The dark side of the rainbow: a review of Jeff Chu's "Does Jesus Really Love Me?"

Jeff Chu is well-positioned to explore the intersection of homosexuality and Christianity. As a gay man and the grandson of a Chinese Baptist minister, he understands each world from the inside. “Does Jesus Really Love Me?” is a sensitive and intelligent exploration of the many ways that American Christians have dealt with homosexuality. Chu himself lives the contradiction. In spite of having lost church relationships over his homosexuality (his mother cries for him every night) he has maintained a faith in God in spite of the wounds he carries.

 Chu’s search runs the gamut of Christian reactions. He spends time with members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the most publicly and virulently anti-gay church. Amazingly, he comes to like them as people, even while rejecting their radical stance. He interviews the leadership of Exodus, the group best-known for trying to get gay Christians to stop being gay. At the other end of the spectrum, he speaks with Christians who have resolved the tensions between their faith life and their sex life by rejecting faith altogether. Chu is unique, I thinks, in allowing each of these groups and individuals to speak for themselves, even when what they say conflicts with his own experience.

 Aside from homosexuality, there are few topics that pit a fundamentalist understanding of the Scriptures against present-day lived reality. The variety of responses that Chu chronicles are both amazingly creative as well as heartbreaking. There is the couple (the husband is gay and knows it) who go on trying to have a married relationship even though the wife knows her husband is not physically attracted to her. They love and respect each other, even though something fundamentally important is missing from their lives. There is the gay man who has decided that he will lead a celibate life, even though that leaves him lonely and isolated. And many more. You have to admire how hard these folks want to love God, and who have contorted their lives drastically to allow them to feel worthy of that love. Chu has done a wonderful service by exposing the difficulty and stress that many deal with over the issue of their homosexuality. That he has done so without polemics and without judgment is an achievement in itself.

 “Does Jesus Really Love Me?” is wonderfully-written and heartfelt look at an issues that will be with us for a long, long time.

The return of Elvis Priestly

Slept in today, so attend Mass locally with my wife, with high temps and a steamy church interior. Standing fans were trying to cool things down, fore and aft. Those laminated Mass cards were out, doubling as fans for sweaty middle-schoolers and elderly matrons alike. The priest, too, was sweltering under his alb and chasuble. A quickie service seemed in the cards.

But neither wind nor rain nor noonday heat will stay a minister from exercising his control over his audience. First, before we even got to the Mass-initiating sign of the cross, Father was shouting for someone in the back to close the left hand door at the front of the church. The amplification was lousy, so I don't know whether he was getting a glare from the street of wanted to alter the airflow.

Then, it was time for a few jokes, also undecipherable due to the bad sound.

Come time for the Creed, though, it was time for some cuts. "We'll now do the second shortest creed there is," he said, leading us in the Sign of the Cross. Kind of clever, I suppose, and merciful. At least we mentioned the Trinity. And I wondered what the shortest form of the Creed might be.

All went smoothly until the Lord's Prayer. Now, Catholics have been known, once they get a part of the Mass to themselves, to go ripping through it. And the Lord's Prayer, once introduced by the priest's "and let us now pray in the words our Savior taught us," are intended for the congregation.We take our prayer with gusto, and prayerfully, and in unison, manage to get through the prayer to the end. But not today. Father had his own preferred pace for the prayer. And it was slower than even the slowpokes among the faithful could follow without tripping up.

"Our (beat) Father (beat, beat, beat) who (beat) art (beat, beat) in (beat) Heaven." And on interminably until the end, the faithful bucking and lurching from phrase to phrase, trying not to get ahead of Father. The Lord's Prayer, which is the people's to recite, was hijacked by the presider, who, I suppose thus made its recital more meaningful. (Roll of eyes!)

Finally, at the end of Mass, before the blessing, and in spite of the heat and distress of the assembly, there was time for more humor! Some lame joke about what was the smelliest part of the church -- the pew! At that point, not needing to be held captive to more of this butt-numbing stand-up act, we bolted.

It's truly dangerous to an adult's sanity to put a microphone in the hands of a ten year old. Between the feedback and the popping of Ps and the overloud speech, its an assault on the eardrums. But a mike in the hands of an old priest is far more annoying. Catholics, having been trained to take the priest's lead in all things, are nearly helpless in the face of a prelate with a need to perform. Priests, especially those with an arrogant and unsocial streak, must love to hold their congregations in place, holding them for another two minutes before releasing them. Maybe they actually think they are interesting. Maybe they are just lonely and need the human interaction, however pitiful or pathological.

All well and good, but do us the courtesy of not cutting out pieces of the Mass to make time for your "routine."

Prayer for the World

Prayer for the world
by Rabbi Harold Kushner

Let the rain come and wash away
the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds
held and nurtured over generations.
... Let the rain wash away the memory
of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and
fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us
wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that
we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels,
beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness
of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and
feel the sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun
be so strong that we will see all
people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by rain,
bring forth flowers
to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts
to reach upward to heaven.

Amen.

Angels of the Boston Marathon Bombing

Sometimes, I am amazed by the beauty of the human soul. I just ran across two stories from the April 15th bombing at the Boston Marathon that took my breath away.

At the site of the second bombing, in front of the Forum Restaurant on Boylston St., bystanders and first responders worked frantically to save the lives of the injured. One man took off his belt to stop the bleeding from 10-year-old Martin Richard. Nearby, BU student Lu Linzhi lay mortally wounded. At some point, it was clear that both had expired from their wounds. But crime scene protocol dictated that the bodies be left as evidence, to the horor of family and friends. At this point, unimaginable tragedy was transmuted into nobility:

The Richard family also paid tribute to the several officers who stood guard over Martin’s body on Boylston Street after the bombing. The bodies of Martin and Lu Lingzhi ­remained on the site until about 2 a.m. the following day while officers gathered evidence and preserved the crime scene, said a police official.

The officers covered the bodies with tablecloths from restaurants. Bill Richard was distraught at the thought of leaving his son there, but officers offered to watch over him, said the source. “Those officers will never know how comforting that was in our very darkest hour,” the family said.

Boston police Captain Frank Armstrong was one of those who stood vigil.

“There were several officers who stood watch over Lingzhi and Martin throughout the night to ensure they were never left alone out of respect for both them and their grieving families,” Armstrong said. “If these actions brought any measure of solace to the Lu and Richards family, we were honored by their sacrifice to have done so.”

A day which began in wanton killing and mutilation ended in respect and honor. It is mind-boggling to belong to species capable of such brutality and such grace.

The second story involves the first bombing scene, near Marathon Sports, just past the marathon's finish line. Here were better-documented scenes of carnage and bloodshed, of stunned disbelief and limb-shattering injury.  But here, too, was healing. Three dancers from the Paulist Center performed a liturgical dance on the one month anniversary of the bombing.

Then, at 2:50 p.m., the time when two homemade bombs detonated here April 15, a remembrance graced the sidewalk. Three dancers from the Paulist Center, a Catholic organization on Park Street, used the emotive language of movement to acknowledge the area’s lingering grief while also reclaiming the space.

“We wanted to offer a blessing at the spot,” said Christine Monterio, director of dance at the Paulist Center. “It’s a very natural response for all of us.”

Think what you will about liturgical dance. But the impulse to reclaim a piece of bloodied ground from the life-denying forces of fear was another moment of grace and beauty -- not by obliterating images of pain and loss, but transforming them into bearable memory.

For these moments of truth, beauty and grace, we pray to the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Back door for the gay lobby?

An old joke:
Did you hear about the gay Pope? He thought he was infallible, but he was simply divine!

A new limerick:

     The pope has a nifty new hobby,
     Which the Curia sniffs is too snobby.
     With silks and organza
     (Holy extravaganza!) 
     He's refurbing St. Peter's gay lobby!

Pope Francis's recent off-the-cuff remark about the Vatican's "gay lobby" has me wondering whether the pontiff was just musing idly on his city-state's problems or was harking back to an era when there was a sodomite under every pew.

Francis has been known for his eye-popping spontaneous remarks. He got the atheists excited that they might go to heaven, a rumor quickly walked back by the ever-so-theologically-correct paradise-poopers at the Curia. But the pope's gay lobby comment, while curious, still lingers in the ether, like a whiff of clove cigarette smoke.

The pope has reason to wonder about gays at the Vatican:

Gay priests in the Vatican are not exactly a new revelation. Allegations of a powerful “gay lobby” in the Vatican’s governing body known as the Roman Curia have been floating around Rome for years. There have been ample examples of priests in compromising positions dating back to 2010 when Carmello Abbate, an undercover reporter for Panorama magazine, caught priests strutting around in panties and fornicating on church property with a hidden camera. He painted a shocking portrait of how priests in Rome blatantly disobey their vows of celibacy, complete with rumors of steamy Turkish baths where top-ranking cardinals and prelates met up for some not-so-holy horseplay.

A gay churchman is a target for  blackmailers, of course. But these fellas seem to have gone a little over the top in their frolics. If a priest is supposed to keep it in his pants, that should go for hetero and homosexual priests, am I right?

More worrisome to me than gay sex among priests though is the atmosphere of hypocrisy that it breeds. If priests (gay or no) are preaching abstinence and continence to their flocks, all the while flaunting their naughty bits to each other, there is a problem. Come clean, padres: either drop the celibacy charade or man up and lead the life of prayer and self-abnegation that you promote!

The secrecy of sex among prelates means that we might be failing to grapple honestly with the burdens that we are asking our pastors to bear. Maybe it's time for all of our priests to come out of the closet and bare the sexuality as well as their souls.

Panties optional.

Son of Man of Steel

I chuckled (discretely, to myself) when I heard that Warner Brothers has been marketing its new Man of Steel movie to Christian churches. The film plays up the similarities between Clark Kent/Superman, and that other super guy we like to call...Jesus. Both were sent by their fathers in heaven to save the world. Both "came out" at age 33. Both had super powers and had adoptive parents. And (one not picked up by most news sources) both have names that include the name of God. "Yeshua" (Jesus's real name) mean "Yah(weh) saves." Kal-El (Superman's birth name) shares a consonant with various Judaic terms for God, including the El-Shaddai (God Almighty) and Elyon (God Most High). It's the same El, by the way, that shows up in Micha-el ("who is like God?"), Garbri-el ("God is my strength") and Ariel ("lion of God").

To hear some of the reviews of Man of Steel, Clark and Jesus share another trait: they both have had really terrible movies made about their lives.

I wonder how many pastors will fall for the promotions and drag their congregations to the new film. They might wonder about the parallels with the Bible when they see Superman fight Zod, wiping out parts of Metropolis in the process. But that's creative license, I guess. Read Revelations if you want to see some real destruction!

Speaking of terrible movies about Jesus, the last time pastors were tagged to bring their flocks to the flicks was for Mel Gibson's execrable The Passion of Christ. All you needed was some heavy promo that the film was super authentic, and a fake plug from the Pope that "it is as it was" (like he would know) and you had the faithful queueing up by the busloads for 3 hours of gruesomeness that not was nasty, but not terribly biblical to boot. Flipping Jesus's cross over, with him on it? Really?

Anyway, at least Man of Steel is unlikely to permanently burn the theory of sacrificial atonement into the back of your eyeballs. And for that, we give thanks.

Pass the kryptonite, will ya?

LOLing Christ?

True story: My aunt G----- (an honorific -- she was my Mom's high-school classmate) tells a story about a print of the Laughing Christ that she had in her home. Laughing Christ was a sketch of a jolly Jesus, in the midst of an unrestrained belly laugh, that was popular in the 1960s. My grandmother, a prim and Yankeefied lady, who was very devout, noticed the picture on a visit, and was miffed. "I don't think he was laughing when they nailed him to the Cross!" she huffed.

And so are religious culture wars carried on.

Lots of Christians love the idea of a laughing (at least smiling) Christ. A smiling Savior is is more attractive than a beaten and bloody one. for sure. For starters, he doesn't give kids nightmares. And As George Carlin (playing Cardinal Glick in Dogma) claimed, he doesn't "give us the willies."

True dat. Crucifixion and Christ on the Cross have featured in more than their fair share of my nightmares.

But did Jesus laugh? Was he a happy guy? A great partier?

The gospels do give us a few details about Jesus's emotional life.

Anger: Jesus often got mad at the scribes, lawyers and Pharisees who came to trick him. He also got mad once at a man who wanted a healing -- for doubting that he could heal him! He rebuked his disciple Peter and called him Satan. Ouch!

Pity: Jesus felt moved to pity by the hunger of the crowds who came to the wilderness to hear him preach. Everybody got a free in-flight meal.

Love: he loved the rich young man who wanted to become a follower. He had a "disciple whom he loved" in John's gospel.

Grief: Jesus wept when he met the sister of his newly-deceased (and soon-to-be-raised) friend Lazarus.

Longing: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, ... how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings...."

Terror: a free interpretation of "My heart is sorrowful unto death" that described his feeling in Gethsemane.

Pain/despair: He cried out while on the Cross -- "God, why have you forsaken me?" "And with a loud cry, he breathed his last."

But no laughter. Not even a smile. Or a grin. Or a giggle.

Does that mean Jesus never laughed? Not necessarily. Some of his stories were hilarious. Like the Pharisee stumbling around with a log in his eye. Or the judge who was awakened by a persistent widow. His first sign, at Cana, was at a wedding where the guests had drunk the bar dry. His most common images of the Kingdom were of a wedding feast. He was known for his table fellowship -- he ate at the home of Levi the tax collector and at the home of Simon the Pharisee. He was called a glutton and a friend of drunkards. Though the Last Supper was no party.

But could Jesus have engaged in all this feasting, celebration and joyful imagery and still have been very serious?

No doubt.

He was hunted from his first days in the cradle. People suggested that he was illegitimate. They laid traps for him, at a time when brutal occupiers ruled Judea, with their summary and brutal means of punishing rule-breakers. Then, there was his mission. The gospels show Jesus in a huge hurry to turn the people of Israel from their sins before God turned the world upside down. To Jesus, to be saved was not a theological nicety, but a literal salvation from wrath to come, and to come in short order.

Did such a Jesus smile as he foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, the taking of every other person, and his own death?

This side of Paradise, we won't know for sure. Perhaps it's best to keep both Jesuses in our spiritual arsenal. The smiling Jesus who loves and accepts. And the harried/hurried Jesus who challenges and provokes.

Redemption tales from the launderette

The laundromat is a great place to talk theology. This weekend, my son and I were talking about redemption.

I wouldn't be the Cranky Catholic if I didn't have a different take on things, and redemption is no different. Whats does redemption mean, and how do I get one?

Redemption means to buy back. In the old days, people received S&H Green stamps when they made a purchase. Buy ten bucks worth of groceries, and you got (say) 10 green stamps. When they got home, people would stick the green stamps into books. When the book was full, you'd start another one. When you had a stack of them, you could redeem the stamps for an item from the S&H catalog. 10 books might get you a desk lamp. 20 might get you a decorative plate.

But the idea was that you had to give something up to get something.

Redemption in the religious sense has  been likened to this kind of buy-back scenario. It was put into easy-to-understand by some Christians when they taught that God had to buy back the human race from the Devil. Through some cosmic catastrophe, the Devil had captured us and was holding us hostage. I guess in his Fortress of Evil Solitude. Instead of the Devil getting to kill us all spiritually, God sent Jesus in a kind of prisoner exchange. Thinking that he now had God in his power, the Devil got Jesus crucified and buried. But old Scratch was outwitted when Jesus was raised from the dead, wrecking the Fortress of Evil Solitude on the ways out and freeing pious souls who had already been trapped in Hell.

It would make for a terrific Hollywood blockbuster.

If that scenario is too literal for your taste, there's Saint Anselm's theory of redemption, written in the 11th century, during the feudal era, lords-and-serfs times, which goes like this. God is divine. His creations, including humans, are mortal. There is an enormous difference in cosmic value between infinite divinity and finite creation. When God created Adam and Eve, all was well until they ate the apple. Their disobedience was not just another mid-afternoon lark, easily forgiven. It was a crime of cosmic proportions, committed by a mortal against divinity. In the same way that a crime of a feudal serf against his lord would merit disproportional punishment, so would the outrage of humanity's act of  lèse majesté have out-of-this-world consequences. God's honor, like that of a serf against his lord, could not be repaid in kind, because God's honor was beyond the ability of humanity to repay.

There was only one way that a slight against a divinity could be assuaged. And that was by an act of another divinity. This might be complicated in a strictly monotheistic universe, but Christianity worshiped a triune God. So, in his mercy and goodness, God sent his own son to Earth, to repay the hurt done to his honor. Jesus stood in for us, and took the executioner's bullet that we deserved. His death, because he was God, satisfied the injury done to God's honor, and restored the relationship that had been broken between God and humanity.

And so, things have stood for the last thousand years.

But is this still a tenable explanation for the purpose of Jesus's life? Was God really so mad at us that our relationship was broken and needed fixing? Are there ways to understand Jesus's death and resurrection that don't rely on hostage taking or obsolete feudal honor codes for their explanation?

How about this.

The human relationship with God has been troubled from the start by humanity's warped carnal and moral instincts. We eat too much, steal too much, don't care for each other, set up power structures that exclude, rob and punish. We are good to our friends and vile to our enemies. We fight, cheat, hurt, maim and rape. God has been working with us from the beginning to straighten us out. He sent a flood to wipe out the worst offenders; used his power to free his enslaved people from oppression; chastised them with 70 years of exile; sent prophets to kvetch about the lack of justice and righteousness. Nothing much worked over the long term.

Worse still, humans built social structures that concentrated power in the hands of the most brutal and venal among them. They used fear and pain to cause humans to worship the right gods and to honor the most powerful and ruthless. God needed to demonstrate in a definite way that he did not approve of the situation; that the gods being worshipped contained none of his holy and merciful self.

So he sent Jesus, begotten of his own substance, to live an exemplary life. The life that God would live if he were human. The life that all humans should yearn to live. He was born poor, so that he would have no pedigree that other humans could admire. He was born powerless, so that others might not love him for his great might. He was born ordinary, so that the ordinary might see in him a fellow and a brother. This Jesus lived our lives, sanctifying our ordinary lives by experiencing them. He sanctified meals and weddings by being present at them. He sanctified ordinary food--bread, wine and fish--by multiplying them. Plain old bread and wine, he made into his own essence. He spoke about hope, love, truth, forgiveness and peace. He sanctified and called blessed those that society deprived of value and livelihood and honor and hope. And when he was finally caught and stopped  by those who deal out pain and dying, he sanctified fear, pain, shame and death, taking away their power to coerce and control human lives.

He found a way to destroy death, not by running away from it, but by running toward it. The way he found, the trapdoor in the edifice of empire, led to his resurrection. And it will lead to ours. Our embrace of what others call shameful and foolish will lead to eternal life. Why? Because God, when he had the chance to live our lives, lived it that way.

It's sad that this example of divine goodness and mercy has been turned into an exclusive club. The way that Christ showed us is not limited to those who belong to a formal church or to those who proclaim magic words about him. It is open to all of good will who stand for truth, love and hope, and who leave the world a more peaceful and loving place than they found it.

Will this story wash? Maye you need to let it run through another cycle.

The Pope and the Good Atheists

Pope Francis

A lot of people took hope in the pope's recent comments about atheists and redemption:

The pope said, "the possibility of doing good is something we all have" as individuals created in the image and likeness of God. All people are called to do good and not evil, the pope said. Some would object, "'but, Father, he isn't Catholic so he can't do good.' Yes, he can. He must."

The idea that others cannot really be good and do good in the world creates "a wall that leads to war and to something that historically some people have thought: that we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that one can kill in God's name is blasphemy."

"The Lord has redeemed us all with the blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone," he said. Some may ask, "'Father, even the atheists?' Them, too. Everyone."

The commandment to do good and avoid evil is something that binds all human beings, he said, and it is "a beautiful path to peace."

There was widespread feeling among news organizations that the pope had opened the gates of heaven to atheists. The headlines blared: "Heaven for atheists? Pope sparks debate" (CNN); "Pope Francis Says Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics" (Huffingtion Post) and "Pope Francis: Atheists are all right!" (Salon). Later, "The Vatican," that sad outpost of clerical party poopers, walked back the pope's remarks.

"The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, has corrected his boss, saying those who know about the Catholic Church "cannot be saved" if they "refuse to enter her or remain in her."

Well, that settles that! Or does it?

It's unclear what exactly the pope meant when he spoke about redemption. According to A Concise Dictionary of Theology,God has been in the redemption biz throughout his relationship with human beings. Saving the Israelites from slavery and later delivering them from bondage in Babylon are the two primary OT example of God's redemptive work. In the New Testament, redemption means that "through his death and resurrection, Christ delivered us from the power of sin and evil." Is that what the pope meant? That atheists are also free from the power of sin and evil, and are liberated to do good, even if they do not recognize the source of their liberation?

It's still unclear whether the pope meant something theologically miserly like "Christ died for the sins of all, even atheists, though they will go to hell; unless they believe in Him," or the real possibility that by answering the inner calling to goodness, atheists have done the equivalent of signing on with God and Jesus. If I were the pope, I would put some lay-about theologians to work figuring out non-Catholics can achieve heaven. Let them whore away at something useful for a change. The sound you hear is of theologians banging their heads against 2000 years  of exclusionary theology.

In the meantime, I would love it if Catholics and other Christians would liberate themselves from overly-harsh interpretations of what it takes to get to heaven. Membership on this or that branch of Christianity seems too clubby for use by an all-holy and beneficent God. That approach just leads to an exclusivist approach that makes those on the inside suspicious and unloving toward of those on the outside. It leads to the religious wars that have marred our history. Almost as bad, it makes the insiders nice to outsiders, but only as a means to drag them away from the sinful cultures and into ours. Catholic missionaries used to scour newly-discovered lands for pagans they could convert. A Catholic friend of mine used to go door-to-door, pushing membership in the Legion of Mary. Other Christians pressure their friends and neighbors to confess that Jesus is their Lord and Savior. As if membership in a church or a single act of fidelity were enough to get God to issue them their Golden Gate ticket.

Pope Francis's comments, even if he did not means them as they were widely understood, might be the Holy Spirit working to make the Church a more welcoming place. It's not only Freudians who recognize slips as the voice of a deeper reality! At the very least, the pope's words should create an opening for Catholics to appreciate the efforts of atheists who do good in this world. All based on Christ's words, which the pope quoted:

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us." (Mark 9:39)

Jesus speaks of a very wide doorway for those who are considered to be his: all who do good. Even if they are not formally on the same team. I would encourage Pope Francis to steer us back to this open and inclusive interpretation. As he said, though we may not all believe the same things in the same way, we can meet wherever there is an opportunity to do good. It is doing good that puts us on Jesus's team, not being on Jesus's team that allows us to do good.

Mary, did you know?

 

Caution: spoilers ahead.

You can write a book that reimagines the story of a beloved hero or heroine, that turns myths about them on their head, and yet provides deeper insights into their character. Then again, you can write a book that merely inverts everything that you know about such a character, turns their virtues into failings and teaches us nothing about them. “Testament of Mary” belongs in the latter category.

In TToM, Colm Toibin gives us a scant 81 pages that are long on Mary’s self-pitying reflections about her life, short on insights about her and Jesus, dismissive about Jesus’s mission and full of bizarre details and anachronisms. Toibin’s conceit is that Mary was traumatized by the crucifixion of her son. No doubt. But since there is no resurrection in his book, just followers claiming one, there is little to solace her grief and pain. She inhabits Ephesus, lonely among those who do not speak her language, enduring visits by her male keepers, and loitering around pagan temples. Mostly, she mopes and complains, knowing that her real and ordinary life is being transformed by those who want to make her son into something she knows he was not.

The Jesus that Mary describes in TToM is a miracle worker, to be sure. He raises the dead, changes water to wine and walks on water. But his mother is unimpressed. To her, Jesus is a pompous jerk who likes to talk, “his voice all false and his tone all stilted, and I could not bear to hear him.” He pals around with rabble – “a group of misfits, who were only children like himself, or men without fathers, or men who could not look a woman in the eye. Men who were seen smiling to themselves, or who had grown old when they were still young.” His teaching are the late-night ramblings of fools. “When my son would insist on silence and begin to address them as though they were a crowd.” This Mary not only seems to hate what happened to Jesus, but seems to hate her son as well.

Unbelievebly, she prays to the many-breasted goddess Artemis, and has a silver idol of her in her living quarters. Her male guardians – it sounds like John and Luke – keep trying to foist their theological beliefs about Jesus on her. She will have none of it. In spite of her, they write a gospel about Jesus that is full of lies. She scoffs at their claims that by his death he saved the world. “When you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.” Holy Mother of God, indeed!

With so much material on the market about the world of 1^st century Israel, Toibin’s errors and anachronisms are unforgiveable. His homes have kitchens, at a time when food preparation was an outdoor activity. Lazarus is buried in the ground, not in a rock tomb. To Toibin, a caravanserai is a moving group of travelers, when in actuality it is a hostel for travelers. Bizarrely, he has Christ pushing and pulling his cross down the street in an hour-long procession to Golgotha. His trial of Jesus is pre-staged, with “everyone” knowing how it will play out days before the arrest. And the idea of Mary, a devout Jew, praying to an idol is just ludicrous. At the very least, it demands an explanation that never came.

Any interest in “The Testament of Mary” is a testament to the iconoclastic appetite of moderns to deal with the religion by rejecting everything about it. Christian stories are made tame and dismissable by claiming, without evidence or thought, that they are based on lies. There is no God, Jesus was just another misguided religious fanatic and the Church is only a place for pedophiles and pinheads. This I know, for Old Mary told us so.

Luckily, dealing with the Christian scriptures is not a binary exercise – you don’t have to accept them at face value or reject them wholesale. Mary can be an inspiring and even graced figure while allowing some poetic and symbolic latitude to the Bible’s and the Church’s otherworldly depiction of her. Toibin may see himself as adding to the conversation about Mary. But his book betrays a desire to discredit her, the son she bore and the Church that grew around his memory and continued presence in the lives of believers.