Resurrecting Mary Magdalene
by Ed Conroy
Two
years ago in France, shortly
after my 50th birthday and two years after a painful divorce, I became a
pilgrim. Though I did not put a scallop shell on the brim of my cap or walk
with a staff, I asked Mary Magdalene to be the patroness of my quest for
renewed faith and a healed heart.
Her unfailing love for Jesus inspired my attachment
to her. The mystery of her identity, however, impelled me to study the
growing debates over her identity and relationship with Jesus.
Mentioned more times in the New Testament than any
other woman, she has arguably been the most misrepresented of all
Jesus’ disciples. She is the subject of intense interest these days;
indeed, I discovered a movement of devotees who for different reasons have
turned to her as a muse, a champion and a spiritual friend.
Over the past two years, I have interviewed and
corresponded with these followers as well as some of the leading scholars,
writers and artists inspired by Mary Magdalene. As a result of those
interactions, I see her now represented in four distinct faces, a woman of
many epithets.
For centuries, she was considered “the woman with the alabaster jar”, a reformed
prostitute, despite the absence of biblical reference to her as such. This
Magdalene has few advocates today.
In early Christian communities, she was seen as a
woman of courage and wisdom. Called “Apostle to the Apostles” for
bravely bearing witness of Jesus’ resurrection, she was also known
among Gnostics as “the embodiment of Sophia”.
Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), she has
been officially affirmed as “Apostle to the Apostles”, both in
the new Catholic missal of 1969 and by Pope John Paul II in his 1988
encyclical Dignitatum Mulieris.
In medieval
Some contemporary authors, such as Clive Prince and
Lynn Picknett in The Templar Revelation, even assert Mary Magdalene was
probably a priestess of the Egyptian goddess Isis and a member of a
still-existing sect known as the Mandeans, now
located in
Jane Schaberg, professor
of women’s studies and religious studies at the
Those questions were very much on my mind as I began
my pilgrimage.
The Magdalene in
My quest began in the company of my sister, Mary, my
two daughters and my niece at the centuries-old chapel of Mary Magdalene in
the little French hilltop
Outside the chapel, buses disgorged hundreds of
curious French tourists eager to consume the stories told in Dan
Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code of the
Priory of Sion and the alleged conspiracy to
conceal knowledge of a royal Jesus-Mary Magdalene bloodline.
Rennes-le-Chateau is the nexus of that conspiracy theory,
made famous by the internationally best-selling book Holy Blood, Holy
Grail by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and
Richard Leigh, published more than 20 years ago.
Located in the heart of the
She is the national saint of
I learned on my French travels that on
It was the first massacre of that crusade. Over the
course of the next 35 years, the marauding crusaders and the fires of the
Inquisition killed thousands of other inhabitants of the
On
Although it was attended by only 50 people, mostly
women, they came from as far away as
It was the first meeting of an Internet-based
interfaith community organized by Lesa Bellevie, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide
to Mary Magdalene.
Most of the participants were originally
Protestants. Many were critical of institutional religion but were developing
a more personally meaningful spirituality through their veneration of Mary
Magdalene.
Susan Smith, a social worker and psychotherapist
from the
Raised a Mormon, Ms. Smith had first encountered
pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the homes of Mexican migrant laborers she visited in her work in the Denver area, she
said.
“I have committed my life to following the
path of the Divine Feminine”, she said.
The conference also included a reading of the play Magdalene’s Mind �by
Gloria Amendola of
It became clear to me from that conference that
there is an emerging spiritual movement that draws inspiration from
conceiving of Mary Magdalene not as a reformed prostitute but as a strong,
wise woman in a close relationship with Jesus.
A movement takes flight
This movement, moreover, has taken wing in
cyberspace on numerous Magdalene-inspired Web sites. Lesa
Bellevie’s
www.magdalene.org and www.themagdaleneline.com, originated by Kathleen McGowan, author of The Expected One,
are two of the most prominent. Ms. Bellevie, who
opened her Web site in 1998, characterized her own Internet community as
divided between historians and �mystics, who differ over the
question of whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. In making that
distinction, Ms. Bellevie is placing in the realm
of mysticism the writings of Ms. Starbird, now the
most highly recognized advocate for a marriage between Jesus and Mary
Magdalene. In October 2003, Dan Brown acknowledged to me that Ms. Starbird’s book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar
was a significant influence on his novel.
Margaret George, author of the highly acclaimed
novel Mary, Called Magdalene, concurs with Ms. Bellevie,
saying that “there are two things going on” in this upsurge of
interest in Mary Magdalene. “One is the attempt by serious church
historians -- mainly but not exclusively feminist -- to rethink, rediscover,
what the role of women might have been in the early church, using scholarly
research. The other is a sort of New Age, touchy-feely, mystical channeling of Mary Magdalene, combined with a conspiracy
theory. I think the first is valuable. I think the other is a passing fad
that has caught people’s attention for this season”, Ms. George
said.
Most of the participants in the
Jane Schaberg puts Mary
Magdalene at a central place in the evolution of Christian faith.
“Focusing on the empty tomb narratives, my own
view is that Mary Magdalene was a prophetic leader in the kingdom of God
movement before and after the death of Jesus, and a creator of the Easter
faith”, Ms. Schaberg said. “Her memory
was important but downplayed in the Gospel of John, in which the Beloved
Disciple is a corporate, symbolic character, perhaps based historically on a
prominent figure or figures in the community, including her”. But Ms. Schaberg points out that it is vital to understand how
the image of Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute was constructed.
“If Mary Magdalene the Whore did not
exist”, Ms. Schaberg said, “we who are
interested in the history of man’s idea of woman would have to invent
her, as complement and contrast to the Virgin Mother.”
The Gospel of John
Salesian Fr. Francis J. Moloney,
dean of the
“In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the risen
Jesus encounters several women,” he said. “In the Gospel of John,
he only encounters Mary Magdalene. John sees Mary as the one who announced to
the Apostles the good news of Jesus’ resurrection and his return to our
God and Father. This makes her the Apostle of the Apostles. This is lost in
the other Gospels.”
Intriguingly, Ramon K. Jusino, who teaches
theology at
The image of Mary Magdalene as a leader in the early
church is an inspiration for the Cleveland-based organization FutureChurch, many of whose members are activists for the
ordination of women in the Catholic church.
Members of FutureChurch
will hold more than 300 celebrations of St. Mary of Magdala throughout the
world this July 22, according to Sr. Christine Schenck,
the organization’s executive director. In an interview, Sr. Schenck described a key moment of inspiration for her
current work. While walking on a beach, despairing of seeing her personal
dream of women’s ordination fulfilled in her lifetime, she remembered
Jesus’ words to Mary Magdalene at the Resurrection: “Woman, why
do you weep?” “I realized,” she said, “that the
battle has already been won: Jesus has conquered death, and, like Mary
Magdalene, we must tell the world!”
The increase of interest in the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, also known as
the Gnostic gospels, has also fuelled interest in Mary Magdalene and even
raised questions over whether she, not Peter, was Jesus’ chosen
successor. In the Gnostic texts, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary
Magdalene, we are presented with Mary Magdalene as someone to whom Jesus gave
secret teachings of how to achieve direct spiritual knowledge (called gnosis in Greek), and who argued
with Peter over the validity of her knowledge.
Jacob Needleman, professor of philosophy at
“We have to ask ourselves the question: What
need do we have that is being reflected in this
interest in Mary Magdalene?”� Dr.
Needleman said. “I believe we are seeing the recognition of not only a
need for closer relationship with God and our inner selves, but also the Gnostic
idea of the need to work on ourselves.”
Yet it is the theme of a loving relationship between
Jesus and Mary Magdalene that is perhaps most inspirational to Mary
Magdalene’s contemporary devotees.
Esther de Boer, a minister in the
“This ‘loving’ has nothing to do
with marital love, but with the love of the teacher for his pupils,”
said the Rev. de Boer. “The Gospel of John calls Mary Magdalene
“the disciple Jesus loved” as a way to make Mary Magdalene
anonymous, since this beloved disciple in John appears to be the great
thinker behind the Gospel and the Johannine
community. It would have been embarrassing and not very convincing to
outsiders to admit that this person is a woman.”
Ms. Starbird, however,
said in a recent interview that she will continue to argue that the four
canonical Gospels and the historical record present evidence for a marriage
between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in her forthcoming book Mary Magdalene:
Bride in Exile. Ms. Starbird explained that in her view the significance of
the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene was cosmological, and
intended by God to provide an example of equal partnership in human
relationship. ”It was the sacred union of male and female principles,
and the balancing of the masculine energy that has been dominant for too
long,” Ms. Starbird said.
Ms. Starbird’s
arguments build on the work of Riane Eisler, author of the cultural history The Chalice and
the Blade. Ms. Eisler argues in that book it is
time for humanity to evolve beyond societies based on domination through
fostering a culture of partnership.
Neither the new feminist scholarship based on the
Gnostic gospels nor the arguments of Ms. Starbird,
Mr. Prince or Ms. Picknett concerning Mary
Magdalene impress Philip Jenkins, a professor of religious studies at
“It’s tragic that modern attempts to
recover that significance use absurd crank theories that no reputable scholar
will take seriously, such as “pagan priestess” or “bride of
Jesus”, or else we have more serious works that are massively
over-optimistic in what can be recovered from very late and tainted texts
like the Gospel of Mary,” Dr. Jenkins said.
Jean Houston sees wider cultural issues at work in
the newfound popularity of Mary Magdalene. Dr. Houston, a well-known author
who earned two doctorates in psychology and religious studies, calls Mary
Magdalene a patroness for the liberation of women throughout the world and an
icon for the ideal of a society where equal partnership, not domination,
prevails in human relationships.
“The rise of Mary Magdalene in our time is
part of one the most significant happenings in human history,” Dr.
Houston said. “Fifty-two percent of the human race is about to join in
as full partners in the business of human affairs.”
Ed Conroy is currently writing a book he titles The Magdalene
Tales: Notes from a Mythic Journey.
This article first appeared in National
Catholic Reporter,
