Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 26, 1994 TAG: 9405260059
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: We are convinced that theologians are people who, when they were picking a career, decided that nuclear physics wasn't complicated enough.
The Mary problem is this: Though always venerated, the mother of Jesus has over the centuries become increasingly important to Catholics, to the point where she is almost on a level with her divine son. Non-Catholics don't understand it; Catholics debate it. They ask, what's Mary's position in the scheme of salvation? How should we think of her? Is she the ``mother of the church'' or merely an exemplary member of the faith?
We went to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to get a better picture of ``Mariology'' or ``Marian devotion'' (we were told that the term ``Marianism'' has a pejorative connotation; it's a subtle world out there). The shrine, built in Northeast Washington by Catholics from across the United States, is the largest Catholic church in the country. Monsignor Michael J. Bransfield told us that Marian devotion is a bottom-up phenomenon, rising from the faith of individual Catholics rather than from the declarations of popes and cardinals.
``We do view her as the first saint, the most important saint,'' Bransfield said. But he added, ``Christ is more important. Christ is divine. Mary isn't. Mary is human.''
Catholics traditionally do not pray directly to God but rather to saints to intercede with God on their behalf. Mary is a kind of mega-saint - typically, she's referred to as ``Our Lady'' or ``Our Blessed Mother'' or some other title, but not as ``St. Mary'' - thus she's the intercessor of choice for many Catholics. She has many times been cited as the source of miracles, such as the miracle at Lourdes.
More importantly, Mary is the most prominent woman in the story of Jesus Christ. The Catholic church has always had a woman shortage: The apostles are men, the popes are men, the bishops are men, the priests are men. So for anyone seeking a feminine role model, Mary's just about it. Different Catholics see her in different ways: She's a woman, mother, ``our sister'' (the feminists' preferred term), Virgin, believer, sufferer, ``co-redeemer.''
Mary plays a limited role in the Gospels themselves. Asked how the Marian devotion squares with scripture, Bransfield said, ``As Catholics, our nature is to not always have to defend ourselves with scripture.'' This is a feature of Catholicism: The church is an ongoing creation. Some things might not be in the Gospels, but the Catholics aren't strict constructionists, you might say.
The ``Immaculate Conception,'' which refers to Mary, not Jesus, has been Catholic dogma only since 1854; it proclaims that Mary was born without original sin. In 1950 the Catholic church proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption (Mary was assumed to Heaven). That probably marked the peak of Mariological maximalism.
Since then, the Second Vatican Council toned down some Mariological excesses. Some Catholics wanted to refer to her as ``mother of the church,'' but Vatican II rejected this language and retained the title De Beata Maria Virgine Deipara in mysterio Christi et Ecclesia, which translates as ``On the blessed God-bearing Virgin Mary in the mystery of Christ and the church.''
Which you have to admit beats the heck out of a title like ``staff writer.''
The Mailbag:
James W. of Arlington, Va., asks, ``Why (and how) is the universe spinning?''
Dear Jim: Your suspicion of a spinning universe puts you in good company. Kurt Godel, the famous mathematician, proposed a bunch of cosmological theories that relied on the notion of a spinning universe.
But it doesn't seem to be happening. If the universe were spinning, the cosmic background radiation wouldn't be so uniform. We'd expect the radiation to bulge a bit in certain spots, the same way the Earth has a bulge around the Equator.
Jim Peebles, a Princeton physicist, says the background radiation has a few wiggles and that's it. ``None of these wiggles has the pattern you'd expect for a rotating universe.''
That's the scientific answer. But we're not so sure. We think we just felt something move.
by CNB