The walk of dark faith. . . Marian apologetics

The devotion to Mary is an invitation to the dry, dark faith of our Blessed Mother - the faith that won her the singular grace of becoming the Mother of Jesus Christ.

Venerated so highly by saints and mystics, the Blessed Virgin is in fact the great hidden gem of the Christian faith: over the centuries, she has truly tended to elude the grasp of the wise and scholarly, even as she has won the affection of legions of childlike devotees.

Take, for instance, the view of Mary as Queen of Heaven, her identity being that of the woman in Revelation 12:1-6, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. Apparently, it wasn't until the late 4th century that a single scholar of St. John's apocalyptic writings identified the woman as the Virgin Mary: then, as now, the vast majority of commentators identify the woman as the Church, or the nation of Israel. Granted, Revelation wasn't included in the sacred canon until the 5th century, and Mary herself wasn't officially declared Mother of God or God-bearer until the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, but it's really striking that ancient scholars were rather slow to attach to Mary the singular centrality of her role in salvation history that much later medieval Christians took for granted.

Similarly with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: though it was a long-established item of faith for rank-and-file believers for generations, even throughout the High Middle Ages it wasn't accepted by such strong devotees to Mary as St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas. Throughout those centuries, it was decidedly the minority view of learned Catholic minds: no surprise, then, that it wasn't until 1854 that it officially became dogma.

What does this seem to illustrate? Like the nature of her faith in God, Mary's true significance to the Church is far more a matter of childlike trust than logical sense. All devotees to Mary who wish to spread the devotion to her should recognize this: the odds are probably stacked up against us in the realm of apologetics, because if we're honest with the history of the interpretation of scripture as concerns Mary, we'll find that even Catholics can take much issue with certain high views and doctrines of her. We who wish to defend such high Mariologies must be prepared to cling to the lowest common denominator: so long as scripture can be demonstrated to not contradict what we believe about our Mother, the rest is a matter of pure, dark faith for us.

There's a certain beauty to this: this walk of dark faith is a very dark walk, indeed!