Not Your Mother: An Autopsy on "The Testament of Mary

Not Your Mother: An Autopsy on The Testament of Mary | Mark P. Shea | Catholic World Report



Colm Tóibín’s book won’t tell you anything about Mary. It will tell you plenty about its very sad and very angry author.

With zombies all the rage (pardon the pun, 28 Days Later fans) there are all sorts
of helpful instructions out there for dealing with them. One illustration of
sundry methods for dispatching zombies pictures a man with a gun pointed at a
drooling old woman shuffling toward him. His hand covers his face as he weeps
in grief and hesitation. The caption reads, “Shoot, you fool! She’s not your
mother anymore!”

I think of this as I contemplate the latest piece of Catholic-hating
detritus to wash up on our shores from the Emerald Isle. The past 20 years have
not been good to Irish Catholicism. The Isle of Saints and Scholars, having
withstood Viking hordes and centuries of English oppression and sectarian
strife, could not withstand the most insidious attack the devil has sent
against the Irish: economic prosperity. Has corruption in the Church aided and
abetted the vicious turn against the Faith there? Sure. Abusive and corrupt
clerics bear very serious responsibility for the hostility to the Church in
large measure.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Sin—very serious sin—has always
been present in the Church, and Catholics who knew and understood their Faith
did not therefore abandon it. Still less did they try to solve the problem of
human corruption by telling lies about God, Jesus, and Mary. Time was when
Irish Catholics knew that God, Jesus, and Mary were their best friends in a mad
world.

That’s gone now. Ireland sold its soul for a brief period of
Celtic Tiger prosperity and got two things in return: a media class that is now
totally cloned from post-Christian England’s culture of casual anti-Catholic
blasphemy, followed by a bursting economic bubble that has left it with neither
man’s friendship nor God’s consolations. All it has left is spite, blasphemy—and
profound sadness.

Into the midst of this devolution of the Country That Used
to Be Ireland comes Colm Tóibín, the issues-filled author of (ahem) New Ways to Kill Your Mother, to deliver unto
us what NPR breathlessly
calls “A New ‘Testament’ Told From Mary’s Point of View”: his
novella The Testament of Mary.
It’s a book that fills a profound void—in the twice-annual need of God-haters
in corporate publishing to find some sort of media phenomenon that will insult
and blaspheme Christianity for Easter and Christmas.

Tóibín is the man of the hour, doing for Mary what Dan Brown
did for Jesus: turning her into a blank screen upon which the author can
project current cultural and personal obsessions for 30 pieces of silver. Tóibín,
it will shock no one to know, is an ex-Catholic homosexual who “once
contemplated the priesthood” (that clause is mandated in the standard corporate
biosketch of every embittered ex-Catholic screed writer), but jettisoned his
faith when he went to college and came out as gay.

In terms of content, the book is a by-the-numbers hatchet
job written in sensitive, spare, and poetic diction for the delectation of UK and
New York Chattering Classes and dipped in a bath of relentless, willful sadness
and bitterness.

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.