MARY, SO CONTRARY

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

One generation's transcendence is the next generation's trivia question. A case in point is Miraculous Medals of the Virgin Mary. Forty years ago, the demure images of the Virgin atop the globe, distributed at First Communions and spelling bees and treasured thereafter, could be found around the necks of a veritable legion of Roman Catholics. Today they have fallen so far from favor that their mention draws blank looks from some Catholic Gen-Xers. Why? Inhibitions unintentionally fostered by the Second Vatican Council may have had something to do with it. And certain women, writes author Sally Cunneen, were "inoculated against" the Virgin as they embraced feminism. Those inspired by the upcoming season to reflect on the Heavenly Mother's ups and downs (as well as those who remembered to celebrate the recent Feast of the Immaculate Conception) will lose themselves in two current books: Cunneen's In Search of Mary (Ballantine; $14) and Jaroslav Pelikan's Mary Through the Centuries (Yale University Press; $25). No one reading either of them will be tempted to count Miraculous Medals out permanently.

The story of Marian devotion as we might recognize it begins in A.D. 431 in the Greek city of Ephesus. As Pelikan points out, the scenes featuring Mary in the New Testament "could all be printed out on a few pages," and the early church's emphasis on her seems correspondingly small: the first recorded prayer to Mary dates only to the 3rd century. At Ephesus, however, a council of church fathers confronting the charge that Jesus was a man who attained divinity rather than having always possessed it responded by stressing Jesus' eternal godliness and pointedly awarding Mary the appellation "God bearer." The dramatic title pulled her center stage; at the same time, the new emphasis on Jesus' less knowable side caused his role as a kind of ombudsman for humanity to shift somewhat onto his mother's reassuringly human shoulders. Mary as intercessor percolated for several centuries in the Eastern church before exploding in the medieval West. There, fueled as much by folk devotion as by church leaders, her cult eventually can be said to have run wild ("Mary so loved the world...that she gave her only begotten son," ran one prayer), providing fuel for the Protestant reformers' charges of "Mariolatry."

Pelikan lovingly tracks successive Marian personae, such as Second Eve, Paragon of Chastity, Queen of Heaven and Blessed Mother, through to the present. He is fascinated with what the Victorian-era Cardinal and theologian John Henry Newman called the "development of doctrine"--the process, infuriating to traditional Protestants, whereby Catholic Popes and bishops continued promulgating articles of Christian faith long after the last biblical word was written. Mary is a prime example: her scant treatment in the Gospels left a vacuum that the church, often preceded and probably influenced by popular belief, has been gradually filling over the centuries. The Vatican's 1854 announcement as doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception, followed in 1950 by her bodily Assumption into heaven, infuriated many Protestants. Some historians read them primarily as papal defiance hurled at an increasingly non-Catholic world. Pelikan, however, discerns in them an exquisite dance of popular devotion, high theology and politics that finally produced official answers to ancient--but important--riddles of salvation. "The doctrine of Mary proved to be one of the most important places to observe and test the processes by which great ideas have developed," he writes.

Pelikan has just completed 50 years' teaching history primarily at Yale, and commands the respect of both Catholic and Protestant scholars. As a Lutheran, however, he enjoys a certain emotional distance from his material. Cunneen, a retired English professor and a religious journalist, delves into Marian history with less authority but with the once-burned affection of a woman who, rummaging recently through a drawer, was moved to discover her old rosary. Cunneen qualifies as a Catholic feminist: she is painfully aware of the line that runs between Saint Athanasius' 4th century contention that Mary "remained continually at home, living a retired life and imitating a honeybee" and the impossibly pure, impossibly obedient "Housewife Mary" rejected by many of Cunneen's peers in the 1960s.

Unlike some other Catholic revisionists, however, Cunneen identifies strands of Marian character and history with which she feels completely comfortable. The medieval idea of the Mater Dolorosa solaced her when she lost her own son. She associates the mysterious black Madonnas that popped up all over Europe in the Middle Ages and Mexico's "Little Dark One," the Virgin of Guadalupe, with Mary's affinity for the humble. She can muster historical support for the Mary described by spiritual adventurer China Galland--"a protectress who doesn't allow her children to be hunted, tortured, murdered and devoured"--and neo-Jungian Clarissa Pinkola Estes' assertion that "Mary would be a teenage-girl-gang leader" today. If this seems a bit all embracing (since the hunters, torturers and murderers no doubt have their own Marys), that too is typical. Mary, Cunneen writes, transcends cultural and religious bounds and speaks to a perennial human need." Or, as Pelikan, over lunch at Yale, puts it, "Everyone has a mother."

In fact, a current mini-comeback attests to the Mother of Mercy's resilience. When the Second Vatican Council tried to temper Marian overenthusiasm--Pope John XXIII said, "The Madonna is not happy when she is placed before her son"--the American hierarchy became especially cautious. A generation following Cunneen's learned little of the Rosary's Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries. But the Marian apparition in Medjugorje and the current Pope's vocal devotion seem to be having an effect. According to Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bishops, young people have been expressing greater interest in the Virgin. "The period of Marian silence is over," says Walsh. And she notes that some of the kids have taken to sporting Miraculous Medals.

--Reported by Lisa McLaughlin/New Haven

With reporting by LISA MCLAUGHLIN/NEW HAVEN