Imagine the fury of the men of Galilee when a young, unmarried girl showed up in their village pregnant. They must have talked about punishments. Stoning — a legitimate penalty, condoned by Deuteronomy — would have been appropriate, although the more compassionate among them might have suggested something gentler: ostracism or banishment.
If the girl had been allowed to speak for herself, which she probably wasn’t, she might have tried to explain. The Gospels testify that something supernatural happened while she was out of doors; she had an encounter with an angel. In that case, who would have believed her? Historians put forth other theories: a rape, a lover. Those explanations would have assured her guilt.
In Luke’s Gospel, the girl with the commonest name of the time — Mary — spends the first several months of her pregnancy out of town with a cousin. The Gospel of Matthew suggests that Mary’s condition made her “a public disgrace.” Joseph agrees to marry her anyway.
When I see that a department of the Vatican, in Rome, has rebuked a group of American nuns for “radical feminism” and for speaking out of turn and has called in a man — a superior — to set things right, I think about Mary. When I see American bishops wanting to make rules about sexuality and contraception for ordinary people, I think about Mary.
A woman is at the very center of the Christian story, yet that story has been told and controlled for millennia by men. Continue reading
Image: BBC
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