Aspects of Mary and the Church through the Centuries

           

 

            It is in history XE "History" ,[1] where the actualisation of the Church becomes apparent in a twofold way: the respective visible manifestation of her inner portrait as perceived by her own representatives in the different epochs of time and her actual concrete configuration in her members. The history of the Church shows the different shifts in emphasis and the close correlation between both aspects, idea and reality.[2]         

Early Patristic Period        

The first centuries are characterized by the image of the Church as mystery. [3] The strong symbolical representation of this mystery is shown by the writers in images deriving from Sacred scripture, mythology, typology, and allegory.[4] Augustine’s notion of the body of the Church as the Eucharistic Body of Christ is particularly influential for the whole of this ecclesiology.[5]                               

The Marian dimension of the patristic ecclesiology must be seen in particular against the New Testament background with the implications of the Pauline and Johannine typology: Adam-Eve-Church-Mary.[6] From this typological basis developed the Church-Mary parallel, with Mary as the typos of the Church: “symbol, central idea, and as it were, the summary of all that is meant by the Church in her nature and vocation.”[7] Augustine develops this further in that he places Mary before the Church as her ideal image[8] and as member of the body of Christ as part of the Church.[9]        

Late Patristic Period and Middle Ages 

            From the time of Constantine until the Reformation the notion of the Christian realm or imperium was in the foreground; the populus Dei became the populus Christianus, which became a sociological, political and cultural term.[10] The corpus Christi mysticum, so far reserved for the Eucharist XE "Eucharist" , became the corpus ecclesiae mysticum[11] ; similar changes occurred in the application of the term laoV, now known as laity  the term for those who are not part of the clergy and the hierarchy. Although the Church was in the fore as imperatrix et domina, her mystery character was present in the renewal movements and in the great theological treatises of  that time.[12]

While the Church-Mary parallel continued into the medieval period, the Marian reflection of the earlier part of this epoch, strongly influenced by the Carolingian era, was characterized by the change from the patristic’s predominantly salvation-historical perspective of Mary to a more individualized, privilege-oriented understanding of her.[13] It was no longer the knowledge about Mary’s importance in the history XE "History"  of salvation that stood in the foreground, but Mary’s effectiveness in the here and now. Here we have a development from the truth of Mary’s position in the objective work XE "Work"  of salvation to her influence on the subjective course of salvation: the Mother of God became the Mother of the faithful, the ancilla domini, the domina and regina nostra who in the present time fulfills an essential task in distributing the fruits of salvation. The typology Mary-Church is no longer seen as purely metaphorical, but, rather, Mary is the model for the virginal-fruitful Church and the reason for the Church’s salvific efficacy toward its members. [14] This development remained prevalent throughout the medieval period.[15]           

The Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation          

            The image of the Church as it became prevalent after the Reformation[16] was counter reformation apologetic-oriented.[17] Influential here in particular was Robert Bellarmine with an ecclesiological concept, which emphasized the visible, institutional structure of the Church.[18] Thus, in the foreground stood the Church, united in the papacy, with a strong apologetic impetus.[19]

The division of Christendom brought about through the Reformation in the sixteenth century caused a setback to Marian devotion. Against Luther’s and the other reformers’ increased distance from Catholic Marian doctrine, the Catholic representatives pointed out the significance of Mary in the work XE "Work"  of redemption XE "Redemption" .[20] The Council of Trent and the post-Tridentine period, marked by the mentioned apologetic impetus, gave rise to a new Catholic self-confidence and a marked Marian piety; the latter was central to the Counter-Reformation and particularly influential in strengthening the faith. This new springtime of Mariology was vitally carried by the Marian Congregations [established in 1563].[21] In the ecclesiological perspective, Mary’s position remained that of being the Mother of God and the most excellent member of Christ’s body. All gifts, graces and divine influence proceed from Christ, the head of the Church, through Mary, the neck, into the body of the Church.[22]           

The Age of the Enlightenment   

            In the following epoch the image of the Church was affected by the impact of Deism and Enlightenment with Rationalism, which brought about a new interpretation of Christian teaching aimed at effacing all creedal differences.[23] The Church was to be reduced to a moral institution through demythologising and desecrating efforts. On the one hand, this resulted in the endeavours of a more people-oriented liturgical XE "Liturgical"  emphasis and on the other hand a stronger clericalism emerged. The strong apologetic orientation XE "Orientation"  remained and was to be seen against the background of the above-mentioned influences and political changes. [24]                             

The effects of the Enlightenment on the Church were particularly felt in the area of Marian devotion and teaching. In contrast to the more demonstrative and effusive Catholic representation of Marian truth and devotion of the Baroque,[25] the time of Enlightenment presented a reduction of Marian doctrine to a purely moral level of values and virtues associated with a milieu of bourgeoisie. There is a marked descent from the praise of Mary’s glories as Queen of Heaven to her being a model character of a mother’s love and concern for home duties. This Marian content, rationalized and reduced to mere morality and ethics by many Church authorities, was kept alive to a significant degree in popular piety.[26]  

From the Period of Romanticism to the Nineteenth Century         

            The influence of the Romantic affected the concept of the Church in a way which brought again to the fore the inner reality of the Church and its organic XE "Organic" unity XE "Unity" .[27] Through the impact of “modernism XE "Modernism" ” and the counter orientation XE "Orientation"  on neo-scholasticism, the Church increasingly closed itself off to the spirit of the time and became defensive.[28]

            Within this atmosphere of Catholicism the ninetieth century inaugurated again a re-awakening of Marian piety marked by Marian pilgrimages and apparitions,[29] and inspired by the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which commenced the so-called Marian century.[30]  In spite of this renewal of Marian devotion, essentially influenced through the dogmatic definition in 1854, there was considerably less development in Marian theology[31]; however, two eminent theologians and contemporaries need to be mentioned: John Henry Newman, who brought again to the fore the Eve-Mary parallel in support of Mary’s original state of grace [Immaculate Conception], her part in redemption XE "Redemption" , her eschatological XE "Eschatological"  fulfilment and her intercession,[32] and J. M. Scheeben.

 

The latter gives a fairly detailed Mariological-ecclesiological exposition.  Mary, as the grace-filled person [per se] in her relationship with the Trinity and in her divine motherhood, is typologically significant for the Church.[33] From this perspective, Scheeben speaks of a fundamental principle which is constitutive and serves as vantage point for all mariological statements and the understanding of Mary’s person and task in the order of salvation and the history XE "History" of salvation: Mary’s divine-spousal motherhood [Gottesbräutliche Mutterschaft ] as her personal character–a term unique to Scheeben’s Mariology.[34] He speaks of the fundamental principle within the framework of the supernatural personal character of Mary.[35] This character distinguishes Mary from all other people: “At the same time, of its very nature and according to the idea of the Church, it is used also in the sense that, compared with all other qualities of Mary, the distinguishing mark of ‘mother of Jesus’ forms the capital, fundamental, and central quality to which, as subordinate attributes, all others are joined.”[36] Further, Scheeben underlines:   

 

All the privileges belonging to the Mother of God are of a super-natural character and thus find their principle in a supernatural gift of grace, so this applies particularly to the motherhood itself. This motherhood must therefore be defined as a supernatural distinguishing mark of Mary’s person, to which, in addition to her nature, she is raised through divine grace and which thus has its root in a divine gift of grace through which it is constituted.[37]        

The formative element of Mary’s personal character is the “supernatural, spiritual union XE "Union"  of the

person of Mary with that of her Son”; it is the highest, most intimate and perfect union between God and a human creature.[38] “Mary, as united with the Logos, is taken into complete possession by him; the Logos, as infused and implanted in her, gives himself to her and takes her to himself as partner and helper, in the closest, strictest, and most lasting community XE "Community"  of life.”[39] Scheeben considers Mary in the role of her divine-bridal motherhood as the mother and heart XE "Heart"  of the Mystical Body of Christ.  Within the inner organic XE "Organic"  unity XE "Unity"  of the Church he highlights this heart function:

 

Mary is . . . the prototype XE "Prototype"  of the Church, as the idea of the Church is originally realized in her person and in the most perfect manner. Since she herself belongs to the Church and at the same time forms the head-member as root and heart, the idea of the Church as a supernatural principle assisting Christ also obtains its full, concrete and living figure.[40]

            Scheeben’s perception of a fundamental principle, and the uniqueness of his concept of Mary’s personal character has found a resonance in the years preceding Vatican II [from ca. 1940 on], for example in the works of H. M. Köster, Kurl Rahner and Semmelroth.[41] The aspects and the orientations that Scheeben gives in this concept have generated negative and positive critiques.[42] According to G. Philips, it is not possible to combine the two terms “mother” and “bride” in the concept of “bridal motherhood” without creating a misconception in the understanding of the concept.[43] C. Feckes takes the divine-bridal motherhood as the fundamental principal of Mariology: Mary is mother, because she is bride and co-worker of the Redeemer. Her first service as co-worker in the redemptive work XE "Work" of her Son is her maternal action. She is bride, because she is mother, since her motherly action includes in her Fiat a bridal dimension.[44]   A pertinent modification and application of Scheeben’s idea of the mariological fundamental principle is given by Fr. Kentenich[45] in his Marian paradigm. XE "Paradigma"  XE "Paradigm"  XE "Paradigma"  XE "Paradigm" [46] In accordance with a long tradition XE "Tradition" acknowledging the essential unity XE "Unity" between Christ and Mary,[47] and in affiliation with Scheeben’s concept, he defines, as a fundamental Marian principle, the personal character of Mary:[48] as “the unique bridal, permanent helpmate and associate of Christ, who is the Head of the whole Church and world XE "World", in the entire work XE "Work"  of redemption XE "Redemption" ,”[49] or expressed in the shorter version from 1950: Mary is “the official companion and helpmate of Christ in the entire work of redemption.”[50] Although all of Mary’s unique gifts–like her immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, the intemerata and her divine motherhood–are included and are to be interpreted from the above paradigm, yet Kentenich’s choice of this definition as he stated in 1941 points beyond traditional Mariological interpretations toward Mary’s active involvement in salvation history XE "History" . She is, through her educative task toward humanity, the free cooperative permanent helpmate and associate of Christ in the entire work of redemption.[51] The Christologically founded and oriented unity between Christ and Mary is constitutive for Mary’s place in God’s divine plan, in the order of salvation and at the center of salvation history, and gives her an official character.[52] For Kentenich, Mary’s position in God’s plan of salvation is the starting point for everything that can be said about her person and her mission.       

From Vatican I to Vatican II         

The First Vatican Council, compelled through exterior circumstances, could deal only with the position and task of the pope and could not go into the question of the Church’s self-concept, a concept which should have found expression as the corpus Christi mysticum and as the true, perfect, spiritual and supernatural community XE "Community".[53]

At the beginning of the present century a new understanding of the Church was emerging: a move from a scholastic, institutional concept to a biblical and patristic image. “The Church is awakening in souls,” wrote Romano Guardini in 1922.[54] His writing and those of Henri De Lubac and Yoes Congar address this new awakening.[55] It is well presented in De Lubac’s work:           

The only real Church, the Church which is the Body of Christ, is not merely that strongly hierarchical and disciplined society whose divine origin has to be maintained, whose organization has to be upheld against all denial and revolt. That is an incomplete notion and but a partial cure for the separatist, individualist tendency of the notion to which it is opposed; a partial cure because it works only from without by way of authority, instead of effective union XE "Union" . If Christ is the sacrament XE "Sacrament" of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him present.[56]   

This notion of the inner reality of the Church was given a strong impetus by Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi,[57] in which he brought together the Body of Christ and the People of God XE "People of God" united to Christ, and Mediator Dei.[58] The different streams of this newly-inspired reflection upon the Church’s inner reality, its mystery, flowed into the discussions of Vatican II, and placed the Church at the center of attention.[59]

            The awareness of returning the image of the Church to patristic notions also brought into the ecclesiological foreground the patristic image of Mary and the Church intertwined. The task of Mary is also the task of the Church: “As it is the mother role of Mary to give to the world XE "World" the God-man, so it is the mother role of the Church, culminating in the celebration of the Eucharist XE "Eucharist" , to give us also Christ as the head, sacrifice and nourishment for the members of his mystical body.”[60] Finally, the eschatological XE "Eschatological" significance of the close association of Mary and the Church finds expression in the dogmatic definition of Mary’s Assumption.[61]

            During the decades just prior to Vatican II, a particular representative of Scheeben’s mariological thinking was C. Feckes. Known as the interpreter of Scheeben’ Mariology, he follows him in his understanding of the basic Marian principle: the divine-bridal motherhood; Mary is mother because she is bride and helpmate of Christ.[62] In his ecclesiology Feckes attempts to present the Church as the Christ-founded institution of salvation and places a strong emphasis on the ministerial priesthood, the mystical body of Christ.[63] Analogous to Augustine,[64] Feckes speaks of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the Church, as its animating and unifying power.[65] In unison with Scheeben he refers to the relatedness between Mary’s motherhood and that of the Church as a perichorese.[66] Above all, Mary’s place in the Church is characterized as that of the heart XE "Heart" .[67] Mary is typos of the Church. Under the Cross she “becomes the mother of all the redeemed” and the mediatrix of graces. [68] The most perfect and original way in which the idea of the Church is realized is in Mary.[69] She is “the first of the redeemed, she is the ideal image of all the redeemed,”[70] and as the pre-redeemed she is Model and Archetype of the Church as the sum of all the after-redeemed.[71] The latter statement closely resembles the Marian teaching of Vatican II: Mary’s model character for all people of God.

            O. Cohausz is also strongly influenced by Scheeben,[72] and his argumentation is highly inspired by the Mary-Eve parallel XE "Mary-Eve parallel" with the primacy of the masculine gender. Mary is the model of creation XE "Creation"  and the representative of creation in the salvific event of Christ’s Incarnation XE "Incarnatio" .[73] She is mother and bride of Christ. She is also our mother because she gave birth to us when she gave birth to Christ. Her motherhood toward us continues in her task as mediatrix of graces.[74]

            K. Adam and E. Przywara speak of Mary as “the inner form of the Church,”[75] and A. Müller comes to the conclusion, after investigating the patristic sources, that “Mary is the perfect realization of the Church–the essential mystery of the Church is the mystery of Mary.”[76]

            de Lubac also refers to the patristic tradition XE "Tradition"  in which “the same biblical symbols are applied, either in turn or simultaneously, with one and the same ever-increasing profusion, to the Church and Our Lady.”[77] All the sources of the Church’s tradition point to the fact that everywhere the Church finds in Mary “its type and model, its point of origin and perfection: ‘The form of our mother the Church is according to the form of his [Christ’s] mother.’”[78]                                                 

H. Rahner, too, speaks of the unity XE "Unity"  between Mary and the Church in his studies of the Church Fathers: “The early Church saw Mary and the Church as a single figure: type and antitype form one print as seal and wax.”[79]

            C. Dillenschneider depicts Mary in her role as the mother of the Messiah; he shows her place next to Christ and within the Church as the archetype XE "Archetype"  [Urbild ] and inner portrait [Inbild XE "Inbild"  ] of the Church.[80] Mary stands with Christ at the center of salvation history XE "History" ,[81] and as his helpmate she also cooperates as the representative of humanity and the Church in the Incarnation XE "Incarnatio" , as well as on Golgotha in the Redemption.[82] Dillenschneider perceives Mary’s mediating role to be a consequence of her “yes” at the Incarnation as well as her “yes” under the Cross. Her “yes” has an ecclesiological perspective since “her general intercession in heaven is nothing else but the highest form of the ‘interceding’ community XE "Community"  of saints.”[83]

            Prior to Vatican II, the French Mariological Society made its particular contribution to the Mary-Church theme through its three-year series of Marian studies,[84] whereby special mention needs to be made of Canon Philips, one of its members, who repeatedly wrote on this theme and who later became one of the main draftsmen of Chapter VIII of Lumen gentium XE "Lumen gentium" .[85] In 1958, the International Mariological Congress in Lourdes too had Maria et Ecclesia as its theme.[86]

            Among the German-speaking theologians it was in particular Semmelroth who discussed Mariology in its relatedness to ecclesiology under the aspect of archetype XE "Archetype"  [Urbild ]. He sees in Ambrose’s expression, Mary as the type of the Church, the sum of the Church’s tradition,  XE "Tradition"  “concerning the Church’s knowledge of its own nature.”[87] It is within ecclesiology, where Mary’s place in God’s plan of salvation should be viewed.[88] Semmelroth sees an essential element in the relationship of Mary to the Church in the primitive etymological meaning of type, which in the fullest sense is threefold. It can signify [1] a personification or representation of a spiritual entity through some sort of image; [2] “the similarity between Mary and the Church is the consequence of a very real, inner connection. The features that make the archetype similar to the image have somehow grown from the archetype into the image”[89] ; [3] it can be a moral example as a result of this relationship.[90] “When it has been established that Mary’s relation to the Church and her members is factual and ontological XE "Ontological" ,” then there will be moral consequences, resulting in “a new relationship in the moral and exemplary order.” Our lives will have to be ordered “according to the life led by the Archetype before us.”[91] Subsequently, in search of a basic mariological principle, he claims:

Because Mary was to be the type of the Church, she was given existence as the virginal Mother of God. There is no other Marian mystery which, as the intentional principle, could precede and give root to the position that Mary holds as type of the Church . . . all other Marian mysteries draw their inner meaning and connection from this basic mystery.[92]

 

            At the center of the economy of salvation and its very essence is the total Christ, that is, Christ with the members of his mystical body. The Church is so intimately bound to Christ that she becomes his mystical body, united to him as to her head without any lessening of her bridal attitude toward him.[93] It follows that
 

the basic mystery of Mariology will be that which brings Mary closer to the center of the economy of salvation, which is the Church. This coming-together takes place through the bridal aspect of the divine motherhood, because here Mary shows herself as the completed bridal fiat for the advent and work XE "Work"  of the Saviour.[94]

 

            In this context Semmelroth addresses also the question of co-redemption and speaks of Mary as “the type of the truly co redeeming Church which gives salvation.”[95] The task of the Church as the community XE "Community" of the redeemed in Christ[96] in God’s salvific plan casts light on Mary’s role within the history XE "History" of salvation. “Mary cooperated with her own redemptio objectiva, which redemption, however, simultaneously signifies the reception of the fruits of salvation for the entire Church and which is therefore objective with regard to the individual.”[97]

 

Thus, Semmelroth concludes that Mary, like the Church whose archetype XE "Archetype" she is, also mediates all graces[98] and affirms as type and pinnacle of the Church “Christ’s work and thereby disposed both herself and the Church within her for the pleroma of salvation.”[99] “In the divine motherhood, Mary was given the most perfect opportunity to prefigure the Church in a co-redemptive way,”[100] and in her Immaculate Conception “the Church emerges as the one essentially redeemed, the one that could never exist tainted with original sin and therefore, in the womb of humanity.”[101] Mary “personifies the Church as a symbol . . . personifies the Church as the primordial cell from which the Church extends in time and space . . . and is gathered into a juridically representative oneness.” However, writes Semmelroth, “There is no question of a Marian-Mystical Body. Rather, it is a Marian-bridal element within the Mystical Body of Christ.”[102] The redeemed state of the physical cosmos at the end of time shines forth in her body in which she partook in Christ’s death. As archetype, Mary’s body shows [in her Assumption] the Church’s fully redeemed body; and it lights the way for the body of the Church and shows that the transfiguration dwells like a seed within her corporeality.[103] Mary, the archetype, represents also the ideal type, the model and moral example “against whom the Church as a whole and all her members can examine their own attitude toward their redemption and fullness of grace as they work out their own lives. . . The Church living in her individual members needs Mary for her growth toward what she is and toward her hidden potential. Mary causes the essence of the Church to shine before individual human beings to appeal to their own moral efforts.”[104]

 

Although Semmelroth emphasizes Mary's archetypal function in “the Church insofar as she is the bride of Christ and mother of the individual faithful