Word: virginal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Popes had proclaimed Mary the Co-Redeemer with Jesus. During the council, bishops were under pressure from the faithful to ratify the Co-Redeemer doctrine; instead they issued no decree on Mary at all. Rather she was incorporated into the Constitution on the Church, a move that placed the Virgin among the community of believers in Christ rather than in anything resembling a co-equal position...
...effects of that downplaying have rippled through the observances of the church to the point that Mary's statues have been removed from some sanctuaries and Catholic parishes have gradually reduced the traditional novena devotions to the Virgin. John Paul clearly thinks the reconsideration went too far, and his fellow venerators of Mary agree. In Eastern Europe, says Warsaw priest Roman Indrzejczyk, enthusiasm for Mary is no less than a "a reaction to the matter-of-fact religiousness of the West...
Behind Vatican II's reconsideration of the Virgin and some of the uneasiness expressed over her populist revival, say feminists, is a concern over making Mary into a competitive divinity, a tradition common to many of the pagan religions that Christianity superseded. Remarks Warner: "The great terror is that she will be worshipped above...
...however marginal, to that notion of supernatural feminine power is alluring. Says Sandra Schneiders, a professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley: "There has been a stupendous upsurge in goddess research and the feminine divinity as an antecedent to the male god. It's not unrelated that the Virgin Mary's popularity has also increased. Judeo-Christianity has been exclusively male, leaving a gap that cries out for feminine divinity...
People thought the sun was spinning in the sky. Some of them stared directly into the blazing light. They hoped to see the Virgin Mary there. A local housewife named Theresa Lopez had had visions of Mary and promised an apparition. Six thousand of the hopeful stared up at heaven near Lookout Mountain. T shirts (MOTHER CABRINI SHRINE and FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION) sold for $20 each. The bottles of HOLY WATER, MEANS OF SPIRITUAL HEALTH were free...