Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Sep 09, 2024 10:53 pm
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 1:57 pm
And then the Catholics have Mary, and even if she isn't officially number four, a lot of people, especially female Catholics pray to here, getting the sense she's more forgiving and empathetic.
A slight correction, from a traditional Catholic perspective. Mary, the vessel through which Christ entered the world on the salvific mission, is far more essential to the Catholic metaphysical picture than she would appear to those examining the *picture* from the outside.
So far ths fits with what I was saying,.
She represents a figure, originally human, who rose to a heavenly stature in the course of her earthly life. She is never seen as being on a plane equal to God (or Jesus) and yet she is Queen of the Angels and has a tremendous amount of spiritual power.
She may not be '
seen' as this, but she is clearly felt as this, unofficially, by many Catholics, especially women, who often turn to her hoping that perhaps there they will find a more forgiving compassionate holy firgue, one that might even intercede where the male figures might be more likely to follow the rule of diving law. I acknowledge that her position officially is not on a par with the Father, Son and somewhat ambigiously gendered HS, which is why I said she wasn't officially there. But if I look at how people behave in their lives and focus also on which humans, I see her as more important to women and as having taken on an unofficial deity status.
And her place has grown in importance over time. She's been on her way up for a long time, even how she is seen, but certainly in how she is related to also. There was some Vatican Council decision fairly recently - in church history terms - that reduced her status in the norther hemisphere, but she continues to go up in importants in the south where Catholicism is thriving.
And Marian organizations have a tendency to have more female than male members. Woman are also aimed at Mary by the Church as a role model, so a special relationship is promoted and this likely leads to more focus on her by women, especially in an intercessionary role, given here special qualities.
It is really not so that only Catholic women, or especially Catholic women, turn to Mary.
Well, since I never said only, there was no need to bring that up.
In fact Mary, and the devotion of the Rosary, became and is a substantial aspect of the Catholic liturgy. All the major Church figures -- saints and fathers -- all stress that devotion to Mary is the *best* route to relationship with Jesus.
Nevertheless, on the ground, in reality, not in the abstract and officially, women are more likely to appeal to Mary than men. And, this, of course, makes sense. They can feel understood by her and also more understandible. More identifiable with. Just as Catholics in general as less likely to appeal to the hard to get a handle on Holy Spirit when in dark times, than the others.
Yet it is true that beside the triune concept of Father, Son (Avatar) and Holy Ghost (a free-wheeling transformative spiritual power) Mary represents a deeply feminine spiritual power or, perhaps one could say, an aspect of the Deity representing the depth of mercy.
Naturally, Catholics visualize these *persons* as real entities and not as concepts. But since our bent is "philosophical distance" and trying to organize the way we talk about the ineffable in coherent terms that satisfy our mental needs, we look at these verbal and visual descriptions through a peculiarly analytical lens.
I'm not sure who 'we' is in the above, but I tend, regardless of context, to be interested i what people actually do and how they practice their religion. I can certainly look at the official positions also, but here I think the lack of official deity that is purely female, has led to a balancing by the members of the church and Mary has a stature especially for women that approaches a defacto deity status.
