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New column: Out of Left Field
(POSTED: 8/14/09) Seeking the authentic Mary of Magdala --
Ever since its publication in 2003, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code has fomented an amazing amount of interest in Mary of Magdala, who was celebrated in the early Church as an important leader, right up there with Sts. Peter and Paul.
Now, if you are one of the few who has not read this blockbuster book (there are tens of millions of copies in print, and dozens of translations) or seen the film adaptation with Tom Hanks, basically this murder-detective story flows from the premise that Jesus and Mary Magdalen were married and had a child.
The true mystery to me is that so many people, and not just those with a grudge against the Catholic Church, desperately want to believe this totally fictitious, and not particularly well-written or well-researched novel. What is it about the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen that people want to believe, even as this very idea shakes the foundation of their traditional Christian beliefs?
Is it a purely emotional reaction that if Jesus was married and a biological father he was really, really like us?
Or could it be that many have always felt the Catholic Church, with its patriarchal "We'll tell you what to read and what to believe and you just pray, pay and obey" attitude, has always been hiding some deep dark secret from the faithful?
Well, as a Catholic feminist, I should be delighted that more people like the idea of Mary, Wife of Jesus, than Mary, Whore-saved-by Jesus, which was, by the 4th century, the portrayal of Mary by misogynist Church fathers.
But actually, the real Mary Magdalen (as far as is known) was not the wife of anyone, a status that usually meant life as an outcast, a woman relegated to the margins of society, living off the charity of others. Instead, it appears that Mary of Magdala was a woman with some resources of her own, and quite probably "bankrolled" the "community organizing" by Jesus and the disciples. And let's not forget she was the person to whom Christ announced the Resurrection -- the Apostle to the Apostles, so to speak. (OK, so Jesus may not have had much choice, since all his male followers were hiding together in an upper room, afraid they might meet the same ignoble fate as their crucified leader.)
There were important women in Jesus' life -- with real-life stories -- but those are not stories we hear often enough at Mass.
And so just a few weeks ago -- centered on the July 22 feast of Mary Magdalen -- 60or so Chicago-area Catholics who believe that Jesus intended his Church to be one that recognizes women as men's equals gathered together to celebrate and honor her and those other women who were so important to the development and growth of Christianity, but whose stories aren't re-told enough in our male-centric Church.
Together, on a tree-flanked knoll overlooking Lake Michigan at Kathy Osterman Park, the group (which included me and my husband) listened to the story of the Apostle to the Apostles from the Gospel of John. We told the stories of other early Christian women leaders, from the Epistles, from the Acts of the Apostles and from the works of scripture scholars who are recovering these "lost" lives.
We reflected on the life of Patty Crowley, who died just a few years ago at the age of 92 and was a friend of and role model for many of us, and whose passion for justice for women in our Church and society so amazingly paralleled these ancient women's stories.
We did what Jesus commanded his followers to do: blessed, offered and shared the bread and the wine. We prayed, sang, ate, admired the children in our midst and renewed not just friendships, but our belief in the words of St. Paul, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
Do I think these stories are as compelling as The Da Vinci Code? Check them out and see what you think. And, do remember, they come from that one book that continues to far outsell Dan Brown or any other author . . . the Bible.
By Margaret Field, a Chicago-area Catholic who is involved in Vatican II reform and renewal efforts.
Contact: meafield@comcast.net or info@chicagocatholicnews.com
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