After Decades in the Background, Mary's Making a Comeback

[gilliam]

When Pope Benedict XVI was presented to the world on April 19, some Catholics were a little dismayed by one part of his greeting: “The Lord will help us, and Mary, his most holy mother, will be alongside us.”

For liberal Catholics of a certain age — my age — any mention of Mary can be cringe-making. I was appalled, as a post-Vatican II Catholic schoolboy, when my mother passed along a secret about salvation that her mother had imparted to her: “If Jesus won’t let you in the front door of Heaven, Mary will let you in the back door.”

Charlene Spretnak has a term for Catholics like me: “minimalist Marians.” Spretnak, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, is the author of “Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her Re-Emergence in the Modern Church.” She takes pity on Catholics who were raised after Mary was “shrunken and suppressed” by the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. “I … have developed a properly ‘bad attitude’ about the church’s drastic reduction of Marian spirituality,” Spretnak writes. “The Roman Catholic Church … had always recognized not only the biblical dimensions of Mary, as do the Protestant and Orthodox branches of Christianity, but also what could be called the biblical-plus perception of her, as do the Orthodox. That is, the church traditionally held that the Virgin Mary, by virtue of her inherent role in the Incarnation, was an expansive bridge between humans and the Divine.”

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com …

 

[thann]

Charlene Spretnak is one of my niece’s professors at California Institute of Integrated Studies, a left-wing school devoted to New Age nonsense. My niece is completely in Spretnak’s thrall, believing every lie in that horrible book. She sent the book to her mother, who is very confused now, and her mom gave it to me to read.

I was literally sick to my stomach while I read it. It is disgusting junk, and I had to get it out of my house. The book makes Mary into a goddess figure. Spretnak quotes folks like Matthew Fox and Andrew Greeley. Scary scary scary. She constantly slams Cardinal Ratzinger.

Mary was never GONE. She doesn’t have to make a COMEBACK. Mary was never minimalized or whatever cockamaymie words Spretnak uses.

Ugh.

God help us.

'thann

 

[amcalabrese]

thann:

Mary was never GONE. She doesn’t have to make a COMEBACK. Mary was never minimalized or whatever cockamaymie words Spretnak uses.

This was my initial reaction. Pope John Paul even put “M” in his coat of arms to stand for Mary (with the symbolism of the M being under the cross, symbolizing that Mary is not equal with Christ and also her station at the crucifixation.

 

[mpav]

I think Mary was played down. It seems that for decades mary was never mentioned from the pulpits in churches I attended. I think it’s appropriate to have Mary mentioned, to have the rosary promoted as a benficial prayer practice, to have rosary services available in church, to have May crowning and to have Marian hymns sung. Otherwise how do people know about her? I’m quite sure many young people who attended those churches that I attended have little appreciation for Mary, and less understnading of her proper place in the Church. Happily, I now attend a Church which has appropriate appreciation of Our Lady.

 

[amcalabrese]

mpav:

I think Mary was played down. It seems that for decades mary was never mentioned from the pulpits in churches I attended. I think it’s appropriate to have Mary mentioned, to have the rosary promoted as a benficial prayer practice, to have rosary services available in church, to have May crowning and to have Marian hymns sung. Otherwise how do people know about her? I’m quite sure many young people who attended those churches that I attended have little appreciation for Mary, and less understnading of her proper place in the Church. Happily, I now attend a Church which has appropriate appreciation of Our Lady.

Maybe I am missing something. I came of age post Vatican II (born 1967). As an altar boy I oftenb served at Marian devotions. Was there a period say between 1965-1975 when Mary disappeared? As long as I can remember, there was lots of devotion to Mary in my churches.