Thursday, December 31, 2009

There's Something About Mary...

...that turns certain Protestants into complete jerks: Read the comments generated by this Internet Monk blog post. (I am not a regular reader of iMonk, but every so often another blogger links to it; and I always leave it feeling like a tourist fleeing a particularly unfriendly, uncomfortable region of Christendom, eager to get back on the plane for home.)
Now, I'm sure that Mary, tough Jewish mother that she is, can take care of herself when confronted by what always appear in my mind to be frowny-faced, Evangelical 30-40-somethings with the requisite alpha-male goatees and bowling-alley sartorial sensibility ("I'm just a fun, sensitive, cuddly guy who also happens to be a homophobic misogynist fundamentalist"). But the vehemence with which some of the respondents reject any notion of according the mother of our Lord with any significance or honor whatsoever makes me want to get into these fellows' faces and snarl, Hey -- you leave her alone.

Since I can't, though, I'll just volunteer a two-word armchair analysis of what lies underneath the theologized veneer of the Marian discomfort I read in this discussion: Mommy Issues.

Addendum: This discussion came up on Beliefnet's Lutheran forum, apparently even as I was writing this post...my friend Wayne provided this article on Luther's attitude toward the Virgin Mary.

2 comments:

Avey said...

Found this interesting. You may find this the same re Mary etc.http://wesleyananglican.blogspot.com/2009/12/theotokos-mary-mother-of-god.html

Tom in Ontario said...

I've got to be honest, I don't get the importance that Marian devotion has in RC piety. I think the M on Pope JPII's coffin was bigger than the cross. Hail Mary full of grace, okay, but do I pray to her? No. Do I think about her every day? No. Is she a part of my devotional life? No. Do I denegrate her? No.