Are we still the Marian kind?

What a wonderful treasure we Catholics have. Some who embrace other religious beliefs have this treasure also, but many God-fearing believing people are, unfortunately, not warmed and thrilled by it. This treasure, to be sure, is devotion to and love of Mary, the Mother of God.

Sometimes careless people, all too often Catholics, tend to put this priceless gift on a barely accessible shelf - there to gather dust rather than radiate grace as it should. How wasteful we sometimes are!

All Christians (certainly not just Catholics) know and revere the Virgin Mary as told of in the New Testament: the appearance of the angel to tell her she is to be the mother of Jesus; the birth of Jesus in a stable; the anxious mother looking for her lost child during a trip to Jerusalem; her intercession at the wedding feast at Cana; and weeping at the foot of the cross. But as theologian Lawrence Cunningham has pointed out: "The New Testament portrait of Mary is, like everything in the biblical text, artlessly simple, tantalizingly enigmatic, and religiously inexhaustible."

To see just how inexhaustible this portrait is, one need only follow the development of Marian theology and devotion over the years since Mary's life on earth. Even in the early centuries of Christianity, leaders and followers of the new religion engaged in frequent, often passionate, consideration of Mary's place in it, striving to flesh out the minimal "clues" from scripture. And as we learn from Cunningham, these considerations "help to explode the oft-repeated charge that Mariological beliefs are late accretions to Christianity."

The universal acclamation of Mary over the centuries can only be described as phenomenal. The greatest painters and sculptors, composers, poets, and even philosophers have, over and over again, paid tribute, sometimes rhapsodically, to her. No saint was more devoted to the Virgin than the great poet Dante; Bach and Shubert wrote ethereal music in her name; and Fra Angelico, Giotto, Murillo, Raphael, and Michelangelo (who cannot be moved by his Pieta?) sang her praise in their art.

Two reactions strongly affected our appreciation of and devotion to Mary. The first of these was the Protestant Reformation. In Lawrence Cunningham's words: "Despite a lingering Marian devotionalism in the writings of Martin Luther, veneration of the Blessed Virgin was swept away with the same vigor and finality as monastic institutions, a celibate clergy, the Latin Mass and devotion to other saints. For the Reformation, devotion to Mary derogated from the true worship of God in Christ."

The second historical reaction may have been equally unfortunate. It was the Catholic Counter-Reformation that, in its well-intentioned effort to combat what it considered the heresies of the Protestants, "protesteth too much." Some among the Counter-reformers were willing to make Marian devotion a test of Catholic orthodoxy. From there, it was off to the races for a small but sometimes influential number of zealots. Devotion to Mary became almost a religion in itself. Some would seat Mary on a throne next to God, and others would promote bizarre cultic practices in their hyperthyroid zeal.

So, another reaction came about. Devout Catholics who mistook the zaniness of the zealots as authentic Catholic doctrine were turned off and grew away from the beauty and glory of true Marian devotion that is of the essence of Catholicism. Ironically, some among the latter are theologically sophisticated.

The Mariological debates during the Second Vatican Council are revealing in this matter. Overwhelmingly, the Council Fathers rejected the argument of a few for a separate document on Mary. In their words:

"It exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word to abstain zealously from all gross exaggerations as well as petty narrow - mindedness in considering the singular dignity of the Mother of God."

The council, after rejecting "sterile or transitory affection" and "a certain vain credulity," placed Mary and Marian devotion firmly in the total context of Catholic faith.

It would be sad, however, if this clearer understanding of Mary's role in salvation history led any to turn away from the efficacy of Marian intercession or to lose the opportunity to be nourished by the witness of her maternal love. In a line from an old, perhaps banal, hymn, "How dark without Mary life's journey would be."