By Tina Beattie

A recent conference in Rome in ‘The Mystery of Mary’ surprised one Christian feminist who took part. Tina Beattie, who has written on Mary and lectures in Theology at Bristol University, found herself inspired by the wealth of the tradition.

Fourteen years ago, when I was living in Zimbabwe and exploring the possibility of becoming a Catholic, I told a priest that my two main difficulties were with the Pope and Mary. One Sunday morning, I found myself sweltering but jubilant on the steps of Saint Peter’s Basilica, where Pope John Paul II was celebrating Mass. This was the culmination of a conference on “The Mystery of Mary and the Trinity”, organized by the International Pontifical Marian Academy, to which I had been invited as a speaker. It has been a long journey from that time in Zimbabwe.

The conference brought together delegates from around the world, including participants from other complexity and vitality of Mary to the Catholic faith. But it also made me ask myself with renewed persistence: what is the significance of Mary in the modern Catholic world? Women formed a significant minority of conference participants. The ones I met were strong minded and highly educated, some with doctorates and licentiates in Theology, many of them were religious sisters living in ways which modern world. They include members of communities which minister to street children, prostitutes and drug addict, university lecturers and school teachers, artists and musicians, all women who are sculpting the contours of a future Church which is visionary, joyous and brave – qualities which surely epitomize Mary.  But with few exceptions, these women were deeply suspicious of feminism. Doctrinally conservative and socially radical, they challenge some of my own ideas about the aspirations of women in the Church, and about the ways in which Mary both reflects and moulds those aspirations. There was much good-humored bantering about some clerical participants, and they were quick to criticize the boring rhetoric of some speakers, but it was refreshing for me to be among women who were happy with the Church, at peace with themselves, and able to laugh rather than rage at the foibles of the male hierarchy.

I also became aware of the chasm between the Mary beloved of millions of ordinary Catholics, and the Mary idealized and conceptualized by the men of the western theological tradition. The conference was held at the shrine of the Madonna del Divino Amore, outside Rome, where large new shrine and conference center have been built alongside a much older hilltop shrine, staying there brought home to me how vital Mary is to an incarnational theology which can be lived an not simply theorized about. It was a place where people were able to be themselves in the presence of an accessible and intimate God, irrespective of the theological abstractions about “divine generativity” and “Trinitarian processions” being propounded in the conference hall. There was a room decorated with family snapshots, sports trophies, racing bikes, photographs of mangled cars and glass cabinet full of crash helmets. All attesting to the Madonna’s capacity to embody God in every aspect of human life – death, Italian girls in skimpy skirts lit candles and crossed themselves, buxom mamas gossiped through the Mass to the accompaniment of chattering children, men came in lycra cycling shorts and business suits to offer their devo-tions; weddings, baptisms and funerals seemed to form a constant procession through the place, and families came by the carload to combine their prayers with a picnic and a day out.

I have come away from Rome with much to think about, but also with renewed respect for the enduring strength of traditional Catholicism. As a feminist theologian, I must continue to ask difficult questions about Mary in relation to Catholic doctrine and devotion. Some of what was said during the conference about Mary’s passivity, obedience and total and total surrender of self as the bride of Christ was troubling, because it was based upon an anachronistic view of marriage. There was something bizarre about the confidence with which many male speakers propounded their theories about Mary in theological concepts which seemed remote and irrelevant, not only to women’s lives but to any tangible human reality. But I have also come away feeling that I am part of a living body of faith which can  accommodate all the abundance of the human family, women and men, young and old, of different races cultures and creeds, so much is did today about what’s right with it – and there is much to celebrate.

Salamat sa THE TABLET