Virgin Mother Research Articles

Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book 2: Doctrine about God, or Theology in the Narrower Sense by Matthias Joseph Scheeben, and: Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book 5: Soteriology, Part 2: The Work of Christ the Redeemer, and the Role of His Virgin Mother by Matthias Joseph Scheeben (review)

Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book 2: Doctrine about God, or Theology in the Narrower Sense by Matthias Joseph Scheeben, and: Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book 5: Soteriology, Part 2: The Work of Christ the Redeemer, and the Role of His Virgin Mother by Matthias Joseph Scheeben (review)

Erasmus and the Lady of Loreto

Abstract One could argue that a mass dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto is an unusual choice for Erasmus. His Liturgy of the Virgin Mother Venerated at Loreto (Virginis Matris apud Lauretum cultae liturgia, 1523, 1525, 1529) would prove such an argument wrong, as this overlooked text reveals much of Erasmus’ theory of accommodatio, his approach to liturgy and the cult of Mary, and his vision of the church and his spiritual exegesis, even in the midst of the Reformation’s turmoil. This article proposes a close reading of the 1525 edition, which will contextualize Erasmus’ portrait of Mary in her moral values and in the de-eroticization and purification of the medieval, Catholic model, which he re-affirms in the same years in which his controversy with Luther unfolded. Moreover, the sermon presents a rarefied and intellectual variant of the feminine imagery of the bride, which I will analyze as being systematically integrated into Erasmus’ theology of progress and ecclesiology.

Deciphering the Inscriptions on “The Adoration of the Magi” by Bartholomäus Zeitblom on the High Altar of Blaubeuren

The Blaubeuren monastery (Germany) is home to one of the most beautiful religious artistic expressions of Swabian art from the end of the 15th century, a collaborative work of various artists and workshops, including Jörg Syrlin the Younger, Michel Erhart, Hans Schüchlin, Bartholomäus Zeitblom, and Bernhard Strigel. It is a high altar triptych with a double opening. On its right inner bas-relief is “The Adoration of the Magi”, a work by Bartholomäus Zeitblom (ca. 1455–1520), a prominent member of the Ulm School. In the scene, on King Balthazar’s leg, there is a short literary text and a number, “DIER ZVO LIEB 100”, as well as a crowned monogram among floral elements. In this decipherment study, we propose meanings for all of these inscriptions, based on a collection of various previous solutions. The conclusions lead us to a pious expression toward the Child God based on an old Tyrolean Christmas carol compiled in the 19th century, which we trace back to at least the 15th century, an author’s signature by Zeitblom, and an acknowledgment of the royalty of the Virgin Mother Mary.

Three Early Shaw Plays That Interrogate Marriage, the Family, and Women’s Roles (Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, and You Never Can Tell)

Three Early Shaw Plays That Interrogate Marriage, the Family, and Women’s Roles (Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, <i>and</i> You Never Can Tell)

The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c.400–1000: Hymns, Homilies and Hagiography. By Mary B. Cunningham

Mary Cunningham is part of the firmament of British Byzantine studies, the author of many studies mostly concerned with Byzantine literature, not least hagiography and homiletics, as well as being unstinting in the humdrum tasks involved in societies and conferences; an accomplished Greek scholar, she has willingly devoted herself to the gruelling task of translation for many years now. From the beginning of her scholarly activity, devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, has been a frequent focus of her activity, which culminates in the book under review, a study of the Virgin Mother of God in Byzantium, early and middle, that is, from the fifth to the tenth centuries, a period that has been understood generously. It focuses on the literary evidence from the period—‘hymns, homilies and hagiography’, as her subtitle has it—and will prove indispensable for anyone wanting to understand the growth of devotion to the Mother of God and the forms that it took in this crucial period—crucial, not just for later Byzantium and for the Orthodox Churches that have their origin there, but for the Latin West, and indeed for Christianity further East, all of which owe debts to the formative period of Byzantine Christianity. As well as her linguistic and literary skills, she brings to this book an unparalleled knowledge of the rapidly expanding scholarly literature.

B Flach! B Flach!

B Flach! B Flach!

Out of the Shadows of Patriarchy: The Struggle for Women’s Liberation in the Holy Bible

In the interpretation of the Bible, feminists are often trapped by the method of progressive subversive interpretation which considers the entire Bible to be written by a patriarchal culture which must of necessity be deconstructed. But through this paper, it is understood that in the Holy Bible it was not entirely written only for a pervading patriarchal culture, but indeed the Holy Bible, or at least a part of the book was written by women in their struggle for liberation. There is even a book that reverses patriarchal culture and turns it into a matriarchy, that the family is not "beth-av" (father's house), but the word family relates to the notion of a "mother's house" in the book of Ruth. There are of course numerous great women in the Holy Bible, inter-alia, Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, Deborah, Ruth, Sarah, Priscilla, Rahab, Hannah, Esther and Miriam who was the archetype of the female prophetic tradition. The method used in this article is historical criticism and exegesis. It is through this method that the texts that are used as examples in this article are examined and there is indeed a feminist struggle for freedom. A feminist lens permits a look at text through the eyes of women and to analyze how women are depicted and presented when compared to men. There is a need to reinterprete patriarchal imagery and language usage about God, and we need to determine women's place in relation sacred texts that are studied and to liberate the fairer sex.

Seeing, Embodying, and Proclaiming Christ

AbstractThis essay examines the way Irenaeus of Lyons describes Blandina in her martyrdom: seen by others as embodying Christ and so encouraging them to also bear witness and be born into life by the Virgin Mother, the Church. It explores in particular Irenaeus' exegetical moves, so as to regain a sense of the unity of theology and exegesis as a transformed and transforming vision, which in turn extends the incarnation of Christ into the present in those who also take up the cross. In this way Irenaeus offers a way of understanding the unity of the discipline of theology and a vision of life and the Church that speaks to our contemporary situation.

Our mother church: Mary and ecclesiology

ABSTRACT This essay, based upon the inaugural Bishop Geoffrey Rowell Memorial Lecture, delivered at Chichester Cathedral in November 2022 in association with the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, examines the Scriptural background in Isaiah and Genesis for the way in which early Christians spoke about the Church as Mother or even the Virgin Mother, and how that in turn influenced the ways in which they spoke about Mary. The Church was, for them, the Virgin Mother in whose womb human beings are born into life by sharing in Christ’s Pascha, already anticipated in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, and the local community in which this life is realised. Further consideration is then given to what came to be the oversight of a bishop over an increasing geographical area and whether this should be spoken of as ‘Church’.

The Rev. Thomas A. Lynch (1966–2022)

The Rev. Thomas A. Lynch (1966–2022) Michael P. Morris Click for larger view View full resolution The Reverend Thomas A. Lynch, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and a longtime member of the American Catholic Historical Association, died on April 28, 2022, after a long illness. Father Lynch was 55. Born in the Bronx, New York, Father Lynch earned bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and philosophy from Manhattan College, the Bronx. In 1988, the future-Father Lynch entered Saint Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, Yonkers, New York, earning an M.Div, as well as an MA in theology (Church history). Ordained to the priesthood by the late John Cardinal O’Connor on May 9, 1992, Father Lynch was assigned as parochial vicar to Holy Family Church, the Bronx. The cardinal assigned Father Lynch to graduate studies at the Catholic University of America beginning in the fall of 1994, where he studied under Msgr. Robert F. Trisco and Nelson H. Minnich. Father Lynch focused his studies and research upon Francis Cardinal Spellman (1889–1967), sixth archbishop of New York. In 1998, Cardinal O’Connor appointed Fr. Lynch professor of Church history and later director of pastoral formation at Saint Joseph’s Seminary until 2006. From 2006 to 2007, Father Lynch served as administrator of Nativity Church, New York City. Father Lynch was subsequently assigned as pastor of Our Lady of Angels Parish, the Bronx, Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, Scarsdale, New York, [End Page 836] and in 2020, named pastor of Holy Family-St. Gregory the Great Parish, New York City. In July, 2012, the Bishop of Raleigh, the Most Reverend Michael Francis Burbidge, appointed Father Lynch to the Historical Commission of the Cause for the Beatification and Canonization of the Servant of God Father Thomas Frederick Price. Father Price was the first native-born priest ordained for service in North Carolina and later became a co-founder of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll). He died in China in 1919. Father Lynch attended meetings of the commission in Raleigh and at the Maryknoll headquarters in the State of New York and contributed to the work of the commission that was completed when the diocesan phase of the Cause was concluded in March, 2018. All the findings were submitted to the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Causes of Saints. Father Lynch possessed that unique gift of combining scholarship with pastoral solicitude. Beloved among the priests and people of the Archdiocese of New York and beyond, Father Lynch formed countless future New York priests and guided souls with mercy, quiet kindness, and an intense joy, even in the midst of great suffering. Father Lynch is survived by five brothers. His mother Margaret Lynch died on April 30, 2022—two days after the death of Father Lynch. Father Lynch was buried in the family plot at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York. “May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God in Zion, with Mary, the virgin Mother of God,with Joseph, and all the angels and saints.” (Prayer of Commendation, Pastoral Care of the Sick: Rites of Anointing and Viaticum, 1983). [End Page 837] Michael P. Morris Hyde Park, New York Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press

The impact of Covid-19 pandemic on tourism and Catholic religious destinations

The Covid-19 pandemic has had an adverse impact on religious destinations ever since its outbreak was reported from Wuhan, China in 2019. The aim of this paper is to diagnose the impact Covid-19 pandemic has had on tourism and religious destinations. Empirical evidence elucidates that the Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on tourism and religious destinations. For example, Christianity, social beliefs and values of individuals, pilgrims were threatened, and faith tested during the pandemic. As such, the aim of this paper is to diagnose the impact that was endured by the Catholic religious destinations in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. This is notwithstanding the fact that some religious destinations have not fully recovered even though they are operating. In this study, qualitative approach was employed, unstructured interviews conducted, and systematic sampling randomly done at the pilgrimage destinations visited. Furthermore, NViVo 12 plus was used to transcribe the responses from the participants. The study elucidates on the sufferings endured by pilgrims who annually visited these religious destinations. The rituals such as that of the Catholic venerating the Virgin Mother Mary every month of October was halted. The discussions of the study focus on the elements of Christianity and social value that were compromised because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Religion and social value theory is reflected on in this discussion. The findings indicate a descriptive analysis of how Covid-19 impacted on the religious destinations of the study area. Lastly, the strategies for the religious and pilgrimage destinations post Covid-19 pandemic to survive are suggested and discussed in this chapter.

Against Autofiction: The French Resistance to Autofiction from Gérard Genette to Julia Kristeva

Against AutofictionThe French Resistance to Autofiction from Gérard Genette to Julia Kristeva Anneleen Masschelein (bio) In her 2016 autobiography, Je me voyage, Julia Kristeva confesses: I do not like autofiction, because it does not liberate from sadomasochism by exhibiting it, it endures it and perpetuates its pleasure by inoculating it to a hypocritical reader, “its double, its brother,” whose desire is, by definition, to power and submission. . . . By replacing [de Sade’s] philosophy in the boudoir with pornography, or with miserabilism, the Spectacle distributes the designer drugs of autofiction, the tailor-made and legal drugs, to a hyperconnected people. This dislike is surprising for several reasons. One of the most prominent post-structuralist French intellectuals, Kristeva belongs to the generation of writers who “invented” autofiction as a hybrid genre, born from experimental prose (the new novel), narratology, and psychoanalysis. Cultivating her outsider position—as a Bulgarian deeply entrenched in the core of Parisian avant-garde life in the 1970s and 1980s, and as one of the main exponents of French theory in New York—Kristeva has always practiced what is now labeled autotheory. Probably the most famous example is her virtuoso 1977 essay on motherhood, “Stabat Mater,” in which she juxtaposes a raw, poetic account of her pregnancy against a cultural history and analysis of the cult of the Virgin mother in Catholicism. Since the 1980s, her studies on the abject, love, melancholia, and the experience of foreignness all contain memorable autotheoretical fragments that link her own experiences and those of her patients, psychoanalytic theory, and readings of the Western canon. When she turned to fiction around the turn of the century, her novels—in various genres—baffled critics and were predominantly read autobiographically, including by herself in Je me voyage, where she readily links many characters to people in her life. Kristeva’s objections against autofiction are double and familiar. On the one hand, autofiction relies on questionable psychological mechanisms in both writer and reader, like sadomasochism, exhibitionism, and narcissism. On the other hand, it is a commercial phenomenon, linked to the digital [End Page 37] sphere and its penchant for reality, self-display, and confession, that, like the opium of religion, lulls the masses to sleep and prevents genuine reflection. Considering the fact that today autofiction and autotheory are most often associated with women’s writing and feminism, Kristeva’s harsh judgment brings to mind an equally scathing passage from her 1981 essay “Women’s Time” about the different waves of feminism and women’s writing. Here, while advocating a revolutionary new language, she explicitly condemns not just attempts to find a “women’s language” but also most literary production by women as “a reiteration of a more or less depressed romanticism and always an explosion of an ego lacking narcissistic gratification,” or, quite simply “naïve whining” or anachronistic “market-place romanticism.” In a note, translator Alice Jardin explains this passionate attack as directed against the “mass marketing” of écriture feminine in France at the time. Still, it is quite remarkable, considering that in the Anglo-Saxon world—including the special issue of Signs where “Women’s Time” appeared in 1981—Kristeva is presented as one of the main exponents of “French feminism,” together with Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. In order to understand the aversion to the related phenomena of autofiction and écriture féminine, it is important to look once again at autofiction as “the forgotten face of French theory,” as Hywel Dix calls it in a 2017 article in Word and Text and in his 2018 edited volume Autofiction in English, and at what Mounir Laouyen termed, in a 2021 article, the “problematic reception” of the genre in France. Dix makes a distinction between Anglo-American autofiction, which is more concerned with an exploration of the status of the author, and French autofiction, which focuses on the distinction between truth and fiction. The association of autofiction with the blurring of boundaries has received a negative value judgment primarily because of Gérard Genette’s oft-cited distinction in 1991 between “true” autofictions, that is, genuinely fictional stories in which author, narrator, and character bear the same name (like Borges in...

Religião, devoção e peregrinações marianas Ibero-americanas

Deseja-se com este artigo ressaltar a importância da religião na vida do homem e a fenomenologia devocional no contexto histórico das romarias aos Santuários das aparições da Virgem Maria. A intenção é mostrar suas variadas iconografias, pelas quais Ela se apresentou nos seus diversos espaços sagrados nos países Ibero-Americanos, para onde milhares de devotos deslocam-se de suas cidades e até países para prestar culto e veneração a Virgem Mãe, em busca das indulgências com o objetivo de alcançar a paz espiritual e o conforto para suas aflições.

THE PROBLEM OF SPIRITUAL CREATION IN M. BAZHAN’S «NIGHT CONCERTS»

The article analyzes the content of the concept of «spiritual creation» and its constituent elements «spirit», «creation»; the means of verbal representation of the studied concept in revealing the content of texts and images of characters in the poetic cycle «Night concerts» are analyzed; the specific in the process of revealing the role of musicians and their works in the life of society, the influence of music on the listener, on the formation of personality are determined; the peculiarity of the poet’s «translation» of the language of music into words are defined.&#x0D; It is emphasized that music is not just a melody for M. Bazhan, it is the truth of feelings, that is why the artist translated it into the language of visible images. A careful reading of the content of M. Bazhan’s «Night concerts» allows us to single out the semantic load of the concept «Spirit»: Spirit of artist; Spirit of music; Spirit of the word (voice); Spirit of the city; Spirit of victory; Spirit-Soul; Spirit of love, and «creation» – as creativity that goes beyond human existence.&#x0D; In each poem that makes up the cycle «Night concerts», we see a personality of the Composer-Creator: E. Villa-Lobos, M. Leontovych, L. Hrabovskyi, Ya. Sibelius, F. Schubert, D. Shostakovych and singer Edith Piaf, who is also a creative person. As composers, whose personalities and destinies are revealed in the works of the artist, the Poet himself becomes a kind of a translator of the sounds of music into the sounds of poetry. M. Bazhan pays special attention to the character of Edith Piaf, whose songs became a symbol of Paris, its freedom, and the singer’s talent raised her above the crowd, even above the city roofs, in the poet’s vision she is a «midnight soothsayer», «pure prophetess» in whose character Virgin Mother is visible.&#x0D; In «Night concerts» the artist is not limited to the sound aspect of the musicians’ work. He attaches great importance to the features of the performer and composer. Because it is their inner strength, their Spirit is embodied in the works. Reading the poems that make up this cycle of poetry acquaints us not only with creativity, but also with the fate of composers and performers.

The Arminian Nunnery: virginity at Little Gidding

ABSTRACT By 1632 Nicholas Ferrar had written what his biographer Francis Turner later described as a “Tract on Virginity”. In it Nicholas firmly defended marriage as God’s plan for most people but sharply criticised contemporaries who denigrated the single life possible for those to whom God had given the gift of continence. Within the family circle he used this concept of single life to defend Anna Collet’s choice of virginity. The Tract’s concept of virginity combined with “mothership of the soul” enabled the family to revive their Little Academy and entrust its leadership to Mary Collet as a “virgin mother”. Its Protestant vision of “chaste single life”, bound not by vow but by “resolve” was essential, if not particularly successful, in countering rumours that Gidding was an Arminian nunnery. New evidence suggests that Arminian label needs qualification; Nicholas’s personal beliefs included not only Arminian but also Calvinist ideas.

The Virgin Mother Sarah: The Characterization of the Matriarch in Genesis Rabbah

Abstract This article analyzes the portrayal of the matriarch Sarah in the fifth-century Palestinian rabbinic midrash Genesis Rabbah. The midrash not only dedicates a large number of derashot to the matriarch, but it repeatedly depicts her as a model of personal and religious excellence. In order to understand this development, I turn my attention to the portrayal of Sarah in the works of Origen of Alexandria. Continuing New Testament themes, Origen presents her as the spiritual mother of Christianity and a prefiguration of Jesus’ mother Mary. Various textual and thematic parallels help demonstrate that the rabbis were both aware of this rhetoric and responded to it. Based on this, I conclude that the rabbis used their portrayal of Sarah to combat the Christian appropriation of the matriarch on the one hand, and to establish her as a Jewish alternative to the Virgin Mary on the other.

Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz

Reviewed by: Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz Michael Beshay Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership Ally Kateusz Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. Pp. xvii + 295. ISBN: 978-3-030-11111-6 What did the Virgin Mary mean to ancient Christians? Many historians of the early church might say "very little," given the slim record of her significance in the New Testament and patristic sources prior to the Council of Ephesus in 431 ce. Accordingly, Mary's then-authorized status as "Mother of God" (theotokos) prompted the church to sponsor her veneration, elevating her status to something quasi-divine, while increasingly holding her up as a model of obedience, submission, and self-sacrifice. Over the last decades, however, new insights have emerged about the Virgin's prominence prior to Ephesus, thanks to the concerted efforts of Marian scholars like Ally Kateusz, who have highlight Mary's conspicuous roles in apocryphal and "heretical" sources. Contrary to patristic writings, extracanonical sources portray Mary as a liturgical and apostolic leader. Several of Kateusz's previously published articles on these topics were revised and expanded for the book under review. How ancient, widespread, and enduring were these views of the Virgin Mary's authority? Ironically, feminist scholarship most accustomed to investigating this question, as it has in the case of other Marys (most prominently the Magdelene, less so Martha's sister), has resisted including the Virgin among its cast of exemplars of women's leadership. As Kateusz observes, "modern Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic interpretation, not to mention layers of their associated gender theology" has conditioned scholars to deny the Virgin the same favorable treatment as other New Testament women, despite the abundance of extracanonical literary and artistic evidence of her leadership (13). Kateusz's goal is to recover this history, "hiding in plain sight," of Mary's authority as priest and bishop—roles which indicate a persistent "discipleship of equals" (as Elizabeth Shüssler Fiorenza described the Jesus movement), which ancient scribes, the church of the West, and modern researchers have occluded. The first three chapters establish the book's aims, methods, and scope. Chapter 1 (re)introduces readers to the Virgin Mary as a founding Abrahamic figure through a cursory survey of principal sources, such as the Proto-gospel of James and the Gospel of Bartholomew. Kateusz foregrounds redaction analysis in her methodology, a means to investigate the ancient church's ideological struggles over gender roles. Kateusz approaches iconographic artifacts in much the same way, treating outlying depictions of women's leadership in the early [End Page 540] record as evidence of wider patterns of female authority based on their unlikely survival through centuries of suppression. In Chapter 2, Kateusz challenges the standard of lectio brevior potior (preferring the shortest reading) by meticulously demonstrating the tendency of scribes to excise or shorten texts around the markers of female authority. She notes especially the offense scribes took to women exorcising demons and bearing censers and incense—activities attributed to Mary in the earliest layer of the dormition narratives and several iconographic remains associated with the Anastasis shrine in Jerusalem. Chapter 3 extends the analysis to the testimonies surrounding extracanonical women like Mariamne, Irene, Nino, and Thecla, whose narrative traditions likewise expose a scribal bias against women prophesying, preaching, and baptizing. The next three chapters explore various dimensions of Mary's authority as priest and bishop. Chapter 4 analyzes iconographic scenes depicting Mary with arms raised—a gesture of blessing which Kateusz links to the high priesthood of the temple—and donning the episcopal pallium—a cloth worn by bishops while officiating the eucharist. By studying them alongside literary evidence of women's leadership, Kateusz argues that these scenes of Mary both idealized and reinforced clerical offices for women. Chapter 5 investigates liturgical objects, like chalices and censers, that pair Mary and Jesus, much as the earliest layers of the Proto-gospel of James and the dormition narratives invite comparisons between the Virgin Mother and her Son. Kateusz argues that the conventional dating of these artifacts to 500 ce or later may be too conservative, for it partly rests on the fraught premise that the Council of Ephesus...

Imagining Mary: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Devotion to the Virgin Mother of God. By Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

Imagining Mary: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Devotion to the Virgin Mother of God. By Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

The Book of Esther and the Typology of Female Transfiguration in American Literature, by Silver, Ariel Clark

<i>The Book of Esther and the Typology of Female Transfiguration in American Literature</i>, by Silver, Ariel Clark

From nursing Virgins to brelfies: the project of maternal femininity

ABSTRACT Contemporary debates about breastfeeding are saturated with ideas about what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothering; ‘achieved’ or ‘failed’ femininity frequently derived from Christian representations of the Virgin Mother. In this article we trace deeply entrenched values about the maternal breast through the representation of the Madonna del Latte, specifically concentrating on breast ownership and the depiction of unattainable motherhood. The myth of maternal femininity is then explored in relation to contemporary visual discourses of the nursing mother in which the narrative of unattainable or failed maternal femininity is challenged. The performance work of Megan Marsh-McGlone and the phenomenon of sharing ‘brelfies’ on social media are read as indicative of a new relationship to the Mary myth in which mothers expose the cultural fear of achieved maternal femininity. Ultimately, we argue that what is required of mothers is that they are held in a process of becoming maternal and that representations that subvert this imperative signal a shift in the landscape of Marian iconography.