Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume II– First Guardian of the Faith

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume II– First Guardian of the Faith.  By Mark P. Shea, Catholic Answers, 2009.

 

Mark P. Shea continues his trilogy on the life, theological role, historical impact, and contemporary relevance of the Virgin Mary in the second volume: First Guardian of the Faith.  As my earlier review mentioned, the purpose of this series is to explain the role that Mary plays in the Catholic Church, especially for an audience that has been influenced by misconceptions and pseudoknowledge.  Although Shea directs a lot of his focus towards educating an Evangelical audience, this is an invaluable reference for helping Catholics learn more about their faith, as well as helping non-Christians learn about what the Catholic Church believes.

 

While the first volume looked at how popular culture and bad theology may have influenced people’s beliefs and conceptions, this book focuses primarily on the Catholic Church’s teachings about Mary, how they were developed, and why it is important that these teachings not be distorted or misrepresented.  The reduced number of popular culture references, and the increased focus on history, religious doctrine, and intellectual development makes the book seem rather more formal than its predecessor, but Shea’s prose style is always eminently readable, and never, ever stuffy.  Shea’s great strength as a writer is his ability to present information in a clear and conversational manner, thereby crafting a rapport with the reader that a more formal style might never have achieved.

 

It is easy to see how people can develop mistaken impressions about what the Church teaches about Mary.  The 1999 television movie Mary, Mother of Jesus, starring Pernilla August as Mary of Nazareth and Christian Bale as Jesus of Nazareth, is an example of how certain Protestant doctrines or other Biblical interpretations not officially recognized by any denomination can disseminate into the popular culture.  There was nothing disrespectful about this production; on the contrary it was quite reverent towards the source material.  Nevertheless, some of the theology and character representation was distinctly different from what the Catholic Church teaches.  For example, in this film, when Joseph learns about Mary’s pregnancy, he is initially stunned, then angry, believing that the baby must be that of another man’s, only accepting the situation after an angel’s intervention.  This is a rather common view of how Joseph behaved, but Shea argues that this is not the Church’s interpretation of events.  Joseph knew Mary well enough to know that she would never betray him or commit a grave sin, and believed her immediately when she told him about the great and wondrous role that God had planned for her.  This is a reminder that we must sometime give great saints more credit than we often do.  What we call “human nature” is not necessarily how people behave when they are divinely guided.

 

Shea brings up many commonly-heard arguments and tropes attempting to discredit Marian theology, the early Church, the medieval Church, the contemporary Church, and Catholicism in general, and in each case, he proves how these perspectives are based upon spurious assumptions, misinformation, and faulty reasoning.  At times, it seems as if Shea is in the middle of a theological and historical version of Perry Mason, with Shea in the title role, all things Catholic as the defendant, and the Church’s detractors in the part of the consistently misguided prosecutor Hamilton Burger.  One of the Perry Mason series’ consistent charms and running gags was the fact that the defendant was always completely innocent (or in one case, acted purely in self-defense), but despite the fact that everyone who was ever defended by Mason was invariably exonerated, District Attorney Burger never allowed himself to suspect that maybe– just maybe– he’d accused the wrong man.  The way Shea keeps advancing alternative, more reasonable explanations of Biblical passages, contradicting historical errors, and refuting horribly flawed theses; it serves as a reminder that whenever one hears any sort of attack against the Church, one should wait to find a defensive counter-argument before automatically assuming guilt.

 

A wide variety of sources are referenced in order to show just how misconceptions about Marian doctrine enter the public consciousness.  Some examples are centuries-old heresies, such as Pelagius and his denial of original sin.  Others are far more contemporary.  Shea quotes extensively from several prominent anti-Catholic websites and how they rage against Catholic views of Mary, yet he never responds in kind.  Bitter anger is repaid with logical rebuttal and calm disapproval.   A deft touch and a sense of humor serve Shea well.  When he addresses oft-mocked and even more often misunderstood doctrines such as Mary’s perpetual virginity, Shea is always firm in his defense of the faith, seeking to explain why those who disagree are wrong while never getting upset.

 

Shea often likes to poke holes at the theory that every day, in every way, humanity is getting better and better.  The idea that 2011 is four centuries wiser and more enlightened than 1611 is utter bosh.  It often seems as if for every moral lesson that the culture at large learns, it in turn forgets two or more old truths.  One of the most interesting portions of this book is Shea’s critique of the legacy of several major figures.  Shea includes a concise but very interesting chronology of some of the most influential intellectual minds of the last couple of centuries, such as Freud, Marx, and many others, as well as how some of their ideologies, when put into practice, have led people away from Catholic teachings and caused destruction to the society as a whole.  To cite one example, when discussing the career of Margaret Sanger, Shea writes:

 

“Sanger even dreamed of establishing a vast American concentration camp for "morons, mental defectives, epileptics... illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, [and] dope-fiends". In all, she wanted to forcibly imprison about one-seventh of the entire American population. Needless to say, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the pioneering eugenics done by doctors of the Third Reich. For years, her slogan summed up a philosophy warmly received by her colleagues in Hitler's scientific elite: "Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds!"

 

The problem for Margaret Sanger was that all this became a tough sell in the post-war years, what with pictures of Dachau and Auschwitz circulating in classrooms and history books. So the organization she had founded changed its marketing strategy. Instead of encouraging Americans to worship racial purity, Planned Parenthood instead seized on the much more salable notion (pioneered by Freud) that we should throw off the shackles of guilt and responsibility and worship sex. This was sold as "Birth Control" but the practical outcome was, as Chesterton famously remarked, "No birth and no control."

 

The outcome of this story is a catalogue of human misery: Massive STD rates, a contraceptive culture in which love and fruitfulness are damned as hindrances to sexual pleasure, the ever-increasing sexualization of childhood, and 1.5 million abortions in the United States alone each year. And so, as Pope John Paul II said, "The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn."

 

Though a great deal of space is devoted to describing what’s wrong with the world, this book ends on a hopeful note.  The world is undoubtedly in a bad way, but the way to fight the problems is not through anger, nor through the use of power to crush dissent, but through following the virtuous example of Mary and praying for her intercession.  As Shea observes in his conclusion, Pope John Paul II knew that the way to set an unjust world right is not to do evil so that good may come of it; but instead to promote justice, truth, and freedom.  Understanding and following the example of Mary is a crucial step towards achieving such lofty goals.

 

 

–Chris Chan