Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Maria; Mutterschaft (materia; Relation zw. 2 Personen) - Vaterschaft (sancuts, hagios, abgetrennt); AT: Nt - Patriarchen : Maria als Mutter (Ordnung. Gnade); Unterschied: Glaube - Philosophie; Christus (Wahrheit) - Maria (Vertrauen)

Kurzinhalt: For what distinguishes the New Covenant from the Old is, above all, the immediacy of God's presence among us from within the created material order itself... In the Hebrew liturgy, the patriarches are invoked, as the Blessed Virgin is in the Christian...

Textausschnitt: ENTRUSTING: THE ESSENCE OF MOTHERHOOD

146c Why does the Pope identify "entrusting" as that which defines the importance not only of Mary, but also of women in general? First, the Pope stresses the fact that Mary's vocation is defined by her motherhood. As he puts it, "Mary's Motherhood ... constitutes the first and fundamental dimension of that mediation which the Church confesses and proclaims in her regard" (RM 39). Second, the Pope takes up the meaning of motherhood itself. According to him, "Of the essence of motherhood is the fact that it concerns the person. Motherhood always establishes a unique and unrepeatable relationship between two people: between mother and child and between child and mother" (RM 45). (Fs)

147a It is precisely because motherhood establishes a relationship between the mother and the child which is "unique and unrepeatable" that Mary's role in salvation can be characterized as "special and extraordinary" (RM 38). As his mother, she enjoys a relationship with Christ which cannot be duplicated in the life of anyone else. At the same time, however, and according to the Pope, her role as the mother to whom this child—and later the beloved disciple—would be entrusted tells us what "entrusting" means. As John Paul II put it, "such entrusting is the response to a person's love, and in particular to the love of a mother" (RM 45). (Fs)

147b To say that God entrusted his Son to her is to say that he entrusted his Son to the love which Mary would give precisely as his mother. And to say that Christ entrusted all of humanity to her is to say that he has entrusted us to the love which Mary continues to give as a mother. It is remarkable to think of both the Father and the Son entrusting themselves to this woman, but, beyond that, the Pope's identification of motherhood with entrusting is extraordinary from another point of view. For it raises a very interesting question for us. If "entrusting" has to do with "the response to a person's love", why does the Pope specify that person as a mother? Why not identify that person either as a father, namely, the Eternal Father himself, who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn 3:16), or as Christ, whose love was so great that he laid down his life for his friends? The value and significance of Mary in particular and of women in general lies, I think, in the answer to that twofold question. (Fs) (notabene)

147c Why is it that entrusting does not, at least in its most basic form, refer to the relationship which exists between a father and a child, or, more specifically, between the Eternal Father in heaven and his children here on earth? To put it another way, what is the difference between fatherhood and motherhood which requires that we identify "entrusting" more with the love of a mother than with the love of a father? The answer, I believe, lies in the difference between that distancing which is implied by fatherhood, as contrasted with that immediacy which is associated with motherhood. As Walter Ong notes in his work on male consciousness, Fighting for Life, "Masculinity stands in the human psyche for a kind of otherness, difference."1 For that reason, Ong makes this observation about God: "He is likened to the masculine not because he has a masculine physical constitution, but because he is a source of existence that is other, different, separated (kadosh, the Hebrew word translated sanctus, hagios, 'holy', means at root 'separated') from all his creation, even from human beings, though they are "made in his image and likeness'."2

148a This otherness, or difference, is of course related to the fact that God is by nature pure spirit, whereas we are embodied or material beings. But distance, or so it would seem, in some fashion defines the Father, since even when God becomes human or embodied, it is not the Father who comes in Person, but the Son who is "sent" by the Father. The Father who "sends" remains, to some degree at least, in the distance. (Fs)

148b Motherhood, on the other hand, is never directly attributed to God, but only to human beings. Indeed, both Eve and Mary would seem in some fashion to be defined in their very being as mothers, Eve as "Mother of all living" (Gen 3:20) and Mary as Mother of God. The revelation would indicate that the fullness of motherhood is properly found in women, whereas the fullness of fatherhood is found only in God ("Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" [Mt 23:9]). The fullness of motherhood found in Mary corresponds to the fullness of fatherhood found not in Joseph, but in God the Father. (Fs) (notabene)

148c The reason motherhood belongs properly to the creature rather than to the Creator seems clear. For, as Karl Stern, a psychiatrist and convert to Catholicism, noted, "Woman, in her being, is deeply committed to bios, to nature itself. The words for mother and matter, for mater and materia are etymologically related."3

148d The statement, "The Father sent the Son", refers to that moment when the Son became incarnate. "The Father sent the Son" is simply another way of saying that the Father entrusted his Son to the materia or materiality of his creation in the only way he could be entrusted, by way of a mater or mother. Indeed, while it is true that Mary is unique because to her God entrusted his only-begotten Son, the fact remains that God entrusts to a mother every child he creates, for mothers provide the only entrance any child has into this world. Human fathers, on the other hand, necessarily share, to some degree, in the distance which separates God the Father from each human child. As Ong has pointed out,

Among higher forms of life, above the egg-laying species, the male's physical relationship to his offspring is distinctly distanced. The male reproductive cell becomes effectively reproductive when it is totally detached from the male's body and joins the cell that, in the higher forms of life, remains attached to the female. Fathers are essentially distant from offspring physically. They can even be dead and buried when the child is being formed and is born.4

149a Because motherhood is bound up with materiality per se, the Pope is quite right to see Mary's Fiat as the moment in which the New Covenant is inaugurated. For what distinguishes the New Covenant from the Old is, above all, the immediacy of God's presence among us from within the created material order itself. In this sense, the Old Testament is properly symbolized by the male patriarchs and prophets, while the New is best symbolized by Mary herself. For, as Stern notes,

The Prophetic—all that which points towards the Incarnation—is the male. In the Hebrew liturgy, the patriarches are invoked, as the Blessed Virgin is in the Christian. The remote foreknowledge of that which one will neither see nor touch, is the paternal.... And it is with the Incarnation as an historical fact that the Blessed Virgin becomes the prototype of faith. Here, contrary to the faith of the prophets, faith achieves the immediacy of certitude, in that carnal link with being which is at the core of all womanhood. (Fs)

150a Motherhood lies at the center of the New Covenant, because the Father entrusts his Son to a mother. But, in point of fact and as noted earlier, God entrusts every child of his making to a mother. Each of us, by our very creation, is forced, as it were, to trust the mother to whom God has entrusted us. As Stern has observed, the paradox of being human resides in the fact that, while we are the summit of God's creation, each one of us must, in order to enter this life, pass through a period of "utter helplessness and dependence". We must trust our mothers for the simple reason that we are given, literally, no alternatives. For that reason alone, as Stern points out, "faith grows out of the relation of child and mother".5 Father, whether divine or human, lies off in the distance, beyond mother. (Fs)

150b If our relationship with God the Father does not supply the most basic instance of "entrusting", it is because we are material beings who must first be "entrusted" to a mother before there is any possibility of our coming to know our father, whether human or divine. And, for the same reason, of course, our relationship with Christ also cannot supply the most basic instance of "entrusting", inasmuch as we must also necessarily trust our mothers before we are in a position to entrust ourselves to Christ. We must, in other words, be born of flesh and blood before we can be born of water and the Spirit. No one can enter into the New Covenant by way of baptism who has not first entered into the world by way of a woman. (Fs)

150c But what about the importance of motherhood within the New Covenant? Given the fact that the Son was sent precisely that he might mediate God to us in the material immediacy of his own humanity, surely no further maternal, material mediation is required. Surely, within the order of grace, entrusting ourselves to the love of Christ is the most basic instance of "entrusting" we now experience. Surely Christ, the one mediator between God and man, does not himself require further mediation. (Fs) (notabene)

151a As plausible as this might sound, it is not, of course, the position of the Church, nor of this Pope. Mary remains mother to us "in the order of grace", and entrusting, even within the New Covenant, according to John Paul II, continues to find its most basic expression in response to a mother's love. Why this should be so brings us, I think, to the core of the role the female is called to play in our salvation. (Fs)

151b A child is entrusted to a mother for two basic reasons. First, because vulnerable and dependent, the child's survival depends upon his mother, always in those months between conception and birth, and for most children in the first few years after birth. Second, a child is entrusted to a mother in order that he might, through her, come to know the larger world into which he must himself someday go. Motherhood is, in the strictest sense of the word, mediation, for mothers are always called to point their children beyond themselves, not only spatially into the world and relationally into the community of other people but also temporally into the maturity of adulthood. Women are called to bear men and women into the world. (Fs)

151c Mothers are therefore the first and, generally, the most influential guides children are given in this world. Children are entrusted to mothers, in order that mothers might enable children to entrust themselves to others, initially their fathers, and, of course, ultimately their Eternal Father. And since not all people or things are trustworthy, children also depend on their mothers to inform them of and protect them from anyone or anything which might harm them. The child is entrusted to his mother in order that he might know, beyond her, what can and cannot be trusted. Although mothers may not have the power to command enjoyed by fathers, they are the primary mediators of reality in a child's life.6 (Fs)

152a Mothers, it might therefore be said, stand for the realm of trust, first, in the sense that the survival of children depends primarily on the trustworthiness of mothers, and second, in the sense that mothers, more than any other persons in our lives, are expected to be able to distinguish, beyond themselves, what can be trusted from what cannot. Indeed, in a larger sense, the female per se would seem to stand for the realm of trust. This, at least, would appear to be the reason why, back in the garden of Eden, the serpent approaches Eve rather than Adam. For the serpent, as John Paul II points out in Redemptoris Mater, is the "father of lies" who sows "suspicion" in the heart of Eve. The serpent's intent is to direct her trust away from God's command and toward his own interpretation of that command. She is seduced into concluding that the serpent is more to be trusted than is God, and Adam clearly relies on her judgment, to his grief and ours. (Fs)

152b Mary, the new Eve, provides the antithesis to Eve's refusal. As John Paul II notes, "In contrast with the 'suspicion' which the 'father of lies' sowed in the heart of Eve the first woman, Mary, whom tradition is wont to call the 'new Eve' and the true 'Mother of the living,' boldly proclaims the undimmed truth about God: the holy and almighty God, who from the beginning is the source of all gifts, he who 'has done great things' in her, as well as in the whole universe" (RM 37). (Fs)

152c Mary, because she entrusted herself to the truth of God, was herself trustworthy. Hence, the Father was able to entrust his only Son to her. Mary's Fiat, however, was not an end in itself but was ultimately directed to the Son being able to entrust humanity to her, as our mother in the order of grace. For, as the Pope points out, "This filial relationship, this self-entrusting of a child to its mother, not only has its beginning in Christ but can also be said to be definitively directed toward him. Mary can be said to continue to say to each individual the words which she spoke at Cana in Galilee: 'Do whatever he tells you' " (RM46). (Fs)

152d That Mary is so crucial to the scheme of things tells us that materiality is just as crucial to the scheme of things. We can see this at a glance by looking at one of the primary differences between philosophy and faith. (Fs)

153a All of the great philosophers of the world have sought the truth of things. And because they have identified truth with abstract knowledge, they have sought to reason their way to it. In so doing, they have bypassed the female. For abstract knowledge is neither personal nor material. It is abstract precisely because it has detached itself from both. And abstractions, as Karl Rahner observed, require no mother.7 (Fs)

153b Christ, on the other hand, tells us that he is the truth—not, mind you, that he has the truth, but that he is the truth. The truth, therefore, the ultimate truth of things, is neither impersonal nor immaterial. And for this reason, the truth does require a mother. In other words, reality (as noted in Chapter 2) is not abstract but incarnational. (Fs) (notabene)

153c By the same token, reason is not sufficient to bring us to the truth. For, in the final analysis, truth in the Person of Jesus Christ requires not just that we recognize it, not just that we make use of it, as we would of abstract knowledge, but that we surrender ourselves to it. We are called to entrust ourselves to Christ. But how is such entrusting possible? Reason alone does not suffice, for reason alone produces only impersonal knowledge. What we require is a different kind of knowledge, the kind which arises not out of abstract reasoning, but out of the intimacy of personal relationship. This knowledge, connatural as opposed to rational, is essential if we are to recognize the truth of Jesus Christ. And as Stern points out, "knowledge by connaturality originates in the child-mother relationship".8 (Fs)

153d Mary is our most reliable guide to Christ, the person in the best position to attest to the truth of Christ, precisely because she is his mother. She knows this Son of hers as no one else among us possibly can. And because God was able to entrust his only Son to her, her Son has been able to entrust us to her guidance. When Mary counsels every one of us to "Do whatever he tells you", she is assuring us that we can entrust ourselves to him. By so doing, she invites everyone of us to do what is, in the created order, the supremely female thing, namely, to surrender ourselves to another. As Stern has noted, "A woman's love, that divine surrender of her ultra-inner being which the impassioned woman makes, is perhaps the only thing which is not achieved by reasoning."9

154a If Christ is the truth, Mary is the trust. And the truth, because personal and material, cannot be efficacious in our world unless we entrust ourselves to him. For that reason Christ requires the female mediation of his mother, for only a mother can offer us the assurance we require that we can not only believe what he says, but also safely entrust ourselves to the Person he is. For that reason, Mary's motherhood can be said to extend to all human beings, since all human beings require the assurance of this woman who is uniquely the Mother of God. (Fs)

154b The Pope, however—and as we have seen—insists that all women share in this ministry which Christ has entrusted to Mary. What concretely does that mean for women today? What are women especially called to do?