One Mother to Another

Today in my daughter's blog she referenced an article about the Catholic Church's rethinking of the concept of limbo. You know limbo. It's the place where unbaptized babies and other innocents go after death. You have to give the church credit for not sending those little imaculate souls there instead of hell but even when I was a small child it all seemed unfair and unnecessary.

The church has decided to let God perform triage on innocent souls, allowing them into heaven as he sees fit. I imagine that God's desk has a new plaque that proclaims, "The Buck Stops Here." I'm sure he's up to the task.

My beef with the Catholic Church concerns decisions made to answer the questions of the reasoning faithful. Limbo must have been the result of such a question. My favorite is the "Imaculate Conception," the idea that Mary was the only human being other than Jesus himself, born without original sin. Really, I think it would have been better to establish Mary as an "every woman" than to cast her image as the purest vessel ever born.

Personally I think the imaculate conception came from the feeling that somehow women are dirty. We are the "near occasion of sin" we learned about in CCD. That means a big temptation to you non CCD raised folks. Those cardinals coulnd't imagine a woman good enough to give birth to the savior so they declared Mary to be other.

It's not that I'm a total nonbeliever. I've turned to Mary many times when I've been worried about my children. She knew the joy and pain of motherhood. She lost her son. I've lost a son. It's complicated but I'm comfortable praying to her, asking for the grace to go on that I think comes more easily from the feminine.

So a few old guys with funny red hats declared her special. She already had what no convocation of cardinals could grant her. She didn't seem to require more.