medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 8:10 PM -0500 9/8/06, Jim Bugslag wrote:
>What I can't help finding more and more remarkable is how dichotomous the
>discourse on Mary has been and continues to be. Some take a
>theological line, i.e.
>that Mary is no goddess and has no power over the fate of mortals.
>And there are
>all sorts of theological writings that support such completely
>orthodox ideas. Yet,
>when one looks at the social contexts and functions of devotion to
>Mary during the
>Middle Ages, it certainly appears that devotion specifically to her
>essentially took
>over the social functions that were formerly served by devotion to
>pre-Christian
>goddesses. ...[snip]...There is little hint that the Church
>protested these social roles for Marian
>devotion, and much evidence that they supported it. What I can't
>figure out is
>whether that makes the Church schizoid, or whether we are dealing
>with a classic
>case of double-think, or what.
Needless to say, this also became a sore point with Protestants,
something I have noticed that 'cradle Catholics' often don't quite
understand. It's remarkable to me that Catholic commenters can
seriously propose giving Mary the title "Co-Redemptrix" and then be
surprised by the screams they hear from the Protestant gallery <g>.
The notion of Mary taking over the functions of pagan goddesses -- in
practice, if not theologically -- is also made much of by those who
either criticize the "paganization" of the Roman church, and also --
which I hear quite a lot of in California! -- by modern pagans who
claim that their tradition continued "underground" within the
Christian church. (A notion pretty thoroughly debunked in scholarly
circles by now, but I can testify it's still common within the pagan
community.)
--
____________________________________________________________
O Chris Laning <[log in to unmask]> - Davis, California
+ http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
____________________________________________________________
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