Recently, I participated in an online conversation about the Blessed Virgin.
As an Evangelical convert to the Catholic faith, I can empathize with the deep fears many Evangelicals have about Mary. It's a terror that runs way down into the guts and marrow of many Evangelicals. It's a deep, unreasoning and nameless fear that does not lose any of its power even when every so-called "basis" for the fear is debunked. And like many irrational fears, it has the odd quality of distracting us from reality and clear thinking.To illustrate what I mean, let me sum up not a few discussions I have witnessed between Catholics and Evangelicals.
- Evangelical: You must not worship Mary!
- Catholic: Relax. I don't worship Mary.
- Evangelical: Oh, but you do!
- Catholic: Actually, I think I'm the only one qualified to make that call, aren't I?
- Evangelical: But it looks to me like you worship her! You pray to her and ask her to intercede for you, don't you?
- Catholic: Yes, I do like to talk to my mother about things. But I don't worship her and I don't think she's God. She's a creature, a fellow Christian (albeit the great one). How would you feel if I said, "You worship your barber! I know you do, because you sometimes ask him to pray for you?"
- Evangelical: That's totally different!
- Catholic: Actually, it's exactly the same. Which is why Scripture says don't judge by appearances. If you'd just ask me rather than telling me, I'd be happy to tell you what I worship. I worship Jesus Christ fully present in the Holy Eucharist — body, blood, soul, and divinity.
- Evangelical: I don't think the Eucharist is Jesus's body and blood, but simply a symbol. But let's not argue over such fine points of theology as "transubstantiation." We both celebrate Communion in our own ways. And that's the important thing.
- Catholic: Did you hear me? I said I fall down in worship and adoration before something that looks just like a piece of bread and a cup of wine. I say "Hosanna" to it. I adore it as the very God of the Universe! The Eucharist is my Lord and my God, my salvation, my life, the very source of my being!
- Evangelical: Yes. I think that's a bit overboard, but let's not argue about it. You have your version of Communion and I have mine. Now: about Mary worship — don't you see how incredibly dangerous it is for you to commit the grave sin of idolizing Mary...
If this were the only time I'd seen exchanges like this I would laugh it off as a singular incidence of obtuseness. But, in fact, it's not at all uncommon to see Evangelicals devoting weirdly disproportionate amounts of energy to the strange task of persuading Catholics to cease doing what they are not doing, while cheerfully and warmly ignoring what they are doing.
To be sure, that doesn't mean I think Evangelicals should get on the ball and start a campaign against Eucharistic adoration. On the contrary, I think Eucharistic adoration the highest duty of the human race and something that should be encouraged till the glory of the Lord covers the face of the earth as the waters cover the sea. But I do think it mighty odd that somebody who doesn't believe the Eucharist is Jesus Christ cares passionately that I not fall down in worship of Mary — whom I do not adore — yet shrugs indifferently when I fall down in worship of the Host.
It gives one the strong impression that there's something other than concern about idolatry here. That something is what I call Mariaphobic Response Syndrome: the irrational terror of the Blessed Virgin that paradoxically makes her loom far larger in many evangelical imaginations than in Catholic ones.
As a recovering MRS sufferer, I can tell you that she is perhaps the single biggest obstacle facing the potential convert to the Church from Evangelicalism. The papacy? Small beer! The Eucharist? Got it. Sacred Tradition? Not a problem! Mary?Something in the gut stirs. The terror that the whole Catholic faith is a vast charade flares up in the mind. Say what they will, the "Catholic Mary" is some terrible pretty face on the worship of Babylonian deities! Must. Get. Out! Must. Escape! It's all a trick! Once I'm in the Church I'll be ushered into the Secret Chambers where Scary Marian Rites of Worship take place in the secret rooms beneath the sanctuary! There'll be no escape! I will be forced to worship the Goddess!!!!!
Then you enter the Church and reality hits you: Mary gets small. Or rather, she resumes her normal place. You discover the comic fact that nobody thinks she's another God, as you feared. You discover the even funnier fact that a small minority of Catholics think she's another pope. But more on that in my next column...
Part 2 of 2
In my last column, I remarked that the surprise for many Evangelical converts to the Catholic faith is how much smaller Mary is to the Catholic than she is to the Evangelical.
For the Evangelical, "the Catholic Mary" looms large as a kind of ur-goddess. The fear that preoccupies the evangelical imagination is that, say what Catholics will, once the convert is safely inside the Church, the priest will produce the brain chip implant and you will be reprogrammed to adore and worship Mary by the Vatican's Mind Control Laser Platform in Geosynchronous Orbit above North America.
But the reality, when you finally get past the irrational terror of Mary and enter the Church, is that nobody thinks she's another God, as you feared. Instead, you find that a small minority of Catholics think she's another pope.
It's funny really. Each religious tradition has its own genius and its own pathologies. On the pathology side of Evangelicalism, particularly charismatic flavors, one sees (in a peculiar minority of Evangelicals) a frequent anointing of "prophets" who have the End Times mapped out in one way or another. Usually, this involves heavy doses of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, as well as ingenious interpretations of events in Israel, bar codes, and numerical evaluations of some world leader's name.
But lest Catholics clap themselves on the back too much, it must be noted that the convert is tempted to mutter "different religion, same pathologies" when he enters the Catholic communion only to be greeted by a small but earnest cadre of apocalypse-minded Catholics who center exactly the same sort of prognosticating, not on Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation — after all, we're Catholics, we don't read the Bible more than we have to — but on some alleged revelation of Mary involving chastisements, asteroid impacts, Three Days of Darkness, and weird commands issued to the pope or the bishops of the world.
The queer thing about this particular subculture in the Church is that it appears to hold to the notion of "Church Governance by Apparition." A certain sort of Catholic can get the notion in his head that the Church is governed, not by the bishops in succession from the Apostles and in union with the pope, but by a series of private revelations from Mary. Such Catholics are often not particularly cautious about distinguishing between public and private revelation, still less about whether a Marian apparition has been approved by the Church. Indeed, the creepier and more apocalyptic the "revelation" the more such a Catholic will be certain that its rejection by the Church is a sign of apostasy and imminent judgment on the Sinister Masonic/New Age/Jewish conspiracy at work in the hierarchy. So if an alleged Marian apparition starts claiming that the pope must define this or that teaching as dogma, or starts telling Catholics to save up beeswax candles to prepare themselves for the Three Days of Darkness that are just around the corner, the apparition enthusiast will often regard it as a judgment on the pope — not on the reality of the "vision" — if the pope does not salute smartly and do whatever the latest visionary is demanding.
This is, however, to fundamentally fail to grasp what the Church has always taught with the authority of Christ. A Marian private revelation is no more binding on the pope than it is binding on any other Catholic. The governance of the Church remains the task of the Church's Christ-appointed governors, the bishops. Mary does not supercede them in their proper and Christ-appointed role and authentic Marian apparitions never try to do so. If the Magisterium judges a Marian revelation to be authentic, the Holy Father or the bishops may well act in obedience to it (as, for instance, when Our Lady of Guadalupe requested the building of a Church and Our Lady of Fatima requested the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart). But in such cases, the Magisterium is still left to act in freedom. It is not obliged to practice government-by-apparition, and apparition enthusiasts overstep their bounds when they declare a pope or bishop "apostate" if they fail to live up to the apparitionist's level of enthusiasm.
This basic counsel to trust the Holy Spirit in leading the Church comes hard for many people. The spectrum can be wide in such matters. Some people are the type who immediately rush off to start praying the Rosary and light candles to water stains on a highway underpass in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Others don't find even Church-approved apparitions and private revelations particularly helpful to them and therefore don't bother with them much. That's their right (the Church doesn't say you must have a devotion to, say, Our Lady of Fatima or Guadalupe, just that you may), but the sensible thing to do is to trust the Holy Spirit to guide the Church as He promised He would. Otherwise, we can find that our passions become so engaged in defending our views that, should the Church rule against us, we end up placing our view of private revelation over the Church's and condemning the Church for her "erroneous" approval or disapproval.
Mark Shea is Senior Content Editor for Catholic Exchange. You may visit his website at http://www.mark-shea.com/ check out his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It!, or purchase his books and tapes here.
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