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View from the Pew  Mary Adamski |
Despite current celebrity,
Mary M. still largely
ignored in churchMary Magdalene, where are you?
A best-selling novel has stimulated titillating speculation about her friendship with Jesus. Reader interest in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" has spawned books, magazine cover stories, TV documentaries and academic seminars on the woman from Magdala, who is mentioned in all four gospels.
A recent blockbuster movie planted a compelling image of a soulful, loyal companion into viewers' minds. Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" dramatized a traditional stereotype of Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, a version that New Testament scholars say repeats a mistaken "conflation" of stories about different female followers of Christ.
A statue in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on Fort Street depicts Mary Magdalene. It was made in the early 1880s in Paris and restored in 1998 by Conrad-Schmitt Studios, of New Berlin, Wis.
But never mind the wider dialogue by scholars -- and by Christian feminists who adopted Mary M. long before the current media flood as a model for the significant role of women in the church.
Where is the Magdalene to be found in Hawaii among the denominations that traditionally keep track of saints? July 22 is her "feast day" in the liturgical calendar, which sets an annual rhythm of remembrance of outstanding Christian people and events. With all the recent public interest, where's the celebration going to be Thursday?
The only public Mary Magdalene image to be found on Oahu is a 2-foot statue in the Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on Fort Street Mall, in the dimness of the second-floor gallery, in the company of 33 other images of saints.
It's a historic art collection, said Charlene Alipio, archivist for the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts. French missionary Bishop Louis Maigret brought the clerestory collection to the cathedral in the 1880s. After the wooden/polychrome statues were restored in 1998, a donor paid to have bookmarks made depicting the statues of six apostles. Mary M. wasn't deemed a necessary honoree in that collection of the companions of Christ.
Thursday Masses in all Catholic churches and the 9 a.m. Divine Liturgy at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Pacific will feature a reading of the St. John's Gospel description of Mary Magdalene being the first person to meet Jesus after his resurrection.
Mary Magdalene was said to have been the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection.
National lay Catholic groups such as Call to Action and FutureChurch are planning events to raise their issues about the modern implementation of Jesus' intention that women serve in visible liturgical roles. But no such activism is to be found here.
The only announcement about a celebration came from Dignity Honolulu, which will hold a liturgy at 7:30 p.m. July 25 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 539 Kapahulu Ave. The group for gay and lesbian Catholics celebrates the feast of Mary Magdalene annually.
"In the Orthodox tradition, she has always been called 'equal to the Apostles,'" said the Rev. Nicholas Gamvas, dean of the Orthodox cathedral. He used an icon of Mary Magdalene in the church bulletin for next week.
"She is highly reverenced. Many women take her name," said Gamvas. It's not just on July 22, but throughout the weeks before and after Easter that Mary Magdalene's importance at the beginning of Christianity is celebrated in Bible readings.
"In Sunday School we talk about how Mary Magdalene and another woman were the ones who went to the tomb because the men were too afraid to go. The girls love that," said the priest.
Gamvas said the spate of popular books that speculate about a sexual connection between Jesus and Mary Magdalene don't mesh with Orthodox belief.
"Jesus was sinless, the perfect man in God," he said. "He loved her as his disciple, as one of God's creatures."
Gamvas recommends Oahu author Ann Graham Brock's "Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: A Struggle for Authority," now in its second printing.
University of Hawaii religion professor Andrew Crislip said he has had queries from students in his Christianity courses.
"They ask if there's evidence of a physical relationship with Jesus.
"I'm skeptical about it. There's no historical basis for 'The Da Vinci Code.' There are a number of Marys mentioned in the New Testament, and a number of unnamed women. The woman who was to be stoned for adultery was not named, and the text never implies that it was Mary Magdalene but it became part of the ancient church tradition," Crislip said.
"There is no doubt, and all four Gospels are consistent, that the movement Jesus started had a special attraction to women. Women are the most loyal to Jesus: The men flee at the Crucifixion, but the women stay by him.
"In a society like first-century Judea," Crislip said, "where women were treated as second class, this is striking ... that women played a significant role in the early Jesus movement and in Paul's communities as well."
Regina Pfeiffer, Chaminade University theology professor, said the wave of popular interest isn't as new as the best-seller listing.
"It comes out of the same movement as the Jesus Seminars," where a group of scholars have "tried to peel back layers of interpretation about Jesus, to find what did he really say and do."
Mary Magdalene isn't even a chapter in the New Testament course at the Catholic university, but she is a key character in exploring the role of women at the beginning of Christianity.
"She is prominent in her role as one of the first going to the tomb, being a witness to the resurrection before the apostles. It would have been unusual. Women were not called as witnesses at that time," Pfeiffer said.
"If I'm teaching a Scripture course, I would refer to her as an example of something read into Scripture that isn't actually there," said Pfeiffer.
She suggested that's a measuring rod to be used in reading about Mary Magdalene from the racks at the bookstores, too.
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Mary Adamski covers religion for the Star-Bulletin.
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.
