Catholic women challenge idea Mary Magdalene was a prostitute
 |
|
||||||||||
A movement seeking to increase the power of women in the Catholic Church is trying to end Mary Magdalene's long-running association with the world's oldest profession.
For centuries, popular culture and Christian mythology have viewed Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute, the "woman of the city" recorded in the book of Luke as a "sinner" who cried at Jesus' feet before being forgiven.
Mary Magdalene went on to become a staunch supporter of Jesus, according to the New Testament. She is said to have stood by him as he was crucified and is thought to have been the first witness to his resurrection — distinctions that have helped her become a saint among Catholics.
But members of FutureChurch — a Cleveland-based organization that promotes women's ordination despite the Catholic Church's prohibition against female priests — argue that Mary Magdalene has been portrayed inaccurately.
She was not a prostitute, they say, but rather the victim of centuries of male-dominated biblical scholarship.
On July 22, Mary Magdalene's feast day, they will be promoting their revised view of the woman at celebrations around the country, including two in Seattle.
The celebrations have grown in popularity since they first started in 1998, according to Christine Schenk, a Catholic nun with a master's degree in theology who directs FutureChurch's efforts in cooperation with the Chicago-based church-reform group Call to Action.
In 1998 there were 34 celebrations around the country that promoted a new view of Mary Magdalene, Schenk said. This year, there are expected to be more than 200 in the U.S., with celebrations also being held in countries such as Guatemala, Kenya, England and South Africa.
The new interest in Mary Magdalene's past comes at a time when women are increasingly rising to prominent positions as church leaders and theologians, said Karen Barta, professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Seattle University.
"Since women have become biblical scholars, they're more interested in how women are treated in the New Testament and in Christian history," Barta said. "They're looking for their foremothers."
When those women discover there is reason to doubt the traditional perception of Mary Magdalene, Barta said, they "feel like the record hasn't been honest. Then they want to reclaim her as a leader in the early church — as someone who has the prominence of an apostle."
The story of how Mary Magdalene came to be known as a harlot, said Pat Simpson, minister at the downtown Seattle Church of Mary Magdalene, is "a very complicated story about people patching together different pieces of Scripture that aren't related. It's just one of those traditions."
Simpson's congregation, which is non-denominational and consists mainly of homeless women, will be holding its Mary Magdalene celebration a day early, July 21.
Mary is a common name in the New Testament. There is Mary, the mother of Jesus. There is Mary of Magdala (a k a Mary Magdalene). There is Mary of Bethany. And there is "Mary the mother of James the Younger and of Joses" (who also appears to go by "Mary the mother of Joses" and "Mary the mother of James.")
Many modern biblical scholars, along with Simpson and Schenk, believe that the traditional view of Mary Magdalene conflates three women from the New Testament: the "woman of the city," who appears in the book of Luke (7:36-50); Mary of Bethany, from the book of John (11:2); and Mary Magdalene, from the book of Matthew (27:55).
Linking the "woman of the city" and Mary of Bethany is not hard. The book of John says it was Mary of Bethany "who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair" — a description nearly identical to the actions of the "woman of the city" as recorded in the book of Luke. This, to many, is proof that Mary of Bethany and the "woman of the city" are one in the same.
But linking Mary Magdalene to those two requires a little more creativity. Mary Magdalene is described in Luke (8:2) as having been healed of evil spirits and having had seven demons cast out of her. Some have said that means she was a prostitute, and therefore is the same person as the "woman of the city."
But Simpson and others feel the mention of evil spirits and demons probably refers to a sickness Mary Magdalene was cured of, not her supposed former profession.
And, Simpson points out, in the book of Luke, Mary Magdalene and the unnamed "woman of the city" appear just paragraphs apart — if they were the same person, she asks, wouldn't they be given the same name in the text?
Also, Schenk notes, in the Eastern Catholic tradition, people "always saw (Mary Magdalene) as an apostle to the apostles, and they did not identify her as a prostitute."
The problem with the Western idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, said Louise McAllister, who is organizing a July 22 celebration at North Seattle's Christ the King Church, is not the profession.
"It's not saying that (Mary Magdalene being a prostitute) would have been bad," she said. "The criticism is that the church for almost 2,000 years has used that to relegate Mary of Magdala to a lesser status."
And if Mary Magdalene could be seen not as a reformed prostitute, but as a powerful woman who helped Jesus spread his message and witnessed his resurrection, that might lend credence to the idea that women can be ordained ministers, FutureChurch members hope.
"Right now in the Catholic community we only see men on the altar," Schenk said. "We don't think this is really helpful for our internalization of our full equality in Christ. We've provided the Mary of Magdala celebration as a way to begin to see women in leadership roles while we wait for the full inclusion of women in all ministries in the Catholic church."
That may be a long wait. In 1994, Pope John Paul II declared that the Catholic Church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women — the idea that Catholic priests must be men, the pope said, comes directly from God.
In the meantime, Bill Gallant, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, said Catholics revere Mary Magdalene regardless of what her profession might have been before she met Jesus.
"The church views Mary Magdalene as a holy and revered saint and you can't get much more adoration than that," he said. "She's on the list of feast days for calendars. We name churches after her. I don't think we reflect on anything other than her saintly devotion to God."
Eli Sanders can be reached at 206-748-5815 or esanders@seattletimes.com.