JoltBlog

It must have been a Holy Day of Obligation. That would explain why we'd gone across town to attend Holy Cross with Mary instead of going to our own church, St. Patrick's. I can speculate that it was a day off, and after Mass they were going to a sale at Robeson's.

The world of a small child is closely confined in church. I could barely see over the back of the pew without standing on a kneeler. There was nothing for me to do. My mother and aunt were standing and kneeling and sitting down according to no rhythm I could comprehend. I owned a ball point pen that had three points you could slide down--red, green, and blue--and sitting down backwards on the kneeler I used our pew as a desk and began to color the cross on the cover of the church bulletin.

After Mass was over and we were in the car and my mother and Mary lit up their cigarettes, I asked, "Why doesn't God want to look at you?"

"Because he wants to keep an eye on you," my mother said. I hated answers like that. My Uncle Bob had an infuriating response for every question: "It's to make little boys like you ask questions."

One might gather God has never wanted to look at women. They are an offense to his eyes. He doesn't want to see them on the altars of his churches. He doesn't want them fooling with his sacraments. His son never married one. For the mother of his son, he provided a virgin who had never employed her womanly organs for the purpose of procreation. We know Mary grew large with child and presumably gave birth in the usual way, although whether giving birth to the son of God was easy or difficult for her is not recorded by the Evangelists, who were all men, as were all twelve of the Apostles.

One woman Jesus seems to have been close to, apart from his mother, was Mary Magdalene. As we all know, she was a prostitute, and Jesus cleansed her of her sin. She washed and dried his feet with her hair before or after the cleansing. She accompanied Jesus on his travels, and was accorded the honor of being the first to see him after his Resurrection. As a follower she was therefore a disciple, but not one of the Twelve Apostles.

The fact is, there's not one word in Scripture to support the notion that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. We are told that Jesus cleansed her of seven demons. One of the demons was possibly assumed to be prostitution by men who later interpreted the gospels, because her sexuality itself stirred unease in them. Patriarchal logic at work: If Magdalene was possessed by demons, one of them must have been sexual, and since she was not married she must have been a prostitute.

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