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S i d e b a r
HE INCREASES AND SHE DECREASES
By MARK P. SHEA
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 5
 May 1994 
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Some friends are always good for a cheery disagreement--like
my pal Bill. Here he is, a guy who modestly describes himself as "The
Last Bastion of the Reformation," a guy who sings "A Mighty
Fortress is Our God" in the shower, a guy who keeps ribbing me
about being Catholic when he knows that I can scarcely resist the
challenge to respond. Consider the letter I got the other day, written
with Bill's usual joie de vivre, in which he urged me to get
a recent book devoted to "critiquing" Marian devotion from
an Evangelical perspective.
As a former Evangelical, I know anti-Marian arguments.
But, having been a Catholic for nearly six years, I've been surprised
to discover how much larger Mary looms in many Protestant minds than
in Catholic ones. Maybe I'm languishing in a papally-induced spiritual
blindness, but Jesus seems as big to me as ever. Only Mary has changed
sizes since I "poped." She got a lot smaller and less threatening.
Since I became a Catholic she often, after directing
me to her Son, has seemed to slip out of the room for long stretches,
leaving me to talk with him while she busies herself with quietly
praying for me or doing some other motherly task. She has been a most
unobtrusive presence--endlessly loving and interceding, but not
nearly as noisy about it as my Protestant upbringing would have led
me to believe.
Yet how can this be? Books have "proven" that
Catholics are obsessively fixated on our Lady to the exclusion of
faith in Christ. They have shown that all we think about is the way
in which Mary can save us from sin. They have demonstrated that I
spend day and night obsequiously seeking to have her declared a fourth
member of the Trinity.
Of course, there are benighted souls in my communion
(Mother Teresa, say) whose summary of Marian devotion is: Love Jesus
as Mary loves Jesus, love Mary as Jesus loves Mary. Such people seem
to think that Mary is not a goddess but that she has a significant
place in the drama of redemption. They regard her as remarkable in
that her choice to love and obey the as-yet-unseen and unincarnate
Messiah was the very key to the Incarnation.
They find a subtle difference between such faith (unbuttressed
and unrehearsed) and the wobbly performance of Peter and Thomas. They
attach some quirky meaning to the fact she was the first disciple
to say "yes" to the incarnate God and that it was this "yes"
and the love it expressed which was the basis of the first and deepest
love relationship the Son of God ever experienced as man.
Such cultists seem to have this notion that her role
in the life of the Church might extend beyond the physical fact of
providing a uterine environment and three square meals a day to the
Second Person of the Trinity--that she is something more than
a disposable first stage in the Incarnation.
For some reason they hold the belief that Jesus, who
obeyed the law perfectly, obeyed the command to love his mother in
a way unique in human history and that imitating him might involve
us in that love relationship too. They are bewitched with the fact
the dying Jesus commanded the disciple he loved (that is, you and
me) to have Mary as mother and that she was commanded to have the
beloved disciple (that is, you and me) as her son.
These people suspect that as the risen Christ remains
human forever, so he remains his mother's son forever. If she loves
him, she just might love those who are in him as her own and pray
they will love her son with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Likewise, if Jesus loves her in a unique way and we are to be like
him . . . well, you can work that one out.
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