Mary, Gender, and Politics after Vatican II

Abstract

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the most transformative event in the modern history of the Catholic Church, conservative Catholics the world over found themselves in a changed world and a changed Church. Modernizing reforms in the Church meant the revisiting and revising of longstanding Catholic tradition, from mass to the catechism. Conservative and right-wing theologians were especially concerned about certain potential changes to Church doctrine, particularly the veneration and status of Mary. Mary and her veneration were risky things to change for the Church, because, for centuries, Mary had served as a symbol of traditional femininity, as a nationalist icon, and as a popular beacon connecting Church and congregants. This article looks at how the potential and real changes to Marian devotion in the mid-twentieth century disturbed conservative and right-wing Catholic theologians in Latin America and Iberia, and explains how Marainism was for them a bellwether of the conservative nature of the Church, both as a representative of traditional norms and as a partisan bulwark against communism.