I am still reading Geoffrey Ashe's The Virgin - his dense, fascinating, and very stimulating book about the historical development and meaning of the Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus.
(Ashe was himself a Roman Catholic, and deeply involved with Marian societies - especially the Carmelite Friars' shrine to Mary at Aylesford in Kent.)
This passage was one I found very striking. Ashe is describing the theology of Saint Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early 700s.
Mary, Germanus maintains, does not simply put requests to the Deity on matters they could agree about; she actively and successfully opposes him. "You turn away the just threat and the sentence of damnation, because you love the Christians... Therefore the Christian people trustfully turn to you, refuge of sinners."
The universe is split at the summit. God stands for Justice, and since we are all sinners more or less, most of us have little to hope for at his hands.
Mary stands for Mercy, and it is only because of her influence at court, not because of love or goodwill on God's part, that Heaven is within reach for more than a handful of human beings...
The Byzantine Virgin seems the only friend close to the throne and the only rescuer from utter awestruck despair...
The Greek church agreed that Mary was indispensable to salvation. An edict issued from Constantinople in 724 condemns anyone who withholds worship from her...
She is no longer the gentle Lady to whom Christians may turn for help. She is the unique being... to whom they must turn or be in peril of losing their souls forever.
[From before 1233] the norm of Marian miracles in hardening. The people concerned are apt to be commonplace and sometimes repellent.
The sole redeeming feature they have in common, "redeeming" quite literally, is their love for the Virgin. This protects them against the consequences of wrongdoing. Her devotees seem able to get away with anything....
It is unfair to treat this mythology as a license to sin; by saving misguided mortals the Virgin enables them to repent.
But the moral is not always conspicuous...
The medieval popular Virgin represented the all-too-human, the irregular, the exceptional. She was superior to the system and could break through every rule. Humanity had her on its side in its perpetual protest against divine law and human ordinance.
For her, every case was a special case. She could draw "her" sinner up out of hell itself, giving him another chance.
Such considerations stimulated various thoughts. One is that - however theologically alien and contradictory the role of Mary in Catholic devotion; the effect of Marian devotion has often been exemplary from what I regard as a strictly Christian perspective (as well as this-worldly-expedient - in terms of sustaining and strengthening the churches).
I understand the above descriptions to represent a spiritual correction to the not-Christian (i.e. not Jesus-derived) emphasis on Justice that has so often overtaken Christian churches of almost every kind.
When Jesus is made into a divine ruler of the universe, he has often been attributed with the characteristics of an idealized human ruler in some particular society - hence the de facto primacy of justice, defined legalistically - despite this being multiply-contradicted in the Gospels.
Furthermore, the tortured theology of Original Sin (which was only required because early theologians made it mandatory to conceptualize and define God as Omni) - led to the weird explanation of Jesus's work as having been accomplished by a vicarious sacrifice (torture and death) demanded to compensate for sin by Divine Justice.
Against this historical backdrop of systemic misrepresenting the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ's work and the paths to salvation by love of Jesus; Mary seems to have emerged, with the consequence of re-creating the truth of Jesus's salvation by personal love - that necessary love being displaced from Jesus to his mother.
But I don't doubt that this displaced or indirect love was none the less effective; so long as the motives were true.
The simple heart of Christianity - i.e. resurrected eternal heavenly life to those who follow Jesus - has always been open to the kind of misrepresentation Ashe describes in the second excerpt above.
This is a kind of parody of Christianity, along the lines of: I can do what I like, be as selfish and gratification-seeking as I like, yet Mary will save me if I love her...
Such is the exactly the same type of criticism made of Jesus's teaching during his life, by those whose real concern was social order and sustaining the power of their church...
Popular with those who do not really believe that all Men are sinners - and no Man good enough for Heaven without first passing through death and resurrection* - and who therefore regard themselves as "good enough" to satisfy the demands of their Justice, and thereby to deserve salvation.
(Or who may regard following Jesus as less a matter of love than of following rules.)
The parody is untrue, because it ignores that motivation is primary, and that the love really must come first.
Salvation is not attained by using love as an excuse to enable the primary motivation of doing evil. That is to put this-worldly gratification first.
But, on the other hand, salvation really is - not for those who successfully past some test of following some laws; but salvation is for all those who love and desire to follow Jesus more than anything else.
Or, in this instance... love and desire to follow Mary more than anything else - so long as Mary is conceptualized in the way she has been by some ancient (and some modern) Catholic Christians, as described in Ashe's book.
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