Editorial: Traditional Marian Devotion and Revelation

Traditional Marian Devotion and Revelation

Our regular readers of The Queen, like many other magazines, . . .

. . . has a section called “Questions and Answers” (see this link for the latest).  It deals mainly with matters that touch on St. Louis de Montfort’s form of devotion known as Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary.

The questions sent in by our readers are, for the most part, informative and interesting. Quite often they are also repetitive, since we keep adding new members who may not have seen their questions answered in previous publications. But every now and then there comes along a question that calls for special treatment; a bit more background, some deeper consideration and often enough some extended explanation.

Question: Is Marian Devotion . . .

Such, for example, was a question we received recently; one that calls for more than a short answer.  One that touches, in fact, on the matter of renewal of devotion to Our Blessed Lady in the modern world. Here are some excerpts.

“I don’t subscribe to your magazine, but my neighbor does, and I look at it occasionally. It is exactly the kind of thing that modern women are complaining about these days in the Catholic Church.  … You probably have not heard what modern theologians are saying about the outmoded and oppressive devotion to Mary that you seem to recommend . . .  You probably never heard of someone like Rosemary Radford Reuther. For your information, she is a Catholic Theologian who has denounced the church‘s Marian devotion for what it is; ’the exaltation of the principle of submission and receptivity, purified of any relation to sexual femaleness.’ . . She says, and I agree with her, that the church’s doctrine on Mary ’exalts the virginal, obedient, spiritual feminine and fears all real women in the flesh’ “.

. . . Relevant to the Modern Woman?

Our correspondent then goes on to enlighten us about other theologians who feel the same way as Rosemary Radford Reuther; to wit: Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenzo, Mary Gordon, Mary Daly and several others who all seem to repeat Rosemary Redford Reuther and each other. They all pretty well agree that, as Marina Warner says; “Mariology is a weapon in the armory of male chauvinism and an effective instrument or female subjugation …”

So, according to this group, there is little hope of any kind of renewal of Marian doctrine and devotion if it is based on the traditional  teaching of the Church. Such a renewal would be bad for the Church since it entails the encouragement of what has now been discovered to be ”the sin of sexism.”

But there’s more to it than that; traditional Marian devotion is now seen to be the tool of a conspiracy. Seen as a deliberate plot to keep women in subjection, a weapon wielded by “male chauvinists” who, Ms. Reuther tells us, ”fear all real women in the flesh.”

And lest our readers think that we’ve finally flipped here at The Queen and are going overboard with exaggeration, listen to Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J. “Notice,” she writes, “that the charge is not that of irrelevance, heard from other quarters about the Marian tradition. It is rather that of complicity in the oppression or women. Mariology has legitimated women’s subordination, has presided over the evil rather than challenging it. “

Theology Must Be Based on Revelation

The complaint then, is not that we are abusing Marian devotion, making it into a tool of oppression. The complaint is that Marian devotion itself, the long tradition of the Catholic Church, suffers from the “sin of sexism.”

What are we to think of all this? Well, for one thing, we here at The Queen have been encouraging the Church’s traditional Marian devotion ever since the foundation of this magazine.  So then, according to our correspondent and the theologian’s that she quotes, we are to be included among those who use the traditional devotion of the Church as a “tool of oppression.”

But before we plead guilty to anything, we would like to see some kind of evidence that there really is a connection between the Church’s devotion to Our Lady and this subjugation of Catholic women that they talk about. Any logician would inform them that throwing gratuitous assertions all over the horizon is no proof of anything.

And secondly, we seriously question whether this kind of procedure can really be called theology at all. Theology must be based on Revelation. If the method of procedure rejects Revelation, then it can’t possibly be theology, no matter what fancy name you give to it.
Devotion to the Blessed Mother of God is based on Catholic doctrine about her role in the salvation of the human race.  It is Revelation itself that tells us what that devotion should be, not our peculiar likes and dislikes.

Devotion to Mary is Based on Her Role in Salvation

And what Revelation tells us about Our Lady is this; she was – and still is – the handmaid of the Lord. It was her submission to the will of God that brought the Savior into the world; that enabled Him to die and rise for us and to free us from sin and death. Without her agreeing to be the Mother of the Redeemer, there would have been no Redeemer. Without her obedience, there would have been no Redemption. And, without her submission to God, there would hove been no re-opening of the gates of heaven for any of us.

Anyone who sees this teaching to be oppressive, to be an encouragement to the subjection of women in the Catholic Church, has got to be – to put it kindly – off his or her theological rocker.

Our Lady Herself Felt Blessed . . . Not Oppressed

And from what Revelation itself tells us, Our Blessed Lady did not see herself as oppressed by God or by anyone else. ”He that is mighty has done great things for me …” And it was another women who first praised her. ”Blessed is she who has believed”., as her cousin St. Elizabeth told her.

Blessed, indeed, is what all generations have called her and will continue to call her. And all because she had the courage to say;  ”Be it done unto me according to thy word.”