A Theological Reflection
The Annunciation, Raffaello Sanzio, 1502
Vactican Museum
Light on Our Blessed Lady:
Chapter Eight of Lumen Gentium
by Eamon R. Carroll, O. Carm.
Part One, Part Two and Part Three are located in Archived Theological Reflections.
There is a blithe disregard of patrology in ignoring the fact that authors as early as St. Irenaeus invoke the "new Eve" comparison not simply to exalt the obedient and faithful Mary as "bringer of Life," as "advocate of the first Eve," but also to counter the gnostic denigration of womanly dinity. A strange reductionism is at play here, as if reducing Mary somehow builds respect for other women. Chapter eight of LG employs the "new Eve" concept for Mary in dependence on the Fathers; Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Augustine, Jerome, John Damascene are among those footnoted, no.56.
It is noteworthy that Cardinal Newman's reply to Dr. Pusey's book against the definition of the Immaculate Conception (with its paradoxical title of Eirenicon!) defended the doctrine by appealing t patristic evidence of Mary as "new Eve," as "the great rudiental teaching of antiquity."
The Blessed Virgin is mentioned in ten of the sixteen conciliar documents. A certain development can be traced from the first document, Sacrosanctum conciliam on the liturgy, 1963, through Unitatis redintegratio and LG (1964), into seven of the ten documents promulgated at the final session (1965). Among these final ones, Mary is invoked as "queen of apostles" in the decrees on the ministry and life of priests and on the missions. The decree on religious life takes from St. Ambrose the advise that Mary's life is a rule of life for all. The decree on the apostolate of the laity proposes Mary as model of spiritual and apostolic life, along the lines of the "Suenens amendment," no. 65 of LG: "The Virgin Mary in her own life lived an example of the maternal love by which all should be fittingly animated who cooperate in the apostolic mission of the Church on behalf of the rebirth of men." In this regard, there springs to mind the Marian apostolic emphasis in the great lay movement of the Legion of Mary.
Chapter eight of LG has many footnotes: to magisterial documents (councils and papal statements, though comparatively few from recent popes), patristic and medieval writings (with emphasis on pre-Reformation Eastern authors). These notes add greatly to understanding the chapter. Itis a regrettable that thise footnotes are difficult to access , as current English versions do not normally fill out and translate them. Thomas Halton did so in The Church (Glazier, Wilmington, DE, 1985) and so did "Marian Studies" (1986).
It is a usually overlooked aspect of the protocol for chaper eight (as for the council documents in general) that references preceded by "cf" are to be distinguished from references without the prefatory "cf."' The distinction is particularly important in biblical citations and allusions. For example, when LG no. 55 speaks of the virginal conception the references to Isaiah and Micah both have "cf," whereas the reference to St. Matthew does not. In effect the Council is advising attentive readers that the two Old Testament allusions do have a bearing on the Church's achieved understanding of the conception of Jesus from his Virgin Mother, but that it is beyond question that St. Matthew is testifying to the mystery. Further, in response to criticisms (from some Catholics a well as Protestants) that the biblical citations are non-contextual, poor exegesis; in chapter eight, as throughout the corpus of Vatican II documents, the Council itself notes that such references are to be read as the Church has interpreted them - so state the constitutions on the liturgy and on revelation.
There are undeniable lacunae in chapter eight. The Council deliberately refrained from taking up many matters about Mary, specifically stating that it did not wish to decide questions not yet fully clarified by theologians. It declined as well to offer "a complete doctrine on Mary." No doubt more might have been said on the exemplarity as well as the intercession of Mary in terms of contemporary circumstances, e.g. women's rights, liberation of the oppressed, the technological world, war and peace, along the lines of the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes. Pope Paul VI was to do this in Marialis cultus (1974), and to explore the aspect of popular religiosity in Evangelii nuntiandi (December 8, 1975).
The Council restored the title "people of God" to describe the Church, but did not develop the equally ancient and profoundly biblical, patristic and liturgical truth of Church as "bride of Christ." In chapter 8 "bride" is sidestepped in the Mary-Church analogy. In handling the sensitive issue of Mary as "Mediatrix," the Council Fathers muted the actual word, as we have seen, and left out altogether such cognates as "Dispensatrix" and "Co-redemptrix." Ecumenical concern helps to explain their attitude, but the hurt many Catholics felt might have been less had the explanation of Mary's role been more in the mode of the liturgy constitution and chapter seven of LG.
Since Cardinal Mercier in the early twenties there had been an ever-increasing interest in Mary as Mediatrix of Grace; many studies had been done on the theme and "Our Lady, Mediatrix of All Graces" was a feast widely kept on May 31st. Prior to the Council, three hundred Fathers had asked for the definition of Mary's mediation of grace.
The Marian chapter of LG opened (no. 55) with an appeal to three sources: Scripture (Gal 4:4), conciliar creed (with footnotes to Nicea-Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon and the important, much-neglected Second Constantinople), and liturgy. This last was taken from the Roman canon (equivalently in the present first eucharistic prayer): joined to Christ the head and in communion with all his saints, the faithful must in the first place (imprimis) reverence the memory "of the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord Jesus Christ." This may be held as at least an oblique instance of the ancient axiom, "Lex orandi, lex credendi."
It is again with the Mother of Jesus in communion with all the saints that chapter eight ends, concluding thereby the entire dogmatic constitution on the Church: "the entire body of the faithful pour forth urgent supplications to the Mother of God and of men that she, who aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers, may now, exalted as she is, above all the angels and saints intercede before her Son in the fellowship of all the saints, until all families of people, whether they be honored with the title of Christian or whether they still do not know the Savior, may be happily gathered together in peace and harmony into the one People of God, for the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity" (no. 69).
In November, 1961, Cardinal Frings gave a lecture at Genoa, preparing for the coming Council. "Our Lady ... is a sign announcing the Church, that holy people made one through the common worship of the liturgy. On the basis of such considerations it may well be the task of the coming decades to integrate the Marian movement into the liturgical (movement) and to subordinate the former to the great theological motives of the latter. The Marian approach would be able to give the liturgically minded something of its heartfelt warmth, of its fervor and feeling, of its readiness for penance and atonement, whereas it would receive from the liturgical movement something of the latter's sacred sobriety and lucid clarity."
The Council attempted to set forth such goals, which were taken up by Paul VI who guided the Council to its conclusion, and then by John Paul II, who has said "chapter eight of LG is in a certain sense a magna charta of the Mariology of our era" (May 2, 1979), and who based his encyclical Redemptoris mater on that magna charta. The goals outlined by Cardinal Frings have been partially achieved in the decades since the Council but much remains to be done.
Fr. Eamon R. Carroll, O. Carm.,S.T.D., is Professor emeritus at Loyola University of Chicago and on the faculty of the International Marian Research Institute, the Marian Library, University of Dayton, Ohio.
This article first appeared in Catholic Dossier, Issues in the Round, vol 2 no.3, May-June 1996.
Archived Theological Reflections
