.
The
official Catholic position is expressed in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
nuntiandi of Paul VI (8 December 1975), which describes popular
religiosity, with its limits and values, as a “reality which is at the same
time so rich and so vulnerable,” but one that must not be ignored because
“when it is well oriented it constitutes “a true encounter with God in
Jesus Christ” (No. 48). Paul VI observed elsewhere that the presence of Mary
within the people is a vital reflection of the plan of salvation:
It
is in fact true that Mary occupies a privileged position in the mystery of
Christ and of the Church, and she is therefore always present within the souls
of our faithful, permeating them in their every religious expression and
manifestation within their depths and also outside.
A
large number of studies have moved in the direction of an analysis of the more
notable forms of marian devotion, examining shrines and places of pilgrimage,
and collecting marian material (songs, poems, customs, and traditions) for
some specific geographical area.
This has provided a fresh and varied picture of popular ways of honoring Mary,
and this material is now awaiting a serious study in the field of theological
hermeneutics.
L.
Lombardi Satriani has penetrated into the sphere of popular legend, tradition,
and poetry, and has collected details of “the Madonna of folklore” within
an anthropological perspective. The picture that emerges is that of a woman
who is part of a family, a young woman who still has things to learn, a model
to help in overcoming negativity and death, a mediatrix with the wrathful Son,
chosen worker for the poor.
On
the theological side other features of the Madonna of the people are being
noted, and G. Agostino summarizes these as follows:
a.
Mary is welcomed as a living presence;
b.
as a maternal presence, who is relevant as individual and universal
mediatrix;
c.
she shares human suffering;
d.
because she is mother, she is the vehicle of communion;
e.
she is the model of Christian existence, the pattern of what we
should be, and the fulfillment of what we should like to be.
Theology
is still faced with the task of working out a “popular mariology” that
integrates the authentic figure of the Virgin into the roots of the ecclesial
tradition and the cultures of the various peoples. This work must have a
biblical and patristic foundation, deal with inculturation, and act as a
life-giving translation of the message of salvation.
If
the people are taken seriously and viewed as a “theological locus,” this
will also lead to an appreciation of their intuitions with regard to Mary.
This is an effect of the sensus fidelium,
whose role in fostering closer adherence to the truths of the faith was
seen in the definition of the marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and
the Assumption.
The
central aspect of popular understanding of Mary today is undoubtedly the
perspective in which she is seen in faith as a living, glorified, holy person,
endowed with power and maternal goodness, and thus as able to intervene in
human affairs.
There
is one result of this that is of great practical value and that has been
formulated as follows by the Church of Latin America:
A
purely typological marian piety has no value for formation, and is simply a
pastoral illusion. It is not enough to say that the Virgin is an example of
fidelity to the word and of strength in suffering…and that we must therefore
imitate her. If we do not foster the bond of love and healthy affection for
the person of Mary, the call to imitation of a prototype is simply a
categorical imperative. In order to make the charisma of Mary fruitful, the
marian bond (which has pedagogical priority) must lead to a marian attitude
(which has concrete priority).
Further,
the working out of a “popular mariology” should move from the
eschatological condition of Mary in her influence in bringing about the
“marian factor” in the Church, in order to descend into the biblical
events of her life and her divine motherhood; it will thus be a new type of
mariology, which reverses the method of the manuals.
The
Path of Cultural Encounter
The
period from 1966 to the present day [1980] has not been marked by some fearful
turning back of theology into itself. On
the contrary, alongside in-depth study of the conciliar texts, we have also
seen a great deal of research activity which consists of exploring new paths,
and in which hastiness sometimes goes hand-in-hand with generosity of
intention.
The
new paths of theology in general act as a counterbalance for mariology, which is thus forced to measure itself against the
cultural trends of our days. The western consciousness has been shattered, so
that we have realized that other cultures exist within which new theologies
have been growing up, such as the liberation theology of Latin America or
“black theology,’ which have hitherto unimagined ways of approaching the
subject of Mary.
At the same time, mariology is also
involved in the feminist movement and in that of feminine theology, which
emphasize the otherwise generally ignored fact that Mary is a woman, and also
the need for an “alternative” type of mariology.
Lastly,
there are tendencies to secularization, demythologization, and structuralism,
as well s development in the human sciences of language, and all these
elements confront theology (and mariology) with the problem of the
interpretation of the information that has been handed down. Mariologists are
therefore encouraged to carry out a revision of the various dogmas and to
discern the significance of Mary for our present age.
Mary
in Theological Esthetics and in the Theodrama
of
H. U. von Balthasar
The
work of H.U. von Balthasar can be situated within the broad range of a
theology anxious to carry out an in-depth study of transmission of revelation
in a way accessible to the contemporary mentality, but without falling victim
to cultural fashions. He devotes a broad space to the mother of the Lord, and
in his work mariology becomes fertile ground for the application and testing
of new paths, such as theological esthetics and theodrama.
1.
Mary as the Masterpiece of the
ars Dei. In his fundamental work Herrlichkeit.
Eine theologische Aesthetik,
von Balthasar sets about a systematic interpretation of revelation, making
use of a category neglected by contemporary theology; “beauty,” which is
the object of esthetics.
Theological
esthetics means contemplating God, not as he communicates truth, or as he is
good to man and helps him, but as he draws near to man in order to manifest
himself in the eternal splendor of his trinitarian love. This is the reason
why this theological esthetics is called Herrlichkeit
(that is, Glory).
In
the development of his system, the author does not omit explicit reference to
Mary and to her function as prototype of the Church, thus showing “the great
significance that mariology has within a theological esthetic.”
Discussion of Mary has its place in the twofold task of theological esthetics:
the esthetic perception of revelation as the uncovering of God who reveals
himself (subjective evidence), and the manifestation of the glory of God in
the figure (objective evidence).
Unlike
rationalistic theology, theological esthetics wants to view the figure in
concrete terms without giving in to the reduction of logical procedures. In
“conversion to the image,” the idea shines forth in a visible and
plausible manner, and its significance is felt intuitively as in a work of
art.
Now
in the Virgin Mary, we have an image or figure of very strong esthetic value.
As God’s “work of art,” Mary’s essence is like a malleable substance
at the disposition of the divine action: “Mary’s life must be regarded as
the prototype of what the ars Dei can
fashion from a human material which puts up no resistance to him.”
Following
the line of Fichte and Hegel, von Balthasar emphasizes the esthetic quality of
the image of Mary on the natural level too:
The
image of Mary is in contestable, and even to nonbelievers it represents a
treasure of inviolable beauty, even when it is understood not as an image of
faith but only as a sublime symbol interpreted according to universal human
categories.
In
the Christian sphere, the meaning of the figure of Mary lies in the revelation
of the Church as christiform. The
church is undeniably very complex and cannot be revealed totally by Mary: it
has other archetypes in Peter, as regards its hierarchical function, and in
Rahab, as symbol of its position as casta
meretrix. Even so, Mary’s special position “can at least set us on the
path toward integral response, in view of the fact that it is the infinite
openness of her attitude of faith…that makes Mary the ideal (moral) and real
(physical) sense of the Church.”
If
we want to eliminate the weakened image of the Church, which overshadows it to
the extent of making it unrecognizable,
then we must turn to Mary, who reveals “its supreme beauty – that of the
Bride-Church of the New Testament”: “The Lord does not want his Church to
stand before him as a unique outstanding failure, but as a glorious bride who
is worthy of him. At this point the marian principle necessarily plays its
role in the Church.” Christians must
therefore keep their eyes fixed on the interior image of Mary if they want to
be the holy and christiform Church that is capable of making the work of God
shine forth in the world: “To the extent that the Church is Marian, she is a
pure form which is immediately legible and comprehensible; and to the extent
that a person becomes Marian…, the Christian reality becomes just as simply
legible and comprehensible to him.”
It
will be remembered that in 1975 Paul VI indicated not only the via veritatis, but also the via
pulchritudinis as approaches to the mystery of Mary.
His words cannot be said to be an echo of those of von Balthasar, but
rather an intuitive view that had developed maybe in the light of scholastic
philosophy. They put forward a threefold problem:
The
methodological problem, concerning research in the field of
mariology; the problem of content, which
has the task of discerning the meaning of Mary’s beauty; and the cibernetic
problem, with a view to an artistic communication of the marian message.
Studies
on the via pulchritudinis are still few in number.
The document Fate quelle che vi dira describes
its significance as “the path of ascetic commitment, the path of adhering to
the Word, the filial path.”
2.
Mary as a Theological Character
in the Theodrama. Von Balthasar takes the category of theatrical drama as
an interpretative presupposition and starting point, and then within this
perspective sees God’s activity as “fulfilled salvation, reconciliation of
the world in Christ with God (2Cor 5:19) through an initiative of love that
gives itself only.” Thus men can become actors in the theodrama only if they
are integrated into Christ and in response to a call.
These
two conditions are fulfilled in Mary, who is transferred, because of a
vocation beyond her expectations, into the “dramatic sphere” of Christ:
Sterile
women are unsuited to conceiving and giving birth to promised sons or to
prophets – Sara, Anna, Elizabeth; and the Virgin Mary is even more unsuited
to bringing the Son of the Most High into the world… The bat
qol (voice from heaven) that introduces Mary into her vocation and mission
tells her something absolutely new.
While
this mission of Mary represents a “space open to further figures, both
contemporary and future,” it is strongly theodramatic because the Virgin is
part of the “constellation” of Christ.
Because
human beings are made up of the man-woman polarity, it is clear that “if the
Word of God” truly became man, this fundamental aspect cannot be excluded
from the sphere of the theodrama or remain neutral towards it.”
As
a woman, Mary has her part in the incarnation, we might say of necessity,
through her motherhood with regard to God:
The
Word of God cannot truly enter into the generational series of humanity except
through conception, pregnancy, and birth from a woman. In this way, the
“adamitic” relationship is reversed, as Paul notes: “…as the first
woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman” (I Cor 11:12)… If
the mother in question is the mother of a human child who is personally God,
then she will rightfully be called Theotokos, the Birth-giver of God.
This
prior position of Mary in regard to the human birth of Christ is reflected in
connection with the Church and with her motherhood of believers, which
“always has as its presupposition the fact that Mary conceived and gave
birth to the Messiah for the world.” Thus, although mariology is bound up
with ecclesiology, “it must claim a priority inasmuch as it deals with the
mother of the Savior, without whom there would be neither a structured church
nor as a rule a divine grace.”
Von
Balthasar does not ignore the difficulty that exists for anyone who wants to
study the intimate closeness and infinite
distance between Mary and Christ. The history of mariology is the history
of a pendulum movement between the praise and oblivion of Mary:
This
makes it possible to understand the historical ups and downs in mariological
seasons: a wave of attributes, titles and exalting honors is almost
necessarily followed by a counter-wave, which can, however, also run aground
in a theologically unworthy oblivion.
Such
a pendulum movement is articulated in a further threefold swing that the
theologian discerns and describes as stimulus to a new and deeper approach to
mariology:
It
is first of all the swing of feminism as such: since woman is molded along the
pattern of man, but with identity of rank in the same human nature, this
irreducible twofold character is not known to man in the same way; it works
against any reduction.
In
the second place, there is the especially marian swing between the
“lowliness of the maidservant” and the “all generations shall call me
blessed”; the beatification (as “queen”) threatens to obscure the
lowliness…, and entails the risk of forgetting it especially in the sense
that in Mary lowliness is not the depths of sinfulness, even original sin, but
that of the nothingness of the creature before God.
There
is lastly the swing that is so difficult to define and that operates between
the ages: simultaneous membership of the spura- and infra-lapsaric sphere, and
moreover, within the latter, simultaneous membership of the Old Testament
sphere (”of flesh and blood”) and the eschatological New Testament sphere
(“overshadowed by the Spirit”). It is especially here that discussion of
the essence, meaning and dimension of Mary’s virginity is developed.
Inculturated
Mariologies
In
the postconciliar atmosphere of theological pluralism and relationships
between gospel and culture (GS 58),
there has been a growing awareness of the legitimacy and need of local
theologies, as well as acculturated evangelization of different peoples.
Alongside European theology, we have “African theology” (a term first used
by T. Tshibangu in Kinshasa in 1969), and that of Latin America, while similar
efforts are being made in the different cultures of Asia.
The
rise of these theologies that are bound to a specific sociocultural context
has consequences for the way of seeing and presenting the figure of the mother
of Jesus on the part of Christian communities outside Europe.
1.
Mariology in the Latin-American Context.
Latin America is rediscovering some of the relatively unknown aspects of
the figure of Mary on the basis of its sociopolitical situation, the history
of its evangelization, and attention to its own culture. Reference to the
Virgin appears in various waves, not in an academic or commonplace
perspective, but in a dimension of life-giving authenticity, although certain
aspects may need closer examination.
Liberation
theology, which has arisen as a witness to
historical-political commitment and as a criticism
of the practice of the Church in the light of the word of God, recovers
aspects of the biblical message that had long been ignored. Among these
aspects, we must include the hymn of the Virgin with all its spiritual and
liberating power:
The
Magnificat expresses well this spirituality of liberation. A song of
thanksgiving for the gifts of the Lord, it expresses humbly the joy of being
loved by him… But at the same time it is one of the New Testament texts
which contains great implications both as regards liberation and the political
sphere. This thanksgiving and joy are closely linked to the action of God who
liberates the oppressed and humbles the powerful… The future of history
belongs to the poor and exploited. True liberation will be the work of the
oppressed themselves; in them, the Lord saves history. The spirituality of
liberation will have as its basis the spirituality of the anawim.
In
a pastoral perspective, and in the face of the felt presence of Mary in the
popular Catholicism of Latin America, there have been three stages in
orientation. First, there was an effort to strengthen the link between the
people and Mary, teaching the significance of her motherhood and intercession,
and placing greater emphasis on affection for the mother than on the content
of her relationship to the Trinity. Then, with secularization, there was a
purifying and iconoclastic crisis, which gave birth to a typological kind of
pastoral approach that lacked affective bonds and resembled a categorical
imperative. Lastly came Puebla in 1979, which fused the motherhood and the
ecclesial exemplarity of Mary. Using universally valid expressions (“Mary,
mother and model of the Church”), Puebla avoids a-historical generalization,
and gives these titles a context in relation to the sociocultural
circumstances of the Latin-American region.
The
Puebla document sees the Guadalupe event as a “sign” that God offers to
the people in Mary in order that they should understand his closeness and
become a community. It is a maternal sign, because a mother is suited to
showing God’s tenderness and carrying out a mission of unification:
From
the very beginning – with her appearances in Guadalupe and the dedication of
a shrine to her there – Mary has constituted the great sign of the nearness
of the Father and Christ, inviting us to enter into communion with them; and
she has served as a sign endowed with a maternal, compassionate aspect. Mary
has also been the voice urging us on to union as human beings and as peoples
(No. 282).
Through
her link to Christ, Mary becomes the historical basis of fidelity to the Lord,
“teacher of the Gospel in Latin America” (No. 290), so that when the
“Latin American Church wishes to take a new step forward in its fidelity to
its Lord,” it must focus its “gaze on the living figure of Mary” (No.
294). All this is founded on the primordial task of Mary, which consists of
connecting God to man and of incarnating the word in the concrete
circumstances of history:
Through
Mary, God became flesh, entered a people, and became the center of human
history. She is the bond of interconnection between heaven and earth. Without
Mary the Gospel is stripped of flesh and blood and is distorted into an
ideology, into a spiritualistic rationalism (No. 301).
The
people of Latin America, who are not able to accept a Church that is not a
family (No.41), “recognize the Church as the family whose mother is the
Mother of God” (No. 285). The presence of Mary in the Church is in no way
anonymous:
Here
we deal with a feminine presence that creates the family atmosphere,
receptivity, love and respect for life; a sacramental presence of the maternal
features of God; and a reality so deeply human and holy that it evokes from
believers supplications rooted in tenderness, suffering and hope (No. 291).
2.
Mary in African Theology. This
chapter is only just beginning, but it is rich in promise and is being carried
out through studies restricted to specific local churches. This can be seen in
various doctoral dissertations presented to the Roman universities between
1974 and 1986, which examine Mary in Dahomey (what is now Benin), Uganda,
Malawi, and Swaziland, with particular attention to the historical and
cultural elements underlying typically African expressions of marian devotion.
On a more general level, there is the study of R. Laurentin, “Mary and the
African Theology,”
which studies the four forms of “blackness” (suffering, aggressive,
serene, triumphant) and the values of African culture in the context of a
precomprehension of Mary. Such anthropological presuppositions should pave the
way to acceptance of certain aspects of the gospel that are difficult for
European culture to assimilate.
Mariology
and Feminism
Mary
and women are linked by a bond of a historical and cultural nature that lies
in the fact that Mary is not only a woman but is the most outstanding figure
in the Christian West. Whether negative or positive, her influence on the
conception of women is undeniable, as Marina Warner observes in no uncertain
terms:
Whether
we regard the Virgin Mary as the most sublime and beautiful image of man’s
struggle towards the good and the pure, or the most pitiable production of
ignorance and superstition, she represents a central theme in the history of
western attitudes to women. She is one of the few female figures to have
attained the status of myth – a myth that for nearly two thousand years has
coursed through our culture, as spirited and often as imperceptible as an
underground stream.
For
its part, feminism provides a spur to mariology, encouraging it to review both
the conception of women and the traditional image of Mary. If the
“scandal” of feminist theology is the “maleness” of Jesus, Mary
constitutes just as great a stumbling block and is viewed as an ambiguous and
dangerous model: a symbol of passivity, sexual repression, and the exaltation
of motherhood.
Faced
with this ambiguity, the feminists swing between rejection of the figure of
Mary or her recovery within a liberating perspective. Thus, so long as
Mary’s holiness is “measured by the number of clothes washed’ or is
projected into a sphere of total perfection and inimitability, women today
tend to become “anti-Mary,” and to take their
distance from an overly domestic and idealized view of Mary.
Instead
of entrenching themselves in closed attitudes toward the mother of Jesus,
other feminists prefer to look to the discovery of the “true” Mary of the
bible, free from cultural accretions, disguises, or ideological
instrumentation.
Within
the context of interconfessional history, Rosemary R. Reuther has discovered
that it is at least possible to produce an “alternative” mariology to the
dominant one. This new mariology is potentially capable of “breaking the
mold of the female patriarchy.”
In the view of C. Halkes, from Holland, a twofold liberation is needed:
a.
Mary asks to be freed from
the image that has been made of her and from
the projections that a male ecclesiastical hierarchy has attributed to her. Under
the promptings of a deep feeling of solidarity or historicity, I do not wish
to diminish her in this way.
b.
It is also necessary to free
women from those images of Mary that still dominate and hold them in
subjection. Such images must be analyzed and unmasked.
The
most pressing tasks with a view to a liberated and liberating mariology can be
summarized as follows: restoring Mary to humanity, overcoming the image of her
as almost not a woman but a semigoddess;
relativizing Mary’s biological motherhood, as Jesus does in his preaching,
in order to highlight her faith in the word of God;
seeing Mary not as the image of femininity or the model of femaleness, but
above all as the model of every believer – the “autonomous” person who
responds freely to God, the “radical symbol of a new humanity, …the
original and eschatological representative of humanity”;
avoiding the approaches of the “new Eve,” the “bride,” and the
“relational being,” which perpetuate a subordination not properly entailed
by service and diakonia, and
transpose the androcentric schema from the order of creation to that of
redemption;
opening the ministerial priesthood to
women, because restrictions in this area are based on an irrelevant past, and
more precisely on prohibitions against blood that make a woman “impure”
because of her biological functions.
Apart
from feminist challenges, theology continues in its elimination of certain
commonly held attitudes to the femininity, maternity, and virginity of Mary,
freeing her image of historical and cultural presuppositions, and highlighting
the revelatory capacity of the Virgin with regard to God and women.
The theologian who carried out “the first attempt of an integrated an major
type, in which the encounter between mariology and the female takes place,”is
L. Boff, with his already cited work O
rosto materno de Deus (of which we are using the Italian translation, Il
volto materno di Dio).
With
a clear striving for a systematic method, Boff examines the organizing nucleus
of mariology “on the basis of which all the marian events can be explained
and understood,” or, in other words, “the master-plan of the divine wisdom
with regard to Mary.”
The
seven answers offered by contemporary mariologists, who base their treatment
of Mary on the foundation of her relationship with Christ or the Church, or
who reject any organic and integrated discussion, are held to be defective.
They do not encompass the whole salvific significance of Mary in the plan of
God, because they neglect the feminine aspect, or fall into “historical
positivism,” because they confine themselves to describing the events
concerning Mary without seeking their theological framework.
Boff’s
intention is to resolve this situation, observing that “the fact that Mary
was a woman is not without significance.” Indeed, this very fact can become
“a fundamental anthropological category” that would be capable of
“systematizing all the facts that the faith bears witness to about Mary.”
The theologian supports this choice with a philosophical and theological
analysis of the female, revealing its sacramental structure (“it speaks of
God, evokes God, and points towards God”).
If
the male is divinized in Christ in a full and direct manner, Boff wonders
“why we cannot hope that, in the order of being, the female should not be
divinized in a similar way.” The theologian offers an affirmative response
in the form of a “theological hypothesis (theologoumenon),” holding that
it is up to the Holy Spirit to divinize the female at the end of history, but
giving an eschatological foretaste of this in the mystery of the Virgin Mary:
We
support the hypothesis that the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of men,
fulfills the feminine in an absolute and eschatological form, because the Holy
Spirit has made her his temple, his sanctuary and his tabernacle in such a
real and true way that she must be considered to be hypostatically united to
the third Person of the Most Holy Trinity.
This
hypothesis has been much criticized by theologians, who consider it unfounded,
exaggerated, and antiecumenical.
There
is still a good deal of heavy ground to be covered in the area of the
relationship of mariology to the feminine and to the pneumenatological
dimension if we are to harmonize historical and cultural requirements (without
giving in to the temptation of hubris) and the facts of biblical revelation
(without sticking obstinately to old cliches that deprive the figure of Mary
and the person of the Spirit of logical and life-giving significance for
contemporary men and women). Despite his “theological hypothesis,” Boff
must be credited with having thrown into relief the limitations of
“unisex” theology, indicated mariology as the “catalizing and
conditioning nucleus” of the whole question of women, and taken Mary as the
“privileged subject of anthropological reflection.”
Revision
of Marian Dogmas
The
urgent need for a reflection of dogmas, not with a view to diminishing their
content, but rather with a view to increasing their understanding and
expressing them in a way more accessible to contemporary culture, has also
been felt in the field of mariology.
The process of revision also brings the four marian dogmas into the dynamic
movement of the crisis, and in these circumstances, some of them are not only
subject to challenge and attack, but also see new horizons of understanding
opening up, beginning with the virginity of Mary.
1.
The Virginity of Mary. The
publication of the Dutch Catechism in
1966 marked the start of discussion on the virgin conception. This document
states that Jesus is “God’s gift to humanity” and “the son of promise,
like none other,” but avoids clarifying the content of this in any
traditional sense. Following the Gazzada and Nemi meetings in 1967 between
theologians of the Holy See and of the Dutch conference of bishops, in its
declaration of 15 October 1968, the Commission of Cardinals stated:
It must be openly
professed in the Catechism that the holy mother of the incarnate Word remained
always adorned with the honour of virginity. It must teach equally clearly the
doctrine of the virginal birth of Jesus, which is so supremely in accord with
the mystery of the Incarnation. No further occasion shall be given of denying
this truth – contrary to the tradition of the Church in reliance upon Sacred
Scripture – retaining only a symbolic meaning, merely indicating for
instance the gift inspired by pure grace, which God bestowed on us in his Son.
The
matter seemed on the way to a definitive solution with the publication of the
“Supplement” to the Dutch Catechism.
However, it then arose again in Germany with H. Halbfas, who was forbidden to
take up his professorship in religious education in Bonn by order of the Vicar
General of Cologne, because of the position he had taken up especially with
regard to the virgin birth in his work Theory
of Catechetics, in which we read: “Jesus’ birth ‘of the Virgin
Mary’ is not presented for belief as a biological fact (Jesus had no human
father) and is not available to a preacher as information about any
psychological, let alone gynecological process…”
H.
Kung caused rather more than a stir with his best seller On Being A Christian, in which he unequivocally asserted the “the
virgin birth cannot be understood as a historical-biological event,” but
should be interpreted as a “meaningful symbol”
of the new beginning brought about by God in Christ.
The
debate moved into Spain with X. Pikaza, who follows R. E. Brown in placing
himself midway between the historical, biological fact and the theologoumenon,
and with an article by R. Scheifler, who casts doubt on the virgin conception
and birth.
A
number of points have become steadily clearer in the theological discussion of
Mary’s virginity between the champions of the “theologoumenon”
and supporters of the traditional interpretation.
These points are as follows: the uniqueness and independence of the virginal
conception of Mary from the theogamic models, the need to understand it within
the perspective of a developed christology, the movement beyond contingent
patristic lines of reasoning, the recovery of the significance of Mary’s
virginity for salvation history and of its biblical and theological
foundations.
2.
The Immaculate Conception. E.O’Connor
was the first mariologist to see the repercussions of contemporary theories
about original sin on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and in 1969 he
produced an article examining this subject.
Reference to the Immaculate Conception is generally ignored or relatively
undeveloped in such theories, although their evolutionary, sociological, or
existentialistic perspectives do in fact throw light on certain aspects of
marian dogma.
Other
theologians throw more light on the question when they specifically consider
the intelligibility of the content of the dogmatic definition of 1854 in a
christological context and using a cultural hermeneutics. Beginning from the
principles that the “starting point cannot be Adam and sin, but Christ,”
and that the redemption must be seen above all in its “positive aspect,”
D. Fernandez asserts that “we must see the mystery of Mary in its true
theological dimension: that is, as a mystery of divine election, of holiness,
of fullness of grace, and of fidelity to the plan of God.”
The
negative formulation of the Bull Ineffabilis
Deus should thus give way to a positive formulation. The negative is, in
fact, always an imperfect expression: for example, what sort of holiness would
it be that was free of sin but was not accompanied by grace and divine
election, as well as by a life of faithful commitment to God and men?
In
a 1985 article, Fernandez repeats his twofold thesis with increased
conviction: we must bid “ a definitive farewell” to the doctrine of
original sin and at the same time reject the existence of any “intrinsic and
essential relationship” between it and the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, inasmuch as it is possible to envisage a redemption that is not a
“liberation from sin” but is principally a “capacity to possess God.”
Alejandro
de Villalmonte examines the relationship between original sin and the
Immaculate Conception, and comes to the same conclusion as D. Fernandez with
regard to the need to move beyond the negative formulation of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception. He says that historically speaking, this dogma “was
the result of the progressive, centuries-long deepening of the Christian
religious understanding of the content of the New Testament affirmation
concerning Mary: Mother of Christ, full of grace.”
Theological
investigation regarding the Immaculate Conception will investigate, with K.
Rahner,
the place of “the individual statement in its coherence…with the one
totality of faith,” and especially in relation to Christ and the Church.
However, attention is also given to the anthropological significance of marian
dogma with regard to “the new humanity”
or “the holy remnant” of the people of Israel.
While ecumenical difficulties concerning the Immaculate Conception are dying
down, this dogma is
interpreted by St. Maximilian Kolbe with mystical and metaphysical intuition
in reference to the Holy Spirit.
3.
The Theotokos. Although the title
“Theotokos” has been defined, it still causes some problems from the
viewpoint of content and terminology: “The question of the divine maternity
always has, and still does, presented difficulties both as concerns content
(it concerns the mystery of the hypostatic union) and also as concerns
terminology, as was the case in the fifth century.”
Despite
the thought-provoking nature of this marian title, postconciliar theology has
produced no work on the Theotokos that is both wide ranging and has an
actualizing cultural impact. Even the new christological trends, such as
metadogmatic ones and those concerned with liberating action, do not offer
valid elements for a new understanding of the mother of Jesus.
The most interesting contributions come from those mariologists who are
concerned to clarify and justify the marian title that received official
approval at the Council of Ephesus.
While
the term “Theotokos” literally means “she who gives birth of God,” J.
Galot does not stop at this biological meaning, but feels that the title of
“mother’ should be taken on in all its anthropological depth and
significance:
Maternity
does not consist only of an act of generation with which the woman conceives
and gives birth to the child. It sets up a permanent relationship between one
person and another, on the basis of this generation. A mother is the mother of
the person of her child.
When
this first observation about motherhood is applied to Mary, it takes on an
extraordinary dimension, because, unlike the motherhood of other human women,
that of the Virgin does not result in any ordinary human person, but in the
person of Jesus:
According
to the expression repeated a number of times by the Council of Chalcedon,
Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is “one and the same.” First,
therefore, there is not some relationship of Mary to the man, Jesus, to which
a relationship to Jesus as the Son of God is later added. There is only “one
and the same” relationship of the person of Mary to the divine person of the
Son. There is a direct relationship with God, since the Son is God.
The
filial relationship (which is real and not just in the sphere of reason) of
the Son of God with Mary corresponds to this maternal link between Mary and
the person of the incarnate word. It brings Christ into other interpersonal
relationships, and also sets up a relationship that is not one of identity,
but of participation and sign, with the divine filiation:
The
temporal filiation is distinct, but has its place as the extension of the
eternal filiation, as its manifestation in the world. The Father generates his
Son within time through the operation of the Holy Spirit, and does so with the
cooperation of Mary. Mary’s greatness lies in the fact that she is the
partner of the Father in this process of generation.
According
to Galot, the second element of a true motherhood is also found beyond the
biological level. This element is the “educational task,” which makes Mary
“she who brought God up.” There is no need to follow those theologians who
are puzzled “in the face of this view of some moral influence of Mary on the
one who was God,” because this aspect falls within the terms of the
incarnation.
In
his book Theotokos, M.J.Nicolas also
reflects on Mary’s motherhood as a psychophysical process and a spiritual
reality. He comes to this view by taking as his joint starting point the
biblical information according to which the Virgin “became the mother of God
not in a purely physical and material way” but “in faith and assent,”
and also the concept of truly human generation, which entails a complete love
coming from the Spirit. The Fathers saw this clearly when they stated that
Mary “conceived first in her mind and then in her womb,” and St. Augustine
also added that she “conceived not in the ardor of the concupiscence of the
flesh, but in the fervor of love and truth.”
Apart
from any dichotomy between natural and supernatural, Mary’s motherhood is
itself a grace, because it establishes a total bond between mother and Son,
and is made up of “a relationship of an ontological order, pointing to and
encompassing a relationship of knowledge and love.” And even though
adulthood entails separation of the son from the mother, “motherhood is a
relationship that should be deepened rather then eliminated with time,”
inasmuch as conscious human parenthood provides the basis for a lasting
relationship with those who have been generated.
A.Muller
tries a new approach to the divine motherhood of Mary, laying aside the
mariologists’ attribution of priority to metaphysical concepts in order to
attribute it instead to biblical revelation. It follows that we must be
careful to avoid seeing the divine motherhood as “completely isolated from
other theological categories”; it must, rather, be seen “in relationship
with the whole doctrine of the incarnation.” In the divine plan, “the Son
of God becomes man in order to give man a share in his divinity, through his
humanity.” This is the biblical category that makes it possible to
understand Mary’s motherhood in a context of salvation: “The divine
motherhood reveals itself as the highest and truest sharing in the humanity of
Christ and as the highest cooperation as member in his work of redemption.”
Muller goes on to interpret the messianic motherhood of Mary with the category
of “the revelation of transcendence” that belongs to the Bible and is
critically guaranteed by theology. Mary’s motherhood becomes a “discourse
on the mediation of transcendence.” It follows that the Ephesian title of
“Theotokos” is seen to “provide a very lively description of the active
participation of man in this event of transcendence.”
If we reject the erroneous meaning of “the maternal production of God
himself,” the title of “Birth-giver of God” is clearer for tradition;
however, the term “Mother,” which is of a personal and relational type,
“is more expressive for the present-day mentality.”
The
theotokos is certainly anything but a revealed mystery. After recent
theological reflection, this title requires further explanation through
in-depth biblical research and cultural insights as to the meaning of
motherhood.
4.
The Assumption. Contemporary
eschatological perspectives have repercussions for the dogma defined by Pius
XII in 1950, and particularly as concerns the abolition of the intermediate
state that would deprive Mary’s Assumption of its character of privilege and
anticipation. This line of reasoning is taken by O.Karrer, and after him by
D.Flanagan, who observes that the formula used in defining the Assumption –
unlike that used for the Immaculate Conception – does not present the new
dogma as “a singular grace and privilege,” and concludes that the Bull of
definition leaves the question open of whether other people apart from Mary
have reached the final state of glory.
While
S. Meo and C.Pozo defend the traditional position,
which would be confirmed in the letter Recentiores
episcoporum synodi (“On the Reality of Life after Death”) of the
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in May 1979, other
theologians feel that it is urgent to reinterpret the Assumption in the light
of biblical revelation and theological anthropology.
The
journal Ephemerides mariologicae ranges
itself with this revisionist position in a 1985 issue devoted to
“l’Asuncion de Maria desde las antropologias y la escatologia actuales.”
E.Baron emphasizes the need to avoid a dualistic
anthropology that places body and soul in opposition, and a materialistic anthropology that confuses body and inanimate
substance. It must be stated with Merleau-Ponty that the body is animated and
the soul embodied. The corruption of Mary’s body is itself seen as a
biological fact, while the aphtharsia of
the Fathers implies fullness of life. As regards the Assumption, this is not a
matter of honouring Mary’s body in memory of her holy past, nor of adding an
accidental (bodily) glorification to the substantial one (of the soul). In a
unified anthropological perspective, the Assumption means “calling the whole
person to himself” in a fulfilled vocational maturity; establishing an
intersubjective relationship through the body; resolving, in the interpersonal
bond with God, a process of Assumption that continued through the whole of
Mary’s earthly life; actuating the dynamic potential of obedience; and
taking up the gift of her body and binding it to the body of Christ.
D.Fernandez
sees the hope of new possibilities in the biblical basis of the Assumption,
and this could have positive repercussions in the ecumenical sphere.
J.M.Hernandez
is equally favorable to the hypothesis of immediate resurrection, and
considers the biblical model of the Assumption particularly suited to
expressing the transferral of the righteous to the sphere of divine life: in
biblical terms, this is not the privilege of a few, but the destiny of all
(1Thess 4:17; Rev 11:12).
As
we can see, mariology has sufficient resources to be able to assimilate new
theories, even if these are not yet securely founded or universally accepted.
The discussion on intermediate eschatology must not totally absorb
mariological study, because apart from this aspect, there are still the marian,
christological, and ecclesial meanings indicated by Marialis cultus (No. 6) and celebrated in the liturgy. The subject
of the Assumption is still open to further study, proof, and development.
The
Future of Mariology
A
backward glance gives us an idea of the ground that has been covered by
mariology since the Council. This progress has been marked by two events of
undeniable historical value that open discussion of Mary to ever-broader
horizons.
The
first turning point was brought about by the Second Vatican Council in 1964,
when it diverted mariology from its posttridentine unidirectional development
and placed it within the framework of theology as a whole, and ecclesiology in
particular. The integration, or reentry, of mariology into ecclesiology marked
the end of an isolated marian discourse, and also the decline of a conception
of Mary in a perspective of privileges and titles. The latter has given way to
functionality, service, communion, and typology in a context of participation.
In other words, the Second Vatican Council called on mariology, which had been
following a path of its own, to correct its orientation, reintegrating itself
into the common movement, and becoming more biblical, ecclesial, and
ecumenical.
The
second turning point was represented by Marialis
cultus in 1974, which opened mariology to the anthropological perspective,
understanding that the mariological crisis that has broken out since the
Council will not be resolved by some well-balanced personal and structural
reasoning that might attract acceptance within the Church, but by taking
account of the full extent of the cultural changes taking place in our age.
At
this point, mariological approaches are branching out in three directions: the
conciliar impulse inspires theological renewal, which attempts a different
mariological approach, bringing mariology back into theology and into unified
worship, and encompassing ecumenical dialogue; in the meantime, an operation
has been launched for the recovery of the charismatic experience and of
popular piety, which some people may consider a regression, but which develops
the pneumatic dimension of mariology and absorbs the values of popular marian
religiosity; and, lastly, mariology feels called to enter on the path of
cultural encounter so that the figure of the Virgin can once again become
meaningful for our age.
To
sum up, postconciliar mariology is moving along its threefold path in the
conviction that it can make up for past shortcomings by basing itself on the
points securely stated in the documents of Vatican II and in Marialis
cultus: strengthening its own integration with the theological movement of
the Church, always considering Mary in relation to the center
and mainspring of the faith, in
other words, “within the mystery of Christ and of the Church,” and also
opening itself to serious encounter and dialogue with the contemporary world
(that is, with the historical movement of the different cultural areas) in
such a way that the subject of Mary, with its typological power and its
ability to foster values, can enter into the dynamic movement of society.
Postconciliar mariology must introduce the spirit of Gaudium
et spes into Chapter VIII of Lumen
gentium in order to develop inter-Church communion on the basis of the
word of God regarding Mary, and the mission of proclaiming the whole plan of
salvation to all cultural areas.
In
view of these serious tasks, “unemployment certainly poses no threat to
mariologists,”
because “mariology has not reached its conclusion. Today it still has a
history oriented to the future which is as yet totally undiscovered. In this
history the Church seeks the essence of woman, of Mary, and also of itself.”
A
repetitive mariology that is capable of accepting challenged and facing new
paths has no future, because it makes the crisis chronic instead of resolving
it. Mariologists must act as antennas sensitive to contemporary challenges and
appeals: they will evaluate the successive cultural trends that are capable of
purifying, developing, and rediscovering many doctrinal and cultal elements
regarding the Virgin; they will make use of different thought forms and lines
of investigation that have been developed in recent years (the linguistic-analytical,
sociocritical, and hermeneutical models);
and they will follow paths that are parallel or complementary to the path of
reason, such as those of symbolism,
typology, and theological esthetics.
Only
by remaining within the mainstream of history will mariology be able to
present a view of Mary that is truly meaningful and that acts as a “living
reference point,” not acting as a brake, but as a spur to a better future,
and indeed offering insights for a solution of contemporary problems on a
deeper level. In the past, iconography has reflected a mirror image as seen by
the Church in its encounter with history and the different cultures, so that
it showed her as the mother with the Child in her arms, or at the foot of the
cross, or bathed in glory in a heaven populated by angels. It would seem that
the marian icon of the future will show the Virgin of the Magnificat:
as the Daughter of Sion who is
transmuted into the Church and who, bearing Christ within her, moves along the
paths of history, assimilating in the Spirit the sad and joyful events of
history and seeing them as reasons for offering praise to God, who leads his
children through varying fortunes of the world and onto the path of authentic
salvation and liberation and of the definitive covenant. Mariology is
entrusted with the mystogogical task of unsealing for future generations the
salvific secrets found in the one who is “blessed among women” and whose
name is Mary.