New feast keeps Mary at the centre of Church life

A leading theologian has said that the Pope’s decision to institute a new feastday of Our Lady as ‘Mary, Mother of the Church’ is a way of underlining the importance of avoiding institutionalism in the Church.

At the weekend, the Pope announced that the new feastday will be celebrated on the Monday after Pentecost.

According to former Professor of Systematic Theology, Fr Tom Norris, the unusual move is significant.  “Pentecost is the summit feast of the Church’s year,” he told The Irish Catholic.

“Pentecost is the birth of the Church. Mary is there as the Mother of the Church [which is] now seeing the light of day.”

The Pope is underlining the Marian Profile of the Church, said Fr Norris, Spiritual Director at the Irish College in Rome, saying this “counteracts the excessive emphasis on the Petrine Profile” (the Church seen in institutional terms, formed in the image of St Peter’s authority).

“Of course, it’s always both, but the Marian profile is even more important than the Petrine profile, as recent Popes have been saying.”

As mother, Mary is the antidote to institution by keeping before us the Church as a Family, said Fr Norris, who wrote Mary in the Mystery. The Woman in whom Divinity and Humanity Rhyme.