BOOK REVIEW: Grace is not Faceless - Reflections on Mary by Ann Loades

Grace is not Faceless - Reflections on Mary by Ann Loades, published by DLT Books in 2021

Introduction and Context

Martin Warner, the Bishop of Chichester, introduced ‘Grace is not Faceless’ during a seminar at St Augustine’s College. It was especially interesting to hear his perspective on the text, a collection of essays by Ann Loades published earlier this year, because he was a student of the author and explained that like all the best teachers, she has an infectious energy for her subject which cannot but inspire her students. He explained that Ann Loades was the first British academic to write a book about feminist theology (Searching for Lost Coins, published in 1987).

Before giving an overview of the book, Bishop Martin listed some of the formative texts on the theology of Mary, which included:

1968 – ‘The Church and the Second Sex’ by Mary Daley
1976 – ‘Alone of her Sex : The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary’ by Marina Warner
1978 – ‘Daughter of Jerusalem’ a novel by Sarah Maitland
1989 – ‘Mary Mother of God, Mother of the Poor’ by Maria C Bingemer and Ivone Gebara (writing from a Liberation Theology context)
1993 – ‘Mary’s Story, Mary’s Song’ by Elaine Storkey.

He went on to set out some of the key dogmas and pronouncements from the Roman Catholic Church in relation to Mary and explained that the pronouncements following the Second Vatican Council helped to shape the response of the Roman Catholic Church to feminist theology:

1854 – Pope Pius IX pronounces the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Bishop Martin explained that this dogma sets out that “Mary is understood to be preserved from the stain of Adam’s sin through a retrospective working back through time of Christ’s redemptive work.” An act which has parallels in the apocryphal text of the Book of Esther.

1950 – Pope Pius XII pronounces the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary in a document published on 1 November 1950 titled Munificentissimus Deus.

1974 – Paul VI publishes an Encyclical titled ‘Marialis Cultus’ (To Honour Mary) in response to the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This document provides an invitation to think more seriously about how our understanding of Mary and traditional devotional approaches to her can be related to the ways in which we (especially women) live today.

I was very grateful for knowing something of this context, both the overview of key texts and historic pronouncements from the Roman Catholic Church, before I read ‘Grace is not Faceless’ in detail. The essays contained in the book are diverse in scope; ranging from critiques of the dogmas and exhortations of the church to comparative analyses of some of the key texts outlined by Bishop Martin, as well as drawing on other resources, including poetry and even a set of Christmas stamps! It sounds like (and is) very much a ‘scholarly’ read but persevering with it if you can, the text reveals some fascinating insights. An overview of the book is set out below.

Ordinary Extraordinary – image and poem by Laura Kestly

Grace is not Faceless

The title of the book is taken from a phrase coined by the Dominican writer Cornelius Ernst. Through the essays, Ann Loades helps us to consider the grace that is embodied in the different reflections we see of the face of Mary through glimpses of her in scripture, culture, tradition and doctrine. In Chapter 3 she quotes Rowan Williams, who reminds us that Mary is the first face Jesus saw; what he sees there is crucial to how he sees God.

The introduction to the book provides further context in addition to that outlined by Bishop Martin, including an overview of the principal devotions to Mary and the history of the Feast Days associated with her and how these are observed across the church today.

The first essay “The Virgin Mary and the Feminist Quest” introduces us to some of the different faces of Mary and how apparently incompatible these seem to be. Ann Loades’ brief historical survey of feminist theology in the UK begins with a public speech by Eliza Sharples in 1832 – advertised as the first woman to speak about politics and religion, in which she addressed the divide between the image of the perfect womanhood of Mary and that of the sinful Eve. In the course of her lecture, she portrayed Eve as liberator from a tyrannical God rather than a ‘cursed’ woman (elevating the status of Eve relative to Mary). Sixty years later, The Woman’s Bible of 1895 provided one of the first critiques of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by suggesting it represents a slur on natural motherhood. But despite the negative associations, Loades notes that many women have found Mary to be their only symbol of hope, particularly in Latin America.

Ann Loades notes that the documents published by the Second Vatican Council opened a debate about the relationship between contemporary women and Mary and the possibility for a reinterpretation of traditional devotions, liturgies and beliefs. However the emphasis throughout the papal texts is that Mary never lived in or for herself – she was always at the service of others; God, Christ, the Church. Such a focus, some suggest, is to wipe away Mary’s history prior to the annunciation. Her personhood has been purified. The dogma’s “killed” Mary. Mary becomes the face of a victim, whilst at the same time a punitive image for women today, because no-one can live up to it. 

Other writers see things differently. Sarah Maitland in her novel ‘Daughter of Jerusalem’ interprets Mary’s assent at the annunciation as liberating her from both biology and submission. From here, through the rest of the essays in the collection, we find a desire not only to recognise the different faces of Mary but also to consider how these might be held together in relationship. Maitland’s portrayal of Mary’s “yes” sees a union not only of the human and the divine but of womanhood - personhood - itself. Mary becomes a  - perhaps the first – ‘fully human’ person. In the words of Marina Warner, through Mary, our weak humanity finds its way to paradise.

Ann Loades explores the duality between body and spirit with an interesting but short reflection on anorexia and eating disorders, which she says were prevalent amongst those women who joined religious communities and aspired to both moral and physical perfection. The control of their bodies (and diet) partly a result of the desire to live up to the perfection of the image of the Virgin Mother, propagated by men. The impact on their own bodies making the case for a fuller; more wholesome image of Mary. It would be interesting to read more about this.

The second essay, ‘Mary:For everyone’ begins with a critique of Marialis Cultus; noting that in it, the Vatican suggest that it should be normal for future generations to portray and express their sentiments about Mary in a way that reflects their own age; yet it fails to authentically express the plight of women of its day in the text (failing, for instance, to note the double burden of work women have to carry).

Christian tradition has associated womanhood with the ‘old’ Eve; burdened by her pains of childbirth and the stain of of sin – as opposed to the ‘new’ Eve (Mary). Surveying the state of public opinion in the UK today in terms of attitudes to sin and to Mary, Ann Loads asks whether we are in an age of ‘constructive ambivalence’ which might provide the right time for reimagining our relationship with Mary; reaching across the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the Virgin/Mother and full personhood for all women.

The third essay ‘Regarding Mary and the Trinity : The Anglican Position’ focusses on Mary in the minutiae of our liturgy, calling for more reflection on the impact of the Common Worship translation of the Nicene Creed introduced in the early 2000s which firmly relates Mary to the Trinity through its use of one preposition; ‘was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary’ rather than ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary’ in the Book of Common Prayer. Ann Loades asks how our recitation of this new language might affect our understanding of and relationship with Mary?

In the fourth essay ‘Bone of Contention’ we are introduced to the writing of Tina Beattie, who proposes that it is in the expression of Marian liturgy that the church reinforces the ‘traditional’ face of the unattainable image. Mary’s important place at the centre of the disciples at Pentecost is highlighted as a possible scriptural basis for a new focus in our liturgy. The essay goes on to quote from the writing of Elizabeth Johnson, who has reconstructed the world of the ‘historical Mary’ : “at the centre of a large brood of children, one of whom was Jesus, central with her husband to an economic group for whom the production of food and clothing was an unalterable priority. Mary’s religious life would flower in village assemblies, oral communication of Torah to everyone, daily prayer, weekly Sabbath and the round of festivals. Mary is tethered to a world of historical specificity.”

The fifth essay, ‘The Nativity in recent poetry” searches for expressions of this ‘realism’ in poetry but finds the corpus lacking in this regard. One of the few artists Ann Loades identifies who has successfully embraced Mary’s ‘humanity’ is Guy Reid, who produced a tiny statue of a naked Mary and child for St Matthew’s Westminster. A representation that sparked outrage in some quarters.

‘Mary for Now’ – the sixth essay in the collection, offers an overview of other female authors from the past century and their positions on Mary; Evelyn Underhill, Dorothy L Sayers, Margaret Baker and Karen O’Donnell. The latter is best known for writing on the subject of trauma theology (drawing on her own experience of “repeated reproductive loss”). O’Donnell suggests that when we experience trauma, a rupture happens both in terms of our bodily integrity and in our cognition and language. After the annunciation, she suggests, Mary experienced a failure to say what had happened to her – her recovery begins with finding a place of safety in the house of her cousin Elizabeth; but she ultimately embraced the Annunciation-Incarnation event; all those who suffer trauma strive to do the same.

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 offer two sermons and a text that appeared in a Royal Mail presentation pack of Christmas stamps (some of the text was used in the design of the stamps themselves); showing something of Ann Loades’ enthusiasm for the subject that Bishop Martin Warner described and revealing that no area of the arts is out of reach for her as a resource for theological reflection.

Summarising the book at the end of his lecture, Bishop Martin suggested that the text challenges our relationship with Mary in three ways:

It is a challenge to masculinity
It is a challenge to our liturgy
It is a challenge to our ecclesiology

He concluded by explaining that one of the medieval images that has been recovered recently, largely thanks to feminist theology, is that of Mary as the creator of an environment of learning. It was to Mary, to women, to whom the Word was entrusted. Growing in a more fuller understanding of Mary will help us to grow in our understanding of our relationship with God.


Links :
Grace is not Faceless by Ann Loades was published in 2021 by Darton Longman and Todd
Role Conflict : A Marian Perspective – a reflection I wrote for St Stephen Walbrook which was inspired by Ann Loades text ‘Grace is not Faceless’.
Book Review – Daughter of Jerusalem by Sarah Maitland.

Image : Ordinary Extraordinary – image and poem by Laura Kestly. Text of the poem that appears on the painting at this link.