Seeking a Promotion for the Virgin Mary
Copyright 1994 - 2008 Endtime Prophecy Org
Last Updated : July 23, 2006
By JAN JARBOE RUSSELL - New York Times
December 23, 2000
"The world of today is in desperate need of a mother,"
whispered Prof. Mark Miravalle as he sat behind his desk at
Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, carefully
fingering a string of rosary beads.
Half a world away, inside the Vatican, yet another enormous
box arrived filled with petitions asking Pope John Paul II
to exercise his absolute power to proclaim a new and highly
debated dogma: that the Virgin Mary is a co-redeemer with
Jesus and cooperates fully with her son in the redemption of
mankind.
Mr. Miravalle, 41, began the petition drive four years ago
from his obscure position as a professor of Mariology - the
study of Mary - at one of the most conservative Catholic
universities in the nation. Since then the pope has received
more than six million signatures from 148 countries on
petitions asking him to give the Virgin Mary the ultimate
promotion.
In addition to ordinary Catholics, Mr. Miravalle has
received support from 550 bishops and 42 cardinals,
including Cardinal John O'Connor and Mother Teresa before
their deaths. Along the way his movement has laid bare a
deep-seated conflict between wildly popular devotion to the
Virgin Mary and the efforts of the established church to
keep that devotion in check.
If Mr. Miravalle's campaign succeeds and John Paul II
proclaims the Virgin Mary as a co-redeemer, she would be a
vastly more powerful figure, something close to a fourth
member of the Holy Trinity and the primary female face
through which Christians experience the divine.
Specifically, Roman Catholics would be required to accept
three new spiritual truths: that Mary is co-redemptrix, as
the pope terms it, and participates in people's redemption;
that Mary is mediatrix and has the power to grant all
graces; and that Mary is "the advocate for the people of
God," in Mr. Miravalle's words, and has the authority to
influence God's judgments. For the millions of Virgin Mary
devotees who have signed Mr. Miravalle's petitions, these
beliefs are already woven into their daily spiritual lives.
They represent what theologians call popular piety,
practices that are widely accepted by ordinary religious
people over the learned objections of the establishment.
Indeed, the idea has been present in Catholicism at least as
far back as the 14th century. There is also historic
precedent for petition campaigns like Mr. Miravalle's. Two
other Marian dogmas - the dogma of the Assumption in 1950,
which declared that Mary was taken up, body and soul, to
heaven after her death, and the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception of 1854, which established that Mary was
preserved from original sin - were both preceded by floods
of petitions. Yet within the Vatican, the dogma that Mr.
Miravalle advocates has touched off a private battle.
Although it has the support of at least 12 cardinals in
Rome, others fear that its acceptance would cause a major
schism among Catholics and set back efforts at ecumenism.
Because the dogma would be an infallible proclamation by the
pope, it would also provoke renewed debate over the role of
the pope's power in modern society.
"It seems to put her on an equal footing with Christ," said
Father John Roten, director of the International Marian
Library in Dayton, giving the primary argument for
opposition. "That just won't do." The Rev. RenŽ Laurentin, a
French monk and a top Mary scholar, agrees. Father Laurentin
said that the proposed dogma would be the equivalent of
launching "bombs" at the Protestants and would widen the
breach between the Vatican and the Eastern Orthodox church.
"Mary is the model of our faith, but she is not divine," he
wrote in a faxed statement. "There is no mediation or
co-redemption except in Christ. He alone is God."
Pope John Paul II has made no secret of his devotion to
Mary. "Totus tuus" (which in Latin means "totally yours") is
his motto, in which he dedicates his papacy to her. He also
credits Mary with saving his life during a 1981
assassination attempt and with hastening the fall of
Communism. He has used the phrase "co-redemptrix" six times
in his papacy to describe Mary, which has led petitioners to
hope that during his lifetime he will proclaim her
co-redeemer.
Mr. Miravalle has visited privately with the pope several
times but he would not say what was discussed during the
meetings. "All I can tell you," Mr. Miravalle said, "is that
I am personally confident that the Holy Father will make
this solemn definition of the Mother of Jesus at the most
appropriate time. It's not a question of if. It's only a
question of when."
Responding by e-mail in Italian, Joaqu’n Navarro-Valls,
spokesman for the Vatican, said, "There is no proclamation
of a new dogma on the Madonna under study either by the Holy
Father or by the International Theological Commission." His
statement repeated one issued by the Vatican in 1997.
Mr. Miravalle's argument is that the Virgin Mary literally
gave Jesus the body that he in turn gave for humankind, that
she was present at the important moments in his ministry and
that she suffered with him during his death on the cross.
"As a mother, she shared in the birth, suffering and death
of her son," he said. "That makes her suffering not only
valuable but redemptive."
But does that make her equal to Jesus Christ? Mr. Miravalle
insists that the answer is no. He says that the use of the
Latin prefix "co" in co-redeemer means "with," not "equal
to." "We do not want to place Mary on a level of equality
with her son," he said.
"He alone paid the price of our sins, but what we are saying
is that Mary offered something that no one else could offer
- the bone of her bone, the flesh of her flesh - and that
cooperation was so great it amounted to a collaboration of
our redemption."
In 1997 23 of the world's leading Mary scholars, Catholic
and Protestant, met in Poland and voted unanimously against
the proposed change in dogma. An underlying reason, again,
was concern that it would be construed as making Mary equal
to Jesus. "The titles are ambiguous and could be understood
in very different ways," the panel of experts said in a
brief report, adding that it would worsen "ecumenical
difficulties."
Leaders of other denominations oppose it for other reasons
as well. It gives the Virgin Mary far more power than most
of them are willing to grant, and it is a reminder that to
Catholics the pope is all-powerful.
The Rev. Paige Patterson, the deeply conservative president
of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination
of Protestants in the United States, expressed alarm at the
suggestion that Mary might be a co-redeemer. "Such a view is
clearly heretical," he said. "In order to be a redeemer, it
would require a person to be perfect. It would require a
person to be God. We certainly don't believe she was God."
Some liberal Protestants have long argued that the Catholic
Church has used the symbol of Mary to restrict opportunities
for women and as a way of instilling women's obedience to
the teachings of the church. Bishop John Spong, one of the
most controversial figures in the Episcopal Church and now
retired, says that Christians need a feminine symbol for
God, but that such a symbol should be created by women, not
"a bunch of men sitting around in Rome in their frocks."
Mr. Miravalle said he was unfazed by such objections. In
some ways, the idea of the mother as hero and savior has
been the defining theme of his life. He was born in San
Francisco in 1959 to parents who were Catholics but who
divorced, he said, because his father was a gambler and
alcoholic. His mother worked as a secretary to support him
and his two siblings. The year that his father left, his
elder sister died of leukemia.
"There was never enough money, and yet mother just affirmed
us so much," Mr. Miravalle said. "If we needed shoes, she
always found a way to cough up the money."
He was a devout child. When his sister died, he reasoned
that she was "taken by God" and that it was somehow for the
best. He attended Catholic schools, made good grades and
took pleasure in studying the lives of the saints.
He remembers times when his mother's migraine headaches were
so debilitating that she would have to pull off the side of
freeways so that she could vomit and then sleep for a while
until she felt well enough to drive. Despite such
challenges, he said: "I always felt very protected by my
mother's love. She was my first hero."
He, in turn, tried to become a man worthy of his mother's
sacrifices. In high school he was one of the few boys in his
class who always attended weekly Mass. He went to a
Jesuit-run college and majored in theology. He agonized over
whether he was meant for life as a priest.
One day in 1980, he said, he went to church to pray for
guidance. As he was leaving, he literally ran into a woman
named Beth who was on her way into church. They talked, and
before they parted, he asked her for a date. "I took that as
a clear, extraordinary sign that I was not meant to be a
priest," he recalled.
The two married in 1981, and Mr. Miravalle continued his
theological studies in Rome. In 1984, shortly after the
birth of their first son, they went on a pilgrimage to
Medjugorje, a small mountain village populated by Croats in
Bosnia that is revered by many Catholics as a site where the
Virgin Mary appears each evening to a small group of
visionaries.
Mr. Miravalle's visit was the beginning of his emergence as
a leader in the popular Marian movement. He wrote his
doctoral dissertation on the messages that the Virgin Mary
is said to have given the Bosnian children who first saw
her. Devotees of the site recount that she told the children
that she opposed abortion, birth control, the ordination of
women and Communism. To Mr. Miravalle, the cornerstones of
her messages are prayer, penance and fasting.
The Miravalles try to to abide by those principles in the
modern world. All seven of their children are home-schooled.
They say the Rosary in Latin three times a day, eat no meat
on Wednesdays and Fridays and attend daily Mass.
During a visit to their home during family prayers, the
telephone rang, but no one moved to answer it. The answering
machine played Mr. Miravalle's message: "We can't take your
call right now. . . . In the meantime, join us as we say a
Hail Mary together."
Since 1984 Mr. Miravalle has published five books on Mary.
Inserted at the back of each are postcards that readers can
detach and send to the pope to relay their support for the
proposed dogma. He also puts out an international monthly
news bulletin, sponsors conferences on the subject and
regularly appears on Mother Angelica's television program,
which reaches more than 55 million homes.
Whether or not his campaign succeeds and John Paul II
declares Mary a co-redemptrix, the popular devotion to Mary
as healer and comforter seems certain to continue. Everyone,
it seems, needs a mother.