In 1854, Pope Pius IX declared the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. This celebrates her being conceived immaculate of the stain of sin in her own mother’s womb. The non-canonical Gospel of James says her name was Anna, married to Joachim. When the church decided at the 16th century Council of Trent on which books qualified for inclusion in the Bible, this gospel, like dozens of others, was excluded either because it came from the second to the fourth century and only derived from the four first-century canonical ones, or because it contained traces of Gnostic heresy. But these also-rans give us an idea of early spirituality and of its practice called “fittingness.” Since it was fitting that Mary be exempt of original sin from her first moment of life, and since God was powerful enough to accomplish it, the church said it was fact. We would say it lacks sufficient proof, but we would admit it was devotional, which is only why they proposed it. Protestants frown on non-biblical traditions like this and on Mary’s perpetual virginity, and on her assumption into heaven at her death since these are not found in the Bible.
After 1854 this new feast of Mary’s special exemption became the patronal feast of the newly independent United States. That is why it is a holyday of obligation in our country but not in others, just as the feast of St. Patrick is one in Ireland but not here. But the doctrine itself had a bit of controversy in its history. One of the church’s greatest theologians called the doctrine “pestiferous,” or having the nature or quality of a pestilence. Scandalized? St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) took strong exception to this devotional belief. He said it would mean that Christ her son could not be said to have redeemed the world by his passion if his mother was already exempt. Given his reputation, Thomas’s thought ruled until Pius IX. Perhaps the justifying reason was that in eternity there is no time before or after.
The church has a long tradition of praising Mary, the Queen of Saints. We do not worship saints, only God. But we do praise them. Once when I walked in the Our Lady of Mount Carmel procession through the streets of Hammonton, we passed a non-Catholic religious articles store with homemade signs in the window chiding us for idolizing Mary with this traditional devotion. They claimed we were having strange gods before the one God. I saw how they misunderstood us.
The Litany of Loreto lists dozens of titles attributed to Mary. Many of them vaguely if at all hearken back to Mary’s surprisingly few appearances in Scripture. Islam’s Quran has more testimony about her than does our Bible. But talk about surprises, Mary is quoted by Luke as praying that God would bring down the mighty from their thrones and exalt the lowly. That is the kind of thing social revolutionaries say. If we needed encouragement to do the Jewish thing of tikvah olam, rebuild the world, Mary our Mother gives it. She was discontent with the economic and political oppression of her people by the Roman occupiers. From whom else did her son learn his passion for justice?
Vatican II in 1965 added yet another title: Mater Ecclesiae, Mother of the Church. She is as much a model today as she ever was for both women and men in her single-mindedness for justice. That is why we do her an injustice if we relegate her to plaster-saint silence, to sweet obscurity. Because of her famed activism, Servant of God Dorothy Day, mentioned glowingly by Pope Francis while in the United States, replied to an admirer who called her a saint. She said, “Oh no. I will not be dismissed so easily.” Whenever we take sandpaper to controversial people like Mary, to her son or to Dorothy Day, smoothing down their evangelical edginess, we are suppressing the truth, making them out in our own image and likeness, reducing discipleship to some quiet, pious, unthreatening Kabuki character who does not challenge today’s scribes and Pharisees, today’s oppressors like Pilate and his gang.
As immensely popular as Pope Francis was during his visit, whenever he critiqued the layers of systematized economic injustice trafficking millions of victims worldwide, allocating inestimable trillions to arms, crushing immigrant refugees, boosting capital punishment, promoting Second Amendment gun possession, he was told to stick with kissing babies. Mary, Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, help us.
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