tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post4202769347886043398..comments2024-03-05T06:16:30.628-06:00Comments on Mary and Mariology: The Marian Narrative: Apology or Fantasy?Servant of Maryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-66301210402099610332012-06-01T22:19:10.588-05:002012-06-01T22:19:10.588-05:00JRV - You raise several interesting questions in y...JRV - You raise several interesting questions in your discussion. It is very interesting that the PJ becomes a sort of primary text for Marian devotion, even though Mary is not given much space in the actual Bible. These questions of how and why things get incorporated into the “unofficial canon” are revealing of the operation of the Church as a whole. Clearly, Church tradition evolves, yet certain key elements of Marian devotion have remained. <br /><br />TA, you ask, ”Could/should the details of Mary’s life become all things to all people?” After an entire course on learning about the evolution of Marian devotion, I have to answer no. The beauty of Mariology is that it means different things for different people. If someone wants to use Mary as a model, aren’t her virtues the only things that matter? If someone wishes to contemplate on the awesome power of Mary as Wisdom, then why would it matter what color she was using for the temple veil? Mariology’s lack of presence in the official canon up until the 20th century meant that an entire body of work about Mary arose based on individual need in a specific cultural context. <br /><br />That all, folks.<br /><br />-CBtwinsieshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00131798925973329115noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-69870116547722733462012-06-01T05:12:00.017-05:002012-06-01T05:12:00.017-05:00JRV putting the accounts we read for class in conv...JRV putting the accounts we read for class in conversation with Against Celsus has left me wondering why it really matters. I certainly understand what was at stake with many of the claims made against Mary by Celsus and in defense of Mary by the authors we read for class, but for others, I do not. What does it really matter if she was poor or not? Or if she made her living as a weaver? I wonder if these issues are partially explainable by differing ideas of what the protagonist of a story should look like.<br /><br />Today, we tend to like an underdog. Heroes seem to be most satisfying to us if they become heroes over the course of the story, rising from inauspicious beginnings and overcoming obstacles to grow into the role. What comes immediately to mind as an example is Harry Potter. At the beginning of the story, the Harry Rowling introduces is a scrawny, friendless, maltreated orphan. As the story unfolds, we discover that Harry is very special indeed, not just because of the circumstances under which he gets his scar, but also because of the way he acts—he grows into his role and displays tremendous bravery, skill, intelligence, and loyalty. That is the way I have always heard the story of Mary. Though I have always thought of Mary as being exceptional in her personal qualities, obedient, faithful, and loving, I have never thought of Mary as someone you would have expected to do something so remarkable as give birth to God. I have always thought of her as a normal girl, born to a poor family with nothing remarkable marking her as special until the visitation of the angel. For me, she has always been an underdog who defied expectations not because of the circumstances of her birth, but because of her faithfulness and piety and because of divine grace. To me, that made the story more remarkable. <br /><br />There, of course, another option for the protagonist of a story, and that is what we see in these accounts of Mary. She is either poor, promiscuous, and disobedient; or wealthy, miraculously chaste, and unfailingly obedient. She is either wretched from the very beginning, from the very circumstances of her birth, or she is blessed from the very beginning. I certainly do not think that these depictions of Mary are reducible to principles of storytelling, but I wonder if stories told during the time these narratives were being promulgated favored protagonists who, instead of growing to become remarkable, were remarkable at every step along the way. <br /><br />LJBServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-34262951419789596122012-04-01T17:48:30.152-05:002012-04-01T17:48:30.152-05:00Thank you so much for these details about Celsus a...Thank you so much for these details about Celsus and the criticisms of the Talmud! This helps put the concerns of the PJ into much clearer perspective. What interests me is why the accusations and rebuttals took the form that they did: why worry so much about the details of Mary's early life at all? Why did it matter that Jesus was born of a particular kind of mother? Given the interest in the Gospels in Jesus' biography, it is easy to take this interest for granted, but of course it only matters if the theological argument depends in some way upon it. "Increased elevation" of itself is a tautology: we can see that Mary's status mattered in early Christianity. The question (as you rightly point out!) is why.<br /><br />RLFBServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-56392903548661745902012-03-29T18:05:01.693-05:002012-03-29T18:05:01.693-05:00Getting this sort of context JRV has provided (her...Getting this sort of context JRV has provided (here and in class on Wednesday) both provides answers and raises new questions about the development of religious tradition, such as Marian devotion. Would the details that the PJ, Pseudo-Matthew, etc., provide have changed much of the critique Celsus lays against Christianity? (I tend to think not, though I agree with JRV that these critiques/questions have everything to do with the publication of the details he points out from our Wednesday readings). At any rate, JRV’s comments give us a glimpse of the relationship between religious traditions and religious texts: If these “extra-scriptural” texts were written in contestation to Celsus or anyone else, what becomes of historical accuracy, or truth claims of the religious traditions? To put it simply, how far and in what directions can the narrative elements of a religious tradition stretch before the tradition is disfigured? For many Christians, one of the very points of the life of Jesus, for example, is that he was born in the humblest of circumstances, so (as a less eloquent Paul may have put it) he could descend below all things in order to rise above all things. Could/should the details of Mary’s life become all things to all people? I am convinced by JRV’s account here, and it does seem to me that we are seeing a fairly uniform upward curve in Mary’s “worldly” prestige in these textual developments. <br /><br />On the other hand, if we look beyond the idea of canon, we could entertain the idea that, rather than purely dialectical response to criticism and/or the paucity of information about Mary in the canonized gospels, these texts reflect traditions that were passed down from earlier but not included in canonical versions for various reasons (which, I think it is fair to claim, is what the authors would argue, or what they were attempting by–sometimes clumsily–bringing Jewish tradition into their narratives). So, which versions have more influenced Marian devotion since being written, the canonical or non-canonical? (Arena chapel would seem to give a fairly clear answer to this.). Would such traditions have lived on if not put into written texts? What tensions between *historian* and *devotee to a religious tradition* does an account like JRV’s present us? <br /><br />~TAServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.com