Exaltation of the Feminine

Why are there so many Marian apparitions and so few appearances of our Savior himself?

How is it that Catholicism developed such a high Mariology that is hardly explicit in Scripture?

Is a distinctively Catholic feminism, precisely for us men, now revealing itself?

What does the coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth teach us about authentic Christ-like virility?

Adrienne Von Speyr (doctor, mystic, theological collaborator with Von Balthasar) may have given us the key to answering these questions. She writes:

The unity of Son and Mother, as it exists after the Son’s Ascension and the Mother’s Assumption into heaven, can be taken as a point of departure. From then on, the Son can be seen almost to retreat backward beneath the veil of the prophecies and forward beneath the veil of the Eucharist and the Church’s existence. He retreats so as to allow the Marian line in the Old and New Testaments to emerge in the special unveiling that Mary has in the promise and in the Church. And the male saints retreat with the Son, while the female saints form an apparent unity with the Mother. The Son is, of course, as much in charge here as he is everywhere else. He is, as it were, latent and in perfect unity with the Father and the Spirit. But this is now in order to liberate the Mother’s line and to make it visible. She is not conceivable for a moment without him. Yet precisely because, as a woman, she so dearly loves being hidden and veiled, the Son demonstrates what she was, from eternity, and is, for always, in this hidden state: in Eve, in the women of the Old Testament, during the Son’s life on earth, during the latter days of the Church, in the holy women, and in womanliness in general. (Mary in Redemption, page 59).

Jesus is Hidden, Mary is Unveiled
Since his ascension, Jesus is hiding. He is playing “hide-and-go-seek:” it is not an absolute absence; he is hiding to be found. Ascended to Glory He is now present everywhere but in veiled fashion; he is hiding to allure us into seeking him; he is hiding to be found. He is hidden in the Word and sacrament, he is hidden in the poor, he is hidden in silence, and he is especially hidden in the quiet, welcoming, unobtrusive Host. But he has enthroned his mother as Queen of Heaven and Earth; he has unveiled her in her splendor; and he sends her frequently from heaven on missions to us on earth. The humble, docile, obedient virgin who exulted to be "maidservant of the Lord" has now been exalted as Queen, soverein over heaven and all of creation...not through assertiveness or empowerment, but by the gracious action of her Son and his Father. As he entrhones and exalts his mother, the Son himself, by a second kenosis, retreats into the hidden, quiet anonymity of availability and service.

A cosmic reversal of the masculine/feminine polarity occurred with the Ascension/Assumption and the glorification in heaven of the virginal male and female bodies. From the fall to the redemption the male was dominant and oppressive and the female was submissive and hidden. Speyr’s breath-taking insight is that the masculine God-man has performed a magnificent inversion by humbling himself, in his virility, to lift up the feminine, the maternal, and the virginal: the masculine now become hidden, the feminine unveiled; the virile becomes servile, the womanly is enthroned; the male is reticent and humble, the female is triumphant and sovereign.

Ecclesial Primacy of the Maternal and the Feminine
John Paul himself affirmed the magisterial Speyrian/Balthasarian insight that for the Church, the Marian is more foundational than the Petrine dimension. The Church is first, foremost and always our mother and the bride of Christ. The Church is Christ’s bride for eternity and history is best understood as a romance between the groom and his beloved. Ecclesial institutions are temporary and will fade away at the eschaton: canon law, papacy, orders, and the like. All of these masculine or Petrine institutions are at the service of the abiding reality: the bride who is ravished by her groom.

Paradigm of Virility: Hiddeness, Humility, Service
What is it like to be a Prince Phillip to Queen Elizabeth? A Todd to Sarah Palin? Husband to Margaret Thatcher or Merrill Streep? A Brad to Angelina? (Let’s face it: Brad may or may not be the sexiest man alive, but he is small change compared to Angelina and even to Jen.)

The implication of Speyr’s vision is that each of us men is called to be the helper of a woman in her more significant historical role. Balthasar himself considered his theological work (monumental in its insight and erudition) to be of less significance than his passing on of the intuitive insights of his mystic friend. By an analogical imitation of Christ, a man is to enthrone the woman: his wife, mother or daughters, or (for priests) our mother the Church. The maternal task of conceiving, nurturing and caring for the new, ensouled person is the highest natural human action; all masculine activities are oriented to service of this absolutely primal creaturely and feminine mission.

This new model of virility is in sharpest contrast with the widespread "de-masculization" of our culture: the disparagement of the specifically virile as violent and oppressive, the cult of androgny, the preference for meek, weak, docile men who lack masculine vigor, passion, and character. Rather, the assumption here is of a confident, magnanimous virility which delights in and exalts the feminine as different, precious, splendid, sensitive, and generous.

This new Catholic feminism is congruent with contemporary trends which highlight the distinctiveness of femininity (Carol Gilligan, Virginia Held) as well as an emergent Catholic awareness of the genius of woman (Stein, John Paul II, as well as Speyr/Balthasar.) It contrasts with mainstream feminism: it accentuates rather than eliminates the difference; it exalts the specifically feminine rather than ignoring it; it relies, not on the assertion of power, but surrenders to humbled and serving love; it trusts rather than fears the (sanctified) masculine.

Post-lapsarian virility is aggressive, egotistical, controlling and predatory towards the feminine. Virility in Christ is gentle, selfless, contemplative and exalting of the womanly. With his last breath, the dying Jesus entrusted his precious mother to John; in doing so, he entrusted her, and every woman, to each of us males.

Think of St. Joseph! In this most perfect of human societies, Joseph is the least: the quiet one, the humble and hidden one, the mystified but obedient one, the one laboring serenely in the background. By contrast, Mary is front and center from beginning to end: from her Immaculate Conception, through the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, Pentecost and finally to Assumption and Coronation.

A young couple is expecting their third child and the mother, normally vigorous and energetic, is suffering a severe and weakening sickness. The father, a man’s man who has jumped out of airplanes as a soldier and prosecuted sexual predators as a lawyer, finds himself coming home from work to clean and cook and care for the little ones. He knows the proper location for every toy and even matches socks after they are washed. He is now a “made man”: he no longer has to prove his masculinity to anyone. He knows how to care for women and children and therefore he is fully vested in authentic virility, he has tenure, he is certified, he has arrived!

Prayer for Men

Come Holy Spirit!
Draw us into a profound communion with the virile Jesus and his mother Mary, our Queen!
Make us strong in gentleness, humble but magnanimous, pure, generous, tender and courageous!
Help us to revere and love our precious women.
Amen.

Marian Devotion and Women Priests

Classic Catholic devotion to Mary our Mother immediately rules out the possibility of woman priests. Anyone who loves and (hyper)venerates our Lady intuitively understands that Catholic woman priests are an impossibility. This knowledge is usually not discursive or cognitive: the believer knows with certainty but cannot necessarily explain it to the outsider, the skeptic. You either “get it” or you do not: what is common sense within the gestalt of Catholic faith becomes a logical incoherence and a moral abomination to the modern, secular, late-Protestant mindset. It is like explaining love to one who has never been loved: it is so primal and foundational that it cannot be constructed or explained from other concepts. The demand for woman priests was only possible in a post-Council Church that had largely demoted Mary from her pre-eminent salvific role to a lower status of mere disciple, one of us, not significantly superior in any way.

To the Catholic imagination, Mary is a creature, one of us, but distinguished from all the rest of creation by her perfect, unbroken, whole-hearted union with God. She is the supreme and perfect creature: “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” (Wordsworth.) She is Queen of heaven and earth; the privileged sovereign within creation, always submissive, perfectly, to the Creator, her son and his father; sovereign over the angels, archangels, apostles, martyrs, popes, and saints; Immaculately Conceived; virgin mother; enabler of the redemption by her fiat; bodily assumed into heaven; mediatrix of all graces; and the very heart of the Church.

A Catholic’s attitude towards Mary and the maternal Church is filial: an analogue of his union with God. Mary and the Church inter-fuse each other and nurture us, their children. The child of God-and-Mary-and-Church is therefore, docile, receptive and submissive to Mary-and-Church as they mirror the love and truth of Christ Himself. It is not, then, for the child to instruct and reform our Mother, to dissent.

The liberal, modern and feminist attitude is best understood as non-filial: “I am not a dependent and obedient child; I am an autonomous adult and the equal of anyone. Everyone is the same; no one is different or superior. I am obedient to no one except my own choice.” Modernity, void of the sacred and the enchanted, levels everyone so there is a total absence of authority, hierarchy, obedience, and filiality. Female becomes functionally equivalent of male, child of adult, animal of human. Creation is not surrendered to its Creator; earth not impregnated by heaven; femininity not yielded to masculinity; and child not docile before father and mother.

By sharpest contrast, the Catholic faith elevates, to a sublime position, Mary our Queen and Mother, and with her all women. Motherhood is viewed as pristine and sublime. There is nothing a male does that can compare. In the most intimate manner conceivable, the mother cooperates with God in the conception of a unique, bodied-spirit who will live eternally. This is hardly “reproduction,” a term which applies to photo-copiers and factories, but procreation, miraculous creation from nothing. By comparison, the masculine contribution is distant and marginal. John Paul himself quoted Balthasar on the primacy of the Marian over the Petrine dimensions within the Church. And so, within my own family I now have two nephews studying for the priesthood and a nephew and daughter consciously pursuing the evangelical life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Which pair is closer to the heart of the Church? The seminarians will be invested with the power associated with Church governance, preaching and dispensing of the sacraments. But the consecrated life brings one closer to the Marian heart of the Church. And so, within the kingdom of God, there is a preeminence of the vowed life. This is incomprehensible to the modern mindset.

The Catholic Church cannot and will not, ever, ordain women priests. To do so would be to pervert the inner form, gestalt, soul and essence of the faith. A son or daughter of the Church lives immersed in a web of filial relationships, all of them hyper-gendered. Our hearts surrender to our heavenly Father, Mary our Mother, holy mother the Church, our Holy Father, and all the spiritual mothers and fathers, virgins, brothers and sisters. May we grow always deeper in our filial faith!