Word: virginal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Mary may also be history's most controversial woman. For centuries Protestants have vehemently opposed her exaltation; papal pronouncements concerning her status have driven a wedge between the Vatican and the Eastern / Orthodox Church. Conflict surrounds the notions that she remained ever a virgin, that she as well as Jesus was born without sin and that her sufferings at the Crucifixion were so great that she participated with her son in the redemption of humanity...
...hundreds of years, there is still room for wonder -- now perhaps more than ever. In an era when scientists debate the causes of the birth of the universe, both the adoration and the conflict attending Mary have risen to extraordinary levels. A grass-roots revival of faith in the Virgin is taking place worldwide. Millions of worshippers are flocking to her shrines, many of them young people. Even more remarkable are the number of claimed sightings of the Virgin, from Yugoslavia to Colorado, in the past few years...
Church concern has served to highlight the most interesting aspect of the growing popular veneration: the theological tug-of-war taking place over Mary's image. Feminists, liberals and activists have stepped forward with new interpretations of the Virgin's life and works that challenge the notion of her as a passive handmaid of God's will and exemplar of some contested traditional family values. "Mary wants to get off the pedestal," says Kathy Denison, a former nun and current drug-and-alcohol counselor in San Francisco. "She wants to be a vital human being...
...Knock, Ireland, where 15 people saw the Virgin a century ago, the lines of the faithful lengthened dramatically after Pope John Paul II paid a visit to the shrine in 1979. Since then, attendance has doubled, to 1.5 million people each year. To handle the influx, a new international airport was opened at Knock...
...boom at such long-established sites is almost overshadowed by the cult of the Virgin that has developed through new reports of her personal appearances, most spectacularly at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia. Before Yugoslavia's civil war erupted and travel became much more difficult last September, more than 10 million pilgrims had flocked to the mountain village since the apparitions began in 1981. Six young peasants there claim that the Virgin has been imparting messages each evening for 10 years. Hundreds of ailments have been reported cured during visits to the region where the visitations take place. None of them have been...