The Immaculate Conception of the BVM

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Along with the Assumption of Mary, it is one of the more recently created holy days of obligation thanks to the inflammability of the Pope, itself a relatively recent attribute..

As one who has been through the Catholic school system (grades 2-12), I have been exposed to the rapidly expanding role of the Mother of God in Catholicism. There is a word for this: Mariolatry (Mary + Idolatry). It didn’t help that the priests who taught me at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio, belonged to a religious order called the Society of Mary. Just to make things more confusing, there were two Societies of Mary (both denoted with an S.M. after the priest’s name), the Marianists and the Marists. Our order were the Marists.

In addition to all the attributes of Mary, and the special devotions to her held by the Legion of Mary, to which I did not belong, there were a whole host of saints. Our school was named after St. Peter Chanel, a French Marist missionary who was martyred for his faith in Polynesia (on the island of Futuna) and eaten by cannibals—the only saint known to have suffered such a fate.

New saints are being created all the time. Just this year, Benedict XVI elevated Kateri Tekakwitha, an Indian maiden, to sainthood. Here she is:

St. Kateri Tekakwitha

Just so she doesn’t feel jealous, some new attributes for the Blessed Virgin Mary are even now being dreamed up by the Sacred Consistory of Adventitious Marian Attributes (SCOAMA) in the Vatican, including the ability to solve Rubik’s Cube puzzles in less than two minutes, miraculously finding parking places directly in front of whatever her destination may be, and being able to keep her girlish figure for over two millennia.

That reminds me of my friend Alain Silver, who was once offered a relic in Europe, nothing other than a piece of wood from the Blessed Virgin’s boat. Now I do not recall any tales from the Bible about Mary’s boating proclivities, but it could be true! 

Catholicism sometimes seems as cluttered as the Hindu or Graeco-Roman Pantheon, but I do not object to it. There are many aspects of Catholicism about which I feel nostalgic, though the statutory rape of altar boys and attempts to dictate what is and what is not sinful regarding human sexuality are not among them. But when I get troubled and confused, I simply return to my special devotion to the Sacred Multiplicity of the BVM.