Protestants, Catholics, and Mary

In 1937 a group of Catholic and Protestant theologians, the latter being mainly Reformed and Lutheran, launched an independent effort to explore the possibilities of Christian unity, an effort that met with considerable suspicion at the time. The company came to be known as Le Groupe des Dombes because it usually met at the Cistercian abbey of Nôtre Dame des Dombes, which is about twenty miles north of Lyons, France. The Dombes effort is in some ways similar to the project “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” in this country, which began in 1992. In distinction from the official theological dialogues, both are deliberately independent from ecclesiastical authority, while receiving encouragement from the communions to which the theologians belong. Both speak from and to their communions, but not for their communions. Both serve as sustained scouting expeditions, so to speak, exploring what might be possible in pursuing the unity that Christ wills for his disciples.

After six years of intense study of the subject, the Dombes Group has now issued an important book on Mary in Christian faith and life, Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints (Paulist, 162 pages, $18.95). The book provides a balanced examination of the scriptural, historical, and dogmatic questions in a way that leads to common affirmations without compromise. It is noted that the sixteenth-century Reformers, especially Luther and Zwingli and to a lesser extent Calvin, had a vibrant Marian devotion that was largely lost in the intensification of Protestant-Catholic polemics. Moreover, on the threshold of the modern era, in the seventeenth century, there was a flourishing of “pietism” on both sides. Pietism, or a “religion of the heart,” was a reaction to what was viewed as the excessive intellectualism of regnant theological orthodoxies. Among Catholics, pietism took a decidedly Marian turn. In predictable reaction, Protestant pietism expunged vestiges of Marian devotion as “Romanist.” Of the nineteenth-century definition of the Immaculate Conception the authors write: “On the whole, the new dogma was well received in the Catholic world. Its proclamation served to give Roman Catholicism a more united front. For the churches of the Reformation and for Orthodoxy, however, the dogma became an added stumbling block. It would play a part in removing from Protestant piety the remaining traces of the Marian reflection and piety of the Reformers.”

Mariology Is Christology

In recent years, the influence of the Second Vatican Council has moved Catholics away from attributing peculiar privileges and dignities to Mary and bound her more closely to the Church as the premier disciple of her Son. All of Mariology is Christology, and any devotion to Mary that is not centered in glorifying Christ is suspect. Today there is a popular revival of diverse forms of Marian devotion and, as the authors note, Catholics “have begun again to frequent controversial places of apparitions, despite the stern warnings of bishops.” However, they add, “At the same time, we must also acknowledge the effort being made at some important places of pilgrimage (Lourdes, La Salette, etc.) to foster in the pilgrims an experience of faith that is authentic and formative. Nowadays, these pilgrimages are privileged places for the exercise of a Catholic pastoral oversight of popular Christianity.”

I can testify to the truth of that. When I first visited Lourdes with the Knights of Malta, I braced myself in advance against letting my perhaps too fastidious theological sensibilities be offended by the excesses of popular piety. I need not have worried. Of course there are the predictable booths peddling every kind of pious kitsch, but even they were considerably less offensive than, say, a convention of the Christian Booksellers Association. At the shrine itself, and in the devotions surrounding the mandatory baths, the principle that Mariology is Christology could not have been more explicit. I had, I must confess, expected miracle-mongering and vulgar superstition, but the piety of the baths is solidly grounded in baptismal regeneration, and the Mass in the underground chapel, with twenty thousand or more people, many of them the sick and dying on gurneys surrounding the altar, some of them attending their final Mass, was marked by a palpable intensity of surrender to the love of God in Christ such as I have seldom experienced. Simply to recall it as I write this quite takes my breath away.

Protestants who become Catholics, or are thinking about becoming Catholics, are prone to put Marian devotion and doctrine to the test of Protestant orthodoxies. While the most theologically austere renditions of Catholic Mariology can usually pass the test, that is, I am convinced, a great mistake. In becoming a Catholic, one should be open to previously unimagined dimensions of Christian piety, far from the least of which is coming to know the Mother of God as the Church’s mother, and one’s own. Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints sometimes succumbs to the aforementioned mistake. But that is perhaps understandable in that this is a dialogue with Christians for whom the Marian dimension of Chris-tian existence has until now been shut off behind a closed and strongly barricaded door.

There are many questions to be taken up between Protestants and Catholics, and some might think the question of Mary somewhat marginal, but I believe the Dombes report is right in saying: “The discussion of the Virgin Mary makes it clear that today she is perhaps the point at which all the underlying confessional differences, especially in soteriology, anthropology, ecclesiology, and hermeneutics, become most clear. These issues are fundamental, if any are, so that when all is said and done, the ecumenical dialogue on the Virgin is a suitable locus for ascertaining our doctrinal disagreements, as it is no less suitable a locus for looking self-critically at our respective ecclesial behaviors in regard to the Mother of the Lord.”

“Unique and Unparalleled”

If salvation is by God’s grace alone, in what sense did Mary “cooperate” in her salvation, and ours? Is the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary scripturally defensible? If Mary was immaculately conceived, and therefore sinless, did she need a Savior? Does the assumption of Mary mean that she is, in fact, supra-human? If Christ is the one mediator, what place is there for invoking the Blessed Virgin in prayer? These are among the questions typically raised by Protestants, and here they are carefully addressed by Protestants and Catholics together. They are not always resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. But the Dombes statement says, “At the same time, we recognize that these differences do not undermine our communion in one and the same faith in Christ. We are all convinced that the claims concerning the life of the Virgin from its beginning to its end must always be ordered to our understanding of the person of Christ and of the salvation Christ has brought to us.”

With respect to the two dogmas defined by the Catholic Church––the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950)––the authors suggest that all can agree on the following formulation: “The Catholic Church would not make the acceptance of these two dogmas a condition for full communion among the churches. It would only ask the partners with whom it would renew this communion to respect the content of these dogmas and not to judge them contrary to the gospel or to the faith, but to regard them as free and legitimate conclusions flowing from reflection by the Catholic consciousness on the faith and its internal coherence.” Whether such a formulation would, in fact, be acceptable to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church is another matter. As I said, the Dombes Group is a scouting expedition exploring what may be possible.

The Group concludes that their statement “is not the fruit of an ‘ecumenical compromise’ that would bring together quite different points of view, but a return to the Mary of the Gospels and the mark of a greater fidelity to the Scriptures.” They quote Karl Barth, probably the most influential Protestant theologian of the past century, who repeatedly suggested that Catholic Mariology is the greatest obstacle to Chris-tian unity. Barth also wrote about Mary: “There is one here who is greater than Abraham, greater than David, and greater than John the Baptist, greater than Paul and greater than the entire Christian Church; we are dealing here with the history of the Mother of God himself. This is a unique and unparalleled event.” Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints is a powerful appeal to Protestants to recover what they have lost, and to Catholics to ensure that their devotion is always ordered to the glory of the Son to whom Mary surrendered all. It is a book that deserves the careful attention of those who yearn for the unity of Christians.