The Mary Paradox

It's rare that I pray, outside church, though if I do, it will always be the Rosary. I don't believe in the power of prayer, because by definition, you'll get what you want if it's meant to be, and not if it isn't.

But on the sporadic attempts I do attend Mass, I occasionally burn a candle in front of the white icon to the left of the altar once the service has ended, though sadly, not until I've been out for a cigarette first.

I know that the idea that the Mother of Jesus is actually sitting somewhere listening is unlikely to be true and certainly doesn't remotely accord with my view of the universe.

But if you have to talk to something to represent the universe, then Mary always seems someone good to talk to.

I sometimes wonder how much this affects my outlook. Protestants call this practice Mariolatry, suggesting that we actually worship Mary. I'm not sure we do that. But certainly, she represents a kind of ideal of womanhood and perhaps she appeals more to Catholic males than Catholic females.

It is, of course, an impossible ideal for any woman to live up to. No woman can actually be both virgin and mother. It doesn't happen in the real world. But when I have my eyes actually fixed upon the figure of Christ's mother, I manage to suspend disbelief here.

I certainly don't expect any woman to try and live up to Mary's standard, and I'm not certainly not advocating chastity for women at all. I think women have laboured too long under a societal belief that a woman should be judged in terms of her sexual behaviour.

But I think somewhere deep inside, the way I view Mary creates a curious prism through which I, and indeed probably many from Catholic culture, view women.

I am idolising and holding up to myself, as the image of female perfection, a woman for whom the very idea of entertaining any form of sexual desires for, would be the greatest evil imaginable, to my mind.

One feels a love for Mary that makes having sexual desires feel dirty in itself.

How healthy is that?
For me, I'm not sure that it is. I suspect the root of much of the trouble in my life stems from that.
I remember talking to a friend some time ago and I simply said, as a throw away remark 'She's the type who is way too cute to f**k.'
He asked what I meant and I said 'Well, you know how there are some woman, you couldn't go to bed with, because you'd just feel so guilty about what you were doing, that you would be physically incapable of actually carrying it out? They're just too nice, too wholesome for you to want to sully them in that way.'

He didn't. I then realised that this was almost certainly a Catholic hang up of mine.

I've realised over time that I can do the whole one night stand thing with no qualms as such, I can indulge in sex-based flings and feel quite comfortable about it. But most of my relationships fail because at a deep psychological level, sex and love are incompatible, in my worldview.

I think this explains the relationship I had with D. It started as an attempt by me to seduce her and became a strange sort of platonic love where we actually lived together. The feelings I had for her were stronger than they ever were about any girlfriends of mine, precisely because she had moved up to a higher category in my head.
In fact, I had no problem with her bringing other men back- they weren't me, so I had nothing to feel guilty about. Quite often in fact, she'd come find me after she'd made love, and we'd go and have a cigarette together.

If I'm honest, I have actually had some huge crushes in my adult life, none of which have ever been pursued. Almost without exception, all my relationships have been women who showed interest and were taken up on the offer. I often saw them as friends, in some cases as almost their brother, but they failed, because the romantic love was not there on my part.



Deep down I seem to be wedded to this idea that if a woman is worth me being in love with her, then she's certainly worth more than me. If she loves me, then in some strange way, there is a limit to how high my regard for her can be.

I can only love a woman by putting her on a pedestal I can never reach.

The Mary Paradox.

PS I'd Like it very much if we could treasure bloggers we will miss by putting them permanently in our sidebars. I put the first blogger whose absence hurts in my sidebar. She'll stay there during the life of this blog. Can we make this blogging custom?