Catholics (RCC) are in an uproar over Playboy’s Mexican edition featuring Argentinean model Maria Florencia Onor draped in a white head cover that trails down her body, revealing a portion of her left breast. Her hands pantomime a mother holding her infant to her breast. The headline, “Te adoramos, Maria,” means “We love you, Maria.”

Father Albert Cutie told CNN’s Rick Sanchez, also a Catholic:

“Listen, there’s no doubt that she’s a beautiful woman. But a stained-glass window and the veil that looks like that, certainly there’s a reference to Mary. Whoever tells you there isn’t is simply being hypocritical or not very honest….I think that they timed it not only with the Virgin of Guadalupe…but also with the month of December. How many nativity scenes are out there this time of the year? How many times is Mary a central figure in this whole celebration? And this is offensive. This is very offensive. It’s blasphemous.”

I wish Playboy had admitted the obvious connection to Mother Mary. Why apologize? As Esther Cepeda wrote:

“Those crazzzzy Mexicans, putting the sacred Virgen on the cover! ‘Ol Lupe made Miss December – now there’s a novel way to say Feliz Navidad!…Playboy: ignore the naysayers and save us from the ridiculous excuses. If you’re going to give the Mexican people an alternative to getting their religious miracle on, just own it….Dude, you put a heavenly hottie on the cover to generate buzz and you got it – don’t act like it’s all some cosmic coincidence that the puritans among us took it to mean that if you buy the magazine you can pretend you’re Juan Diego sneeking a peek at what’s under the Virgen madre’s hood. Ay dios mio!”

Setting aside the disputed legends of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Cutie’s statements are still troubling. His assumption that the RCC controls the imagery of Mother Mary should not be allowed to stand. The RCC does not own Mother Mary, her son, Mary Magdalene or any other Biblical figure. Their insistence upon Mother Mary’s recognition as nothing more than an asexual virgin — a myth that first appeared nine decades after his birth — has denied her greatness and harmed women the world over.

Why is a woman’s breast, made for feeding her child, “blasphemous” when related to Mother Mary, especially when the church once promoted her image as a nursing mother? Before the cross of death became the symbol for their church, Mary’s exposed, life-giving breasts were the desired symbols of the RCC. By ignoring that reality, Cutie is practicing the very hypocrisy he condemns.

According to the Louvre, where it now hangs, “[Madonna with the Green Cushion] is one of Andrea Solario’s masterpieces…It is not known who commissioned the work, but in the 17th century it was found in the Cordeliers convent in Blois, where Marie de Médicis purchased it for a large sum.”

In God’s Love, Mother’s Milk, Margaret R. Miles, Dean of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, discussed the impact of her portrayal as the nurturing mother and the gradual change that led to the sexualization of a woman’s breast:

“Consider, however, another visual expression and presentation of God’s love for humanity. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of late medieval and Renaissance paintings and sculptures depict the Virgin Mary with one breast exposed as she is nursing or preparing to nurse the infant Christ. The origins of the image are disputed, but whatever its origins, depictions of the lactating Virgin acquired new meaning and new urgency in mid-14th-century Tuscany. In communities under siege from plague, wars and malnutrition, the Virgin’s breast was a symbol of God’s loving provision of life, the nourishment and care that sustain life, and the salvation that promises eternal life.

“In many of these paintings of the nursing Virgin, Christ twists around to gaze at the viewer, making eye contact that establishes the viewer’s identification with Christ and invites the viewer to share the nourishment of the Virgin’s breast….What happened to the nursing Virgin as symbol of God’s loving provision for humanity? The short answer is that changes in society and religion in early modern Western Europe secularized the breast. In the 15th and 16th centuries, representations of an exposed breast became increasingly realistic. No longer the cone-shaped appendage that emerged at shoulder height from a slit in the Virgin Mary’s garment, her breast now resembled the engorged nursing breast.

“Moreover, by the end of the 15th century, exposed breasts were no longer exhibited exclusively in maternal contexts. Mary Magdalene’s naked breasts signified her penitence, extending the meanings of the religious breast…By the 16th century, paintings of the nourishing breast of the Virgin and Mary Magdalene’s penitent breasts were only two among many contexts in which breasts were seen in art….By 1750 the public meaning of naked breasts was large ly medical or erotic. I have not been able to find a single religious image of the breast painted after 1750. By that time, it was impossible to symbolize God’s love by depicting a nursing Virgin.”

Mary Magdalene Erhart, Gregor

Many of the artists who portrayed Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene either partially or fully nude were sponsored by RCC officials. Pope Gregory XV was the patron of Giovanni Francesco Barbieri who painted Magdalene in the Desert (1622)

Titian used a strong erotic presence in his interpretation of Mary Magdalene, who has tears in her eyes as she gazes up to heaven.

Gregor Erhart’s nude statue of St. Mary Magdalen (1510) was suspended from the vault of the church of St. Mary Magdalen in the Dominican convent of Augsburg.

Alexandra, in Seeing the Spiritual in the Sensual provides an alternative explanation for the change in artistic portrayals.

“There is one word that describes these images better than “devotional,” and that’s “titillating.” The Magdalen became an excuse to portray the female form without the inappropriateness of a common nude. But it wasn’t just about showing naked women. The late 16th century was the time of the Reformation, when the Catholic church was losing the faithful to the new Protestant faiths right and left. The Counter-Reformation sought to bring them back any way they could, and one way was by selling sex along with piety. Dramatic, often scandalous images cropped up. Some of the first “shock” art appeared at this time, as artists experimented with new and dramatic ideas and images. While some found this new art offensive, most were drawn to the power of the imagery.”

Mary Magdalene by Titian

If the RCC used nude paintings and statues to lure people, isn’t it duplicitous to scream “blasphemy” when Playboy does the same? The Playboy photo certainly isn’t lewd, especially in comparison to Renaissance portrayals of Mary Magdalene, which the RCC proudly displays. The idea of Mother Mary with her breast exposed to nurse her baby isn’t new either. And that’s the crux of the problem. The two most powerful women in Yeshua’s life were reduced to a falsified sexual status by sex-phobic early Christian fathers. Both deserve to be liberated. We deserve their rightful recognition.

Women are still suffering the repercussions caused by changing their breasts from a symbol of God’s love to a sexual display for titillation. Miles called for women to reclaim their breasts as spiritual imagery as a way to reclaim respect for our bodies:

…the value of the nursing breast as a symbol of God’s provision might need to be reconsidered in our own time, a time in which the technological capacity for, and interest in, objectifying women’s bodies contributes to eating disorders among young women as well as to rape. Understanding the complex social, religious and technological factors that resulted in the eclipse of the nursing Virgin could prepare the way for a critical recovery of this symbol. In societies in which violence is rampant on the street and in the media, the nursing Virgin can perhaps communicate God’s love to people in a way that a violent image, the image of one more sacrificial victim, cannot.

But the changes need to reach further than our breasts. By defining both Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene via their sexual status, we are also denied our right to fully enjoy our sexuality. Like the asexual virgin, Mary Magdalene’s “penitent sinner” or “prostitute” imagery is false. Both were revered leaders in Yeshua’s ministry. Both were dynamic, exicing women whose complete lives are inspirational.

Neither of these glorious women were Christian. Their religion was Judaism. Even though their society was fiercely patriarchal with a heavy suppression of women, the sacred need for sexuality is displayed throughout the teachings of the ancient rabbis. Jonathan Margolis, in O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm, quotes from rabbis who affirmed the need for marital sex in order to fulfill Mary and Joseph’s obligations to God in marriage:

“In scriptural matters, knowledgeable interpretation is all. And viewed through knowing eyes, the Jewish Torah and Talmud emerge as little short of practical marriage manuals. The early Jews believed one should enjoy the pleasures of life, sex included, with some rabbis holding that at the last day people would have to account to God for every pleasure they had failed to enjoy.

“‘In Ancient Jewish thought sexual congress is a metaphor for God’s creation of, and interaction with, His world.’ Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes in his book Kosher Sex. ‘Sex is said to bring about the celestial unity of masculine and feminine energies…Since our world was created as an arena to demonstrate the unity of God, no other act demonstrates this better than the physical union of male and female, strangers who become lovers, and lovers who are also friends.

In Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance ,Phillip Beitchman, agreed: “Additionally, every Friday night the practicing cabalist is enjoined to have intercourse with his wife, because at that time she has become Shekinah, God’s female emanation: ‘Students of the Torah…make themselves ‘eunuchs’ during the six days of the week for Torah’s sake, and on Sabbath nights have their conjugal union, because they apprehend the supernal mystery of the right moment when the Matrona (Shekinah) is united with the King…..Intercourse on Friday night is not only indicated but rather enjoined and indispensable, a form of welcome to and congress with the Shekinah, who is partial to the beginning Sabbath and who descends to inhabit the body of the man’s wife. Sexual experience, about which The Zohar is particularly insistent and emphatic, is also generally a rite in Cabala…’”

If she was the divinely-ordained mother of the only begotten son of God, would not her obedience to Him be even more important than the average woman? But the the rabbis didn’t stop with the importance of regular sexual relations. They declared the sex act and orgasm as the woman’s right, per Margolis:

‘Long ago, well before Christianity enacted legislation forbidding its clerics from marrying or having sex, the ancient Rabbis were giving explicit sexual advice to married men and women as to how they could enjoy pleasurable, yet holy, intimate relationship. The Rabbis made female orgasm an obligation incumbent on every Jewish husband. No man was merely allowed to use a woman merely for his own gratification.’ The Bible, he points out, conceives sex within marriage as the woman’s right and the man’s duty, while the Talmud, later, a mere 2,000 years ago — declared that a woman’s sexual passion is far greater than that of man. Later still,, Nachmanides, a thirteenth-century Jewish scholar, explained in his commentary on the Bible that when God said Eve would long for Adam after eating from the tree of knowledge, her craving took the form of an exceedingly great sexual desire for him.”

Female orgasm an obligation on her husband? Great sex as a woman’s right? Amazing concepts when viewed through the dysfunctional lens of Christianity which condemns our sexuality except for procreation.

In Sexuality Sacred? A Biblical Connection, Renata Alexandre, a pastor in the United Methodist Church, commented upon the importance of our sexuality is in regard to the Divine :

“We render a great deal of power to our sexuality, for it connects our bodies and minds, making embodied experience intelligible for us. Foucault depicts our sexuality as that which has become more important than our souls. Our history does not depict a sexuality that is a ‘knowing’ such as the ancient Hebrew mind-set might describe. Yet, there are currently instances of our recognition of sex as wholeness.

“Effective egalitarian power requires a differentiation between females and males, rather than a barrier placed between them. Instead of seeing partners as a threat to our power, we must see each other as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” The failure to ‘know’ causes an inability for members of a couple to sense the work of the sacred between and among them as they move through out their dai ly lives. Egalitarian power must be shared, not hoarded by one member of the partnership. Failure to share power places energy in keeping one’s power intact rather than allowing energy to flow freely from one person to the other.

“In focusing on male sexuality, James Nelson discusses relational power that is shared between partners. It is a power that is integrated, just as the ancient Hebrews integrate the differentiated bodies of male and female through the desire for unity. He states, ‘People are enhanced by this kind of power, mystery is affirmed, interdependence is celebrated.’”

Thus, if the beliefs of Mother Mary, Yeshua and Mary Magdalene had not been hijacked by the misogyny of churchmen who later formed the RCC, all women would have benefited through the centuries. How different our world would be. No Victorian ancestors who gritted their teeth and “endured” it for “God and country.” No shame and guilt heaped upon a wife who wants to have her sexual appetites satiated. Instead there would be joyous celebration for any woman who treasures her inherent sexuality.

We should tell Christians who try to restrict women’s sexuality what Esther Cepeda said to Playboy. “Dude, you put a heavenly hottie on the cover to generate buzz and you got it – don’t act like it’s all some cosmic coincidence.”

1 Comment »

1. 

   Great article, thank you Lore!

   Comment by Carol — December 23, 2008 @ 9:14 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.