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Mary in Catholicism and Heavenly Mother in Mormonism: Anaddendum
to the Givens podcast interview
During a recent Maxwell Institute Podcast interview , Fiona
Givens observed that Mormons have notheology of Heavenly Mothera
problem which is receiving increased attention in Mormon blogs
andother publications. She redirected the conversation by observing
that Mormons are still trying to articulatetheologies about God the
Father, which she believes helps account for increased interest in
HeavenlyMother. Some views of God are more foreboding, making him
inaccessible in a devotional sense, thusincreasing a desire for a
divine feminine.
During this discussion, she made a brief comparison between
Mormonism and Catholicism: And again, we go to the Catholic faith
tradition. I was raised CatholicI understand whats going onhereand
you have Christ, and he appears to be vulnerable and compassionate
and benevolent, but healso says some pretty scary things, so what
do you do? How much of the Father is in the Son, how muchof the
Mother is in the Son, and one isnt seeing a huge inuence there.But
I can understand in the
Catholic tradition why people, the Catholics go to Mary; she has
become the intercessor. Shes completelytaken over, for most
Catholics, the role of Christ. And I think its because its
difculttheres thatwonderful scripture, To whom shall we go? I mean,
the things that youre saying, Lord, are reallydifcult and we really
dont know what to do. And we have this Heavenly Father gure who has
beenterribly misconstrued. And its also our own personal
experiences with our own fathers; its much easierto go to the
mother gure. She tends to be more merciful, kind, [long-]suffering,
and empathic. But theinjunction in the New Testament is to pray to
our Heavenly Father. That is difcult, its a hard thing to do,so
once we understand who he really is, I think that will make a huge
difference (21:5223:13).
A thoughtful Catholic listener sent me an email after hearing
the episode, taking exception to the claimthat Mary has taken over
Christs role for Catholics. Fionas observation, taken at face
value, does notfairly represent the place of Mary or Christ within
the Catholic tradition. Indeed, the Catholic
Encyclopedia is emphatic in distinguishing between Christs role
and Marys role. The impetus behindMarys role as intercessor likely
involves a number of factors which may have little to do
withperceptions of God as a stern father gure. This is complicated
further when considering Catholic viewsof the Trinity. Of course,
Fiona speaks as a former Catholic (with all that entails), and
certainly doesntrepresent the entire tradition.
Taking a closer look, we might consider the intercessory role of
Mary within Catholicism, not as areplacement for Christ in the
larger sense of atonement and mediation, but in terms of devotional
worship,particularly prayer. It seems to me Fiona was discussing an
apparently widespread religious impulsedirected toward the divine
feminine, which she believes helps mitigate dour depictions of an
OldTestament-style God. She seems to say that within Catholicism
this impulse has been manifest in the
traditions affection for Mary as an intercessor. Within
Mormonism she believes this impulse is directed toHeavenly Mother.
This could be the beginning of an interesting comparisonalbeit
limitedbetweenmanifestations of the divine feminine in Mormonism
and Catholicism.
The main problem is that Fionas observation can all-too-easily
be understood through the lens of long-standing anti-Catholic
accusations of Mary worship , a caricature Ive occasionally and
unfortunatelyheard about in LDS settings. (See here for a short
discussion from a Catholic writer regarding prayerversus worship.)
Taking a more charitable view, it might be said that Catholics who
pray through Mary asintercessor, or in other words who seek
devotional experience through the Mother of God, are perhaps
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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2012/04/do-catholics-worship-mary.htmlhttps://www.google.com/search?q=Mary+worship&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS523US523&oq=Mary+worship&aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0l3j69i62l2.2901j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08070a.htmhttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08070a.htmhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/maxwell-institute-podcast/id666445688?i=162444907&mt=2
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fullling a desire which many religious people feel to reach for
a divine feminine. Fiona compares thiswith Mormons who feel drawn
to know more about Heavenly Mother.
There are a number of crucial caveats that must be made in any
such comparison, of course. For instance,this isnt to say that Mary
is a replacement for Jesus, better than Jesus, or that Jesuss
saving acts are notefcacious in Catholic beliefafter all, the
Eucharist (or as Mormons call it, the sacrament) directlyplaces the
body and blood of Christ at the center of Catholic liturgical
experience. But perhaps, at least forsome Catholics, Mary has
played an intercessory role similar to that which Christ plays in
other traditionschiey in the realm of petition and prayer. But even
in this, Mary does not replace Christ, but rather herstatus ows
from being the vessel through which Christ was born, in addition to
her eventually beinggloried and assumed into Heaven.
Moreover, as the emailer noted, such prayerful intercession is
not limited to Mary, but includes manywomen and men in a wide
Communion of Saints . She lists examples like St. Catherine of
Siena, St.Therese of Lisieux, or St. Joan of Arc. (It would be
awesome if similar historical Mormon women couldfeature so
prominently in average Mormon thought. At the present, Eliza R.
Snow, Emma Smith, and afew others ll Mormon imaginative space,
albeit without the intercessory dimension. This is perhaps
somewhat odd, given Mormonisms focus on Elijahs promise to turn
the hearts of children to parentsand
parents to children. Well, fathers in particular!) The emailer
concludes: There is no shortage of thefeminine intercessor in
Catholicism and since we are all priests and priestesses we are all
called tointercede for others, after all thats what we do when we
pray for others.
A more rigorous comparison would be fascinating. In the
meantime, I believe Fiona Givens intended toconvey the idea that
Mormons do have a shortage of such feminine intercessors for a
variety of social,historical, and theological reasons. She implies
that this shortage has been one factor in the recent mini-surge of
online discussion within Mormonism about a Heavenly Mother*a
substantially different gurecompared to Marys theological place in
Catholicism, but potentially devotionally similar in lling a
needfor connection with the divine feminine.
In other words, this is an aspect of Catholic devotional life
that some Mormons may understand asdesirablesomething positive
about Catholicism which the LDS Church currently lacks in
articulation, ifnot in practice. To the limited extent that Mormons
understand the comparison they may feel a certainholy envy for one
means by which some Catholics have incorporated the divine feminine
into theirworship of God.
* Recently, the most conspicuous contribution about Heavenly
Mother in Mormonism is David Paulsenand Martin Pulido, A Mother
There: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven ,
BYUStudies 50/1 (2001). This article sparked various blog posts,
several positive , others highlighting some
problems . The image is from the Video, Audio, Images section of
lds.org .
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http://www.lds.org/media-library/images/gospel-art/new-testament?lang=eng&start=31&end=40http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithpromotingrumor/2011/09/critique-of-paulsen-and-pulidos/http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleCasslerPaulsenPulido.htmlhttp://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/joannabrooks/4588/is_heavenly_mother_making_a_comeback_in_mormonism_/https://byustudies.byu.edu/showTitle.aspx?title=8669http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04171a.htm
