(Mis)Reading the Gospels

Is The Annunciation, a passage in the Bible where the angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she will bear the Christ, a “pro-choice feast”? That’s what Catholic feminist author Mary Gordon argued in a recent Modern Language Association (MLA) presentation entitled “Rereading Jesus.”

Gordon described her book as divided into three parts,

• the first, “parts of the gospel that I really like,”
• the second, “parts of the gospel that I find alienating to heinous…”, and
• the third part covers “the passion, resurrection narratives” and why she remains with Catholicism.

Barnard College Professor Gordon spent the majority of her presentation reading from her book Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter With the Gospels. Her chapter on “The Tainted Text: The Problem of the Jews” cites Matthew 8:11-12, 21:42-44, 28:11-15 and other passages. She asserts that “It would be hard to find words written at any point in history as drenched in blood as these.”

“From the persecutors of Jews in the Middle Ages to the Inquisitors to Hitler’s troops to blogging neo-Nazis, the words of the Gospels have been used to justify the murder of Jews,” she writes.  She later adds,

“Reading the deconsecrated text would be to understand that, in loving it, we turn the pages leaving behind us bloody fingerprints, the blood of murdered Jews seeping into the lines that make up our individual fingerprints, our individual responses to these words, the individual ways we have taken them into our lives. The pages are stained with blood. We cannot read them purely. We cannot read them innocently. They must be read supported by an undertone of lamentation. We must always read these words with a broken heart.”

Gordon also made several points in her speech which are unlikely to win the hearts of traditional Catholics. Gordon asserts that the New Testament contains “nothing about homosexuality, not a syllable” and that the “question of whether Jesus thought he was the Messiah or not” is “absolutely open to interpretation.”

The Ethics Matters website, run through the University of California at San Diego, recommends Gordon’s works on abortion. “Mary Gordon has several interesting essays relating to abortion, including “Abortion: How Do We Think about It?” and “Abortion: How Do We Really Choose?”, both of which are to be found in her Good Boys and Dead Girls and Other Essays (New York: Viking, 1991), pp. 128-37, 138-47, respectively,” states the website, which is “founded and edited” by UC Davis Professor Lawrence M. Hinman (formatting in original).

“Also see in that same volume her journal entries on ‘Having a Baby, Finishing a Book,’ pp. 215-221,” states the site. “The ‘How Do We Really Choose?’ piece is particularly interesting, beginning with an account of a number of women recalling abortions from their youth. Powerful and provocative.”

Gordon’s MLA statements about The Annunciation were likewise “provocative.” She asserts that Luke’s description of The Annunciation contains a “pro-choice” message, saying,

What his followers did, again, I don’t know what gospel they were reading, but there are, there are places in the gospel that certainly justify…the very fact, for example, in Luke when Mary is asked—she’s asked—‘Do you want to bear this child?’ She has to say yes. It’s not …it’s not a rape. Her agency is demanded which is why I always say The Annunciation is a pro-choice feast because her, women are demand [sic]—the response of women is respected, the objectification of women is vilified, the condemnation of women as sexual transgressors is in fact condemned, so there are real spaces that I think feminism can find a place. What the tradition did is what we have to undo” (emphasis added).

Father Robert Sirico, President of the Acton Institute, told this correspondent that Gordon’s interpretation was a “shabby attempt at theology.”

“The simple and obvious answer to this shabby attempt at theology is to observe that the Conception of the Lord does not take place until Mary’s fiat, as the Church has reiterated in her prayers, relections [sic] and theology through the ages,” he writes. “Bottom line: there could be no abortion if there was not yet a conception,” he later added.

As for the Gospel passage in question, it emphasizes Mary as servant not feminist.  Luke 1:26-38, according to the New International Version (NIV) translation, states,

²⁶In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. ³¹You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.’

³⁴’How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’

³⁵The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. ³⁷For nothing is impossible with God.’

³⁸’I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May it be to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.”

Other translations of Luke 1:38 use the words “Behold the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be me according to your word,” (NKJV), “Behold the bondmaid of [the] Lord; be it to me according to thy word” (Darby Translation), “”Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word,” (NASB),  and “…Lo! the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me after thy word” (Wycliffe New Testament).

Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.