Our Lady is definitely not blonde

That excellent Catholic journalist, Christopher Howse writes in Saturday's Daily Telegraph about Mary the Mother of God and how she has been perceived and portrayed by artists and poets. He quotes the from a poem called "Icon" by contemporary poet and talented artist, Lynn Roberts:

    "She is a dark/scared girl in dusty djellabah and veil,/with dirty feet."




 



Picture: The Daily Telegraph
Our Lady as portrayed by poet Lynn Roberts

I like the realism of this type of portrayal; it shows beauty, honesty and a certain level of basic human goodness. I much prefer this sort of treatment over the conventional blonde haired virgin so beloved of the western world. Those who commission the creation of  statues and those who carry them out seem oblivious to the fact that Mary was a Jewish peasant girl; dark hair, sallow skin and slightly more obvious features than we are used to seeing on our "English Rose" version. I recall the story of how, once Lourdes began to develop as a place of pilgrimage, the church placed a statue of Our Lady in the niche at the Grotto, exactly where she had appeared. This statue caused St Bernadette some angst as, according to her (and she should know), it bore no relation to the vision she had seen. When Our Lady appeared at Lourdes she appeared as a Pyrenean lass, short and stocky but outstandingly beautiful. Let's face it, the niche is only around five feet or less in height, there is no way that the conventional Virgin could have fitted into it. The present statue is, I guess, about four feet in height.

I also like the fact that, wherever you go in the world, Our Lady is featured as a native of the particular country you may be in. In Japan, Our Lady of Akita is most definitely Japanese, the same applies in China and I am sure that Africa is well endowed with genuine Black Madonnas. But here in Europe and, indeed in the USA, Canada and Australia/New Zealand, we are only familiar with Mary's "European" features and I long for an image that I can more easily relate to. What, I wonder, caused Renaissance artists to portray her as a blonde? Was it a form of racism, a reaction against the Jewish race? If so it was very short sighted; I find a Jewish maiden concept utterly charming and we in the Western world should now be mature enough to cope with such things. Perhaps we could see more statues and carvings that are true to the original or, at the very least, our interpretation of how that very young and scared maid from Nazareth must have looked.


Lynn Roberts is a very gifted artist and also has a range of botanical illustrations in her portfolio. I hope that she receives some commissions from the Catholic Church in the future, we need to bring some integrity into the contemporary art within our churches.





      Tall, blonde and lissome? That is not how Our Lady of Lourdes looked!

A message to the Ordinariate.....

                    COME ON IN - CATHOLICISM'S AWFUL!

Oh dear! I hear you say. He's gone OTT again, just when all those wonderful Anglican folk are lining up to become good RCs and now he's gone and blown it.

Well, let me tell you that these are not my words but those of one time radical blue stocking journo Mary Kenny. Written by her at a time when the Church of England faced the mega issue of women priests....ancient history! The world held its breath and the Bishops of England and Wales must have had a touch of the heeby jeebies because all thought that there would be a mass exodus of vicars who would be bringing reverence and thuribles and beautiful vestments into a church that was, shall we say....going through a sort of ecclesiatical menopause?

The year? 1992. The newpaper? The Daily Telegraph. And here is an extract....Mary could have written them yesterday so appropriate are they.

"You might imagine - and some people indeed suppose - that Roman Catholics are crowing with 'triumphalism' at the prospect of a harvest of Anglicans taking the path to Rome in consequence of the present differences of opinion in the C of E.
Well au contraire as George Brown used to say. Most Catholics, it seems to me, are quaking in their shoes at the thought of these Anglicans, some of them dauntingly grand, arriving to join their ranks.
It is rather like expecting some awfully impressive relations who are coming to stay. What are they going to think of your tip of a house? How are they going to react to your badly brought-up children and ill-behaved pets? Oh dear, perhaps it would be better to put them off, for fear they might be disappointed with the scene they find.....

......The tasteless architecture of modern church buildings. The ear-splitting acoustics. The extraordinarily bad hymns or, more often, no hymns at all. And then the differences within the church, which are just as marked as within Anglicanism. The scandals of bonking Bishops and priapic priests. The feminist nuns exploring revived forms of witchcraft. The liberation theologians calling for a return to excommunication for usury. The continuing arguments about authority, birth control, divorce, married priests - you name it we've got it........(I could add Papal disobedience, Magic Circles, even, "Tradophobia").

How would devout Anglicans  - and all Protestants are more respectful in church - take the extraordinary lack of punctuality so characteristic of Catholics, as they wander in and out of Mass when it suits them (Novus Ordo, I believe)...........

Ends/................

Well, that was less than twenty years ago but it's as fresh and as relevant today as it was then. I am sure that many Catholics (the chattering classes before Mass brigade) are going to be in for a mighty shock and a jolly good thing it will be. The church in England and Wales needs a healthy injection of respect and reverence. Tacky chasubles and stoles can go in the bin......here comes some decent gear. Chuck out the china chalices, rip the Save the Children posters off the walls, dress the altars so that they look like altars and put up a sign in the porch stating: "The Blessed Sacrament is present here so, please, maintain respect and do not  talk". That's just for starters.
So I say to all Anglicans who have swum the Tiber or who are considering it:

                COME ON IN - WE NEED YOU!