In common with many other orders and congregations, the Carmelite Order is well known for its Marian nature and devotion: its official title is ‘the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel’ (Alban 2008a). Almost from its very beginning, the Order had a strongly Marian character. The first chapel on Mount Carmel was dedicated to Mary. The prior general, Pierre de Millaud, wrote to Edward I of England that the order had been founded in honour of and to praise the Virgin and very soon the hermits from Mount Carmel described themselves as the ‘Brothers of Blessed Mary’ (Staring 1989). The Order was noted for its Marian piety and fervent enthusiasm, culminating in a fifteenth-century treatise from the Low Countries, the De patronatu Beatae Virginis Mariae by Arnold Bostius (Daniel of the Virgin Mary 1680). The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed a flowering of mystical writers who emphasized the idea of spiritual union not only with God, but with Mary as well. Some scholars have wondered if the Marian nature and devotion of the Order could stem solely from the dedication of that first church on Mount Carmel. Were the Carmelites perhaps influenced by the local Church in Palestine and its Marian theology and devotions? Since we have very little documentary evidence about the foundation and early development of the Order, any views on this topic are bound to be speculative. Nonetheless, several commentators have suggested that there are several points of contact between Eastern theology and the Carmelites.
In 1999 the Discalced Carmelite General Council held a meeting on Mount Carmel around the theme ‘Return to the Sources: Beside Elijah’s Fountain’. One of the papers was by the then Vicar General of the Order, Jean Sleiman, in which he outlined some ideas about the roots of the Carmelite Rule in the East. Concluding, however, he also suggested that, ‘It would be quite interesting to compare Eastern Mariology and Carmel’s Mariology, especially that of the Order’s great saints with the Fathers of the Eastern Church. In effect, their Mariology is not devotional. It is soteriological and mystical’ (Sleiman 2000: 109). Similarly, in a contribution to a Marian Congress in 2001 to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the traditional giving of the brown Scapular to St Simon Stock, Sleiman, by now Latin Archbishop of Baghdad, indicated strongly that, ‘La mariologie profonde du Carmel, celle des Saints, peut très bien dialoguer avec la mariologie de l’Orient chrètien, s’enricher et l’enricher’ (Sleiman 2003: 261). These dimensions of Eastern and Carmelite Mariologies centre on one specific term which has its roots in the East and which has a particular development in Carmelite Marian writers, that of ‘sister’. It should be noted right away that there is no evidence that the Carmelites drew on specific texts from the East to develop their notion of Mary as sister, rather there are a number of elements which come together in a gradual and complex process of the elaboration of a Carmelite Marian identity.
The use of the term ‘sister’ in Carmelite Mariology, however, is not to be confined to the historical development of the Order’s identity, but has a contribution in contemporary discourse. Carmelite Mariologist Christopher O’Donnell notes that, ‘It is especially important to note that some contemporary feminists can relate to Mary more easily as Sister that as Mother; this is surely an added reason for developing this part of our Marian heritage’ (O’Donnell 2000: 48). Furthermore, apart from the specific application of ‘sister’ in a feminist oriented Mariology, there is an implication of the use of this term for current theological anthropology as well (Perroni 2009).
The emphasis on the central importance of the idea of Mary as Theotokos with its profound Christological, ecclesiological, and soteriological implications, has perhaps resulted in the relative neglect of the idea of Mary as ‘sister’. Interestingly, Pope Paul VI in the very ceremony that he proclaimed Mary as the Mother of the Church on 21 November 1964, also drew attention to her role as sister: ‘she is, however, very near to us. A daughter of Adam like us, she is therefore our Sister by the bonds of nature’ (Paul VI 1964: 20). Former Fordham professor, Elizabeth Johnson, developed the idea of the solidarity between Mary and humanity in a more extensive and profound way in Truly Our Sister, published in 2003. She writes from a feminist stance to show that the title of ‘sister’ can open up new and liberating perspectives on Mary.
The idea of Mary as ‘sister’ is, of course, much more ancient than Elizabeth Johnson or Blessed Giovanni Battista Montini. There are several examples of the use of this term by writers of the East and two in particular will be examined.
The first Christian writer to call Mary by this title appears to be Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) (Buby 1997). As a theologian of the ‘Alexandrian School’, engaged in the debate over the relationship between divinity and humanity in Christ, inevitably the place of Mary was important in his thought. The logos takes on Mary’s humanity, her sarx, in the Incarnation. However, apart from the Christological implications of Mary’s place in the history of salvation, her life is also exemplary and worth imitating for Christians. He claims that she was entrusted to the Beloved Disciple by Jesus on account of her purity: ‘But because she continued as a virgin after having given birth to Him, the Lord gave her as mother to the Disciple, even though she was not his mother, on account of John’s great purity of understanding and her intact virginity’ (Alvarez Campos 1970: para. 536). Above all, Athanasius sees Mary’s virginity as a model for all those committed to perpetual virginity in their life choices: ‘Therefore, if one desires to remain a virgin and the bride of Christ, she can ponder on and imitate the life of Mary’ (Alvarez Campos 1970: para. 537).
It is in Athanasius’ letters however, that there is a reference to Mary as sister. Writing to the Bishop of Corinth, Epictetus, the Alexandrian theologian posits Mary as the guarantee of Christ’s true humanity. He had a true human body which is distinct from his divinity and therefore not just an apparent body, yet Christ was not divine merely because God’s spirit dwelt within him and therefore he was not adopted in any sense, but truly God. This letter would later be seen as the expression of the orthodoxy which both the Council of Ephesus (431) and that of Chalcedon (451) wished to espouse and proclaim. There are, of course, soteriological implications here too: Athanasius points out that since Christ became man ‘the salvation of the whole man was brought about’. If Christ’s humanity were only apparent, then human salvation would not be real either. In giving flesh to Christ, Mary gives what all humanity possesses. ‘because it was the same as our body, for Mary was our sister inasmuch as we all are from Adam’ (Letter 59: To Epictetus).1 The force of calling Mary ‘sister’ is very significant for a clear understanding of the reality of human salvation and it is not simply a reminder that Mary was human and gives an example to humanity, but that the flesh she gave to the Logos is the reason why humanity is truly redeemed. Mary is the nexus or fulcrum upon which human salvation hinges.
At the same time that Athanasius was writing in Alexandria, Ephrem the Syrian (306–373), the great theologian and poet of ancient Syria, was composing hymns and verse in honour of Mary (Gambero 1999). Indeed Epiphanius of Salamis (310–403) calls Ephrem ‘Mary’s poet’. He particularly emphasizes Mary’s beauty, but always in a Christological key: ‘Only you and your Mother are more beautiful than everything. For on you, O Lord, there is no mark; neither is there any stain on your Mother’ (Carminia Nisibena 27.8).2
Although possibly closer to the Antiochene school that the Alexandrian one, Ephrem too acknowledges the fundamental importance of Mary in an orthodox Christology. Among the Hymns on the Nativity, he writes: ‘For she is your mother—she alone—and your sister with all. She was to you a mother; she was to you a sister’ (Buby 1997: 308). Again the stress is on the common humanity that Mary gives to Christ uniquely as his mother (‘she alone’), yet it is a common humanity (‘your sister with all’). She is the connection between the reality of the Incarnation in Christ truly taking in human flesh and the reality of human salvation in that her flesh which she gives to Christ is common to humanity.
Moreover, Ephrem here (and elsewhere) also wishes to underline the paradoxical nature of the Incarnation and the ‘God Man’ by emphasizing a paradoxical relationship between Mary and Christ. She is Mother, Virgin, Sister, and Betrothed. He asserts: ‘if your mother is incomprehensible, who is capable of comprehending you’ (Buby 1997: 330), reminiscent of Augustine’s ‘if you understand it, it’s not God’ dictum. The via negativa starts with Mary’s relation to Christ as a symbol of the mystery of his relation to humanity (McVey 1989).
Ephrem also has a contribution to make in the field of Mary’s virginity and human emulation of it. His emphasis on the value of the ascetic practice of perpetual virginity does not stem, however, from a pejorative view of the human body, nor a dualistic vision of the flesh versus the spirit. The Bride Church keeps herself pure for her Bridegroom Christ. The Wise Virgins of Matthew 25 (1–13) are symbolic of the wakeful angels, ready always to greet and praise. The witness of virgins in the Church is to the re-attainment of Paradise, where Adam and Eve lived without sexual relations. There are then a number of significant dimensions to virginity beyond a mere abstinence of the flesh and these are an important element in appreciating the exemplary role of Mary’s virginity.
From this brief summary of Athanasius and Ephrem it emerges that ‘sister’ is perhaps as much a Christological title as ‘mother’. With all due respect to Blessed Paul VI and Professor Elizabeth Johnson, it may be a little reductionist to explain ‘sister’ as a symbol of common descent from Adam, and therefore Mary as a human being and not divine. There seems to be much more at stake here: that by truly giving her humanity to Christ, Mary opens the way to the salvation of humanity in the flesh. The crucial link between Mary and humanity in general is expressed therefore precisely in the title ‘sister’. Similarly, the emphasis on Mary’s exemplary status for those who have vowed perpetual virginity is more than a dualistic denigration of the flesh, but an ecclesiological and eschatological sign.
It must be conceded immediately that there is no evidence of a particular connection between the Eastern theologians and the hermits on Mount Carmel or their friar successors in Europe. However, it may be possible to draw not a solid line between the two, but at least a dotted one. Much work was done in the 1970s on Mount Carmel itself, in terms of the physical evidence for religious life of some form before the Latin hermits that are now called ‘Carmelites’, by Fr Elias Friedman, a Discalced Carmelite (Friedman 1979). His work has been largely confirmed and validated in the magnificent survey of the ecclesiastical sites in the Crusader Kingdom by Denys Pringle (Pringle 1993).
In the case of Marian devotion, there are documentary indications, generally regarded as reliable, that the first oratory on Mount Carmel built by the Latin hermits who occupied the slope and valley towards the sea was dedicated to Mary. It seems that these hermits were in place around the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for they received a formula vitae (a more exact description would be a ‘rescript’) from the local bishop, Albert of Vercelli, patriarch of Jerusalem from 1206 until his assassination in 1214 (Smet 1988). This letter answered a number of questions the hermits had obviously asked the archbishop and at the same time made certain provisions for their life on Mount Carmel. One of these was the construction of a place of worship: ‘An oratory is to be built as conveniently as possible in the midst of the cells; you are to gather daily in the morning for Mass, where this is convenient’ (Clarke and Edwards 1973: 85). That oratory survives in part and, from an account of an itinerary to Jerusalem written between 1229 and 1239, it appears that ‘there is a very beautiful and delightful place where the Latin hermits who are called friars [brothers] of Carmel live. There is a very beautiful little Church of Our Lady’ (Pringle 2012: 168). This dedication is confirmed by similar accounts of pilgrimage routes in the middle of the thirteenth century and later. It would seem then that the first Latin hermits made a deliberate choice of a Marian dedication for their oratory, even though Mary was not especially associated with Mount Carmel before their arrival at the turn of the century. During the course of the thirteenth century however, there is a constant and insistent witness to the Marian title of the hermits’ oratory and this provides the basis for the assertion in later accounts of Carmelite history that it is a Marian order at heart.
The archaeological evidence for the occupation of Mount Carmel by various groups is abundant and it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the main outlines. Friedman sets out very clearly the evidence for Byzantine monasticism on Mount Carmel and is extremely judicious in indicating what can and what cannot be asserted on the basis of archaeological studies. There are the remains of several Eastern religious sites all over the Mount Carmel region, bearing in mind Carmel is a range of hills, not a single mountain. These remains illustrate the two principal forms of religious life in the East: the eremitical, seen in a number of laurae or settlements of cells around a chapel, and the cenobitic, seen in monasteries organized for community life. Thus on Carmel, there is a laura of St John of Tyre, and the laura in the Wadi ain es-Siah, where the Latin hermits would eventually settle. There are also monasteries of Elijah, of Elisha, of St John, and of St Margaret (Friedman 1979).
It seems then that Mount Carmel was an attractive site for both forms of the religious life, drawing hermits and monks in imitation of Elijah and Elisha. The Elijan consciousness among the first Carmelites, who wrote to Albert of Jerusalem for advice and help, was strong from the beginning and of course contributed significantly to the construction of an ‘ideal’ history to compensate for a documented history that the order never had. That consciousness was linked and fed in a very tangible way by the various sites associated with Elijah on Mount Carmel, until the loss of that original Carmelite hermitage in 1291 (Pringle 1993). From around 1200 however, until the Saracen occupation of Carmel at the end of the thirteenth century, the Order existed in the West and the East together and the East exercised a powerful pull on the West. The prior general Nicholas the Frenchman wrote a stinging letter to the whole Order in 1272 calling the urbanized Western half back to its eremitical, Eastern roots (Alban 2008b). The provincial superiors gathered in General Chapter in 1281 were anxious that the Order, and especially its younger members, should not lose their sense of Elijan (and therefore Eastern identity). They prefaced the Constitutions promulgated that year with an introductory article which set out the origins of the Order:
In order to give witness to the truth, we affirm that there, from the time of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, who lived devoutly on Mount Carmel, holy Fathers of the Old and New Testaments, as true lovers of the solitude of that mountain favourable to the contemplation of heavenly things, close to the spring of Elijah, lived praiseworthily in holy penitence, continuing without ceasing through successive holy generations. (Staring 1989: 40–1)
As the Western part of the order grew in size and importance, there was a shift in Elijan consciousness from a sacred topography linked to Mount Carmel itself, to a sacred historiography, which provided a framework for an account of the Order’s origins in the documentary sources for Elijah and Elisha in the first book of Kings (Jotischky 2002) It is to this ideal history and the linking of the Elijan with the Marian themes that this chapter now turns.
The development of an Elijan pedigree for the early Carmelites was a key mechanism for the construction of their identity as an ancient order in the Church and as a Marian one (O’Donnell 2000). The Elijan myth gave meaning and importance to their life style which was closely derived from the traditional, Eastern eremitical life found on Mount Carmel. Early Carmelite writers, such as Jean de Cheminot (c. 1337) in his Speculum Fratrum Ordinis Beatae Mariae de Monte Carmeli, brought together the Elijan and Marian elements in a mythological configuration (Staring 1989). The prophets on Mount Carmel heard the preaching of John the Baptist and then Christ and were subsequently baptized. These newly professed religious took on the title of the Blessed Virgin Mary and dedicated themselves to God in holy virginity and voluntary poverty: ‘For both Elijah and the Blessed Virgin took their origin from the tribe of Aaron’ (Staring 1989: 126). Therefore, the first step in bringing Elijah and Mary together is a very literal one of a common genealogy.
A much more sophisticated and theological approach emerges from the Marian writings of John Baconthorpe (d. 1348) who, in various texts, makes the following points:
Here there is a strong convergence of ideas arising from the environment of Mount Carmel and the profession of virginity that Mary makes. The understanding of the cloud and the rain as the image of the process of the Incarnation, integrates the critical role of Mary as giver of the flesh to Christ into the mythology of Carmel. Her importance to Carmelites is not only that she made a vow of virginity, but that she is the one through whom the salvation of the flesh was realized. This raises the level of Carmelite Mariology from a self-justifying preoccupation with the early history of the Order to an assertion of Mary’s crucial role. This is similar to the early development of the idea of Mary as sister which was not only a question of imitating Mary as one like the rest of humanity, but recognizing that her cooperation with God was part of the process of salvation itself.
Just a few years after Baconthorpe was writing, the German Carmelite John of Hildesheim (1310/20–1375), noted mainly for his History of the Three Kings, composed a tract defending the Marian pedigree of the order. The Dialogus or Defensorium sets out the arguments that Carmelite used to assert the antiquity of Mary’s patronage and in the course of the work John refers to Mary as ‘our sister in religion’ because she and the Carmelites share a common vocation to and life of virginity (O’Donnell 2000: 47). This is the same point Athanasius makes in general terms that now finds a specific historical instance in the Carmelite Order.
The third step in this process of bringing Mary and Elijah together is set out in an extremely important spiritual text, or compilation of texts, edited by the Catalan prior provincial Felip Ribot (d. 1391) which enjoyed great popularity in the Order for many centuries (Chandler 1991). This is the Ten Books or Institute of the First Monks, which sets out a detailed, complete, but almost entirely legendary, history of the first hermits on Mount Carmel. In book VI the main Marian themes are set out, the Carmelites were the first men to take a vow of virginity, following Elijah’s example, just as Mary was the first woman. ‘This unique conformity’, the text says, ‘from the beginning between the Mother of God and the Carmelites in voluntary virginity, prophesized long ago and afterwards fulfilled, was the reason why the Carmelites, already at the time of the apostles, called the Virgin Mary their sister, and following this unique conformity, they called themselves the brothers of the blessed virgin Mary’ (Copsey 2005: 88). Thus, the dedication of the hermits of their first oratory to Mary is a way of celebrating the common vow of virginity they have made, the hermits for men, Mary for women. The connection between Mary and the hermits is encapsulated in the title of ‘sister’, denoting this shared commitment.
The text goes on to outline that when Elijah sees the little cloud, he is granted a special insight into the future and he comes to know that the redeemer will be born of an immaculate virgin mother, that Mary will make a vow to remain a virgin forever and that the fecundity of her virginity is foreshadowed in the rain coming from the cloud.
Valerius Hoppenbrouwers, a Dutch Carmelite Mariologist in the twentieth century, noted that after the occurrence of ‘sister’ in Ribot there is something of a hiatus in the use of the term by the Order’s theologians (Hoppenbrouwers 1960). There was, however, a more permanent and pervasive reminder in the Carmelite liturgy. In the Solemn Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin (known now as the Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) in the office of Matins at the first nocturne, the second antiphon is an accommodated text from Genesis 24:60: ‘May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes’. The quotation is from the passage which deals with Rebekah’s marriage to Isaac, but the composers of these antiphons saw a spiritual application to the life of Mary. The use of ‘sister’ may be rare in the writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it occurs every year in this solemnity, bringing it to mind and emphasizing the connections the Carmelites had with Mary (Hoppenbrouwers 1960).
The foreknowledge that Ribot’s text attributes to Elijah is taken up strongly in the final stage of the weaving together of Marian and Elijan themes in the work of the Carmelite humanist, Arnold Bostius (d. 1499). Bostius’ major Mariological work, composed in the Flemish priory of Ghent, is the De Patronatu et Patrocinio Beate Virginis Marie in dicatum sibi Carmeli Ordinem (Daniel of the Virgin Mary 1680). This was written around 1480 and presents a comprehensive portrait of the relationship between Mary and the Carmelite Order. Where Ribot had placed Elijah and Mary in parallel, one making a prototypical vow for men, the other for women, Bostius develops Ribot’s idea of Elijah’s foreknowledge and claims that his vow of virginity was made with a view to the one Mary would make. So now Elijah is inspired by Mary’s vow and not the other, chronologically more comprehensible, way round (O’Donnell 2000).
Bostius continues to use Ribot’s title of sister for Mary as a sign of the common ground between the Virgin and the Carmelites, but does not develop the idea theologically. Some observers have noted that the title ‘sister’ actually provoked a negative or at best indifferent reaction in the order with figures such as Lezana, Silveira, and Mastelloni actively opposed to it, and others silent on the question (Borg Gusman 1965). This may be the reason why the idea of Mary as a Carmelite gained popularity: it conveys the same idea as sister without actually using such an unfamiliar term or one at the expense of ‘Deipara’ (Esteve 1953). There is one instance in Bostius’ work reminiscent of an Eastern accumulation of titles which was observed in Ephrem’s hymns above: ‘so dignified, so holy, to have a sister, a mother, a spouse and a patron’ (Daniel of the Virgin Mary 1680).
Bostius, however, generally confines his use of sister to a more liturgical context, using the title in a number of hymns. For example, ‘O to me you are a sister’, ‘O my bride, sister’, ‘O sister who descends on Carmel’. The common vocation to virginity shared with Mary leads Bostius to endow the title sister with an intimacy and sense of community which distinguishes his Mariology and is at the root of a flowering in devotion and theology in the seventeenth century in the ‘Mystical Marian’ school of the reform of Touraine (Smet 1988). This was a movement which placed emphasis on Mary as a role model to imitate, but did not use the title of ‘sister’ to express the connection, rather the more common ‘mother’. However, here too it would be a mistake to confine the occurrences of ‘sister’ to theological texts. In the 1656 edition of the Order’s Constitutions, there appears the assertion that ‘by a special privilege, the Blessed Virgin Mary is acknowledged as Patron, Mother and Sister.’ The importance of the legislative texts of the Order has already been noted above in the case of Elijah. Here now in the case of Mary there is the same emphasis on giving a background to a particular Carmelite presentation.
In this section mention will be briefly made of the relationship between Mary and the contemporary ecclesial context as expressed in the term ‘sister’. It is not simply a question of the place Mary has in the historical events of the story of salvation that is at stake here. Mary is not only an ‘icon’ of the Church in a somewhat static sense, but she is bound up in its dynamic of obedience, faith, and the tensions with self-centred tendencies. In other words, ‘sister’ needs to be appreciated in an anthropological context and an ecclesial one.
Recent Mariological research has underlined not only the Christological nature and import of Mary’s faith response, but also the human face of the Jewish woman from Nazareth (Perroni 2009). This latter trajectory would emphasize the ongoing struggle to understand and respond to the demands of belief. Paul VI, both in the proclamation of Mary as the Mother of the Church in 1964 and on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of that declaration, underlined that Mary is our sister in humility and poverty, having truly shared our human condition (Paul VI 1964, 1974). These latter concepts of humility and poverty draw Mary into a sphere of influence which does not depend on or derive from her predestined role as the Immaculate Virgin. Rather her relevance and importance can be appreciated in terms of what she shares with humanity, not what distinguishes her.
Perroni (2009) notes that neither Matthew nor Luke depict Mary accompanying her son; indeed, she seems excluded by virtue of Jesus’ rejection of biological family in the synoptic gospels. She reappears in the story after the Resurrection praying with the apostles and others (Acts 1:14). Perroni interprets this as a period of profound estrangement and even isolation which does not, however, preclude Mary’s capacity to accept the Resurrection and integrate herself into the community. This would be much closer to human experiences of alienation and rupture than of predestination and glory.
From the sociological perspective, what does it mean to say that Mary is ‘sister’, that is, one of us? How does her relationship with humanity relate to the ‘secularization’ of the Church, in the sense of a lay Church? How does her role as sister play out in a Church of differences? In this scenario, ‘sister’ does not replace ‘mother’, but it certainly challenges it. The motherhood of Mary is an instance for many of the patriarchal reasoning and attitude which has characterized the Church and a greater emphasis on sister might speak against that. Many feel that through the use of ‘sister’ there will be a reinterpretation of the place of Mary in the Church where difference is valued in a lived ecclesiological reality. This might also have important ramifications for Carmelite Mariology and its tradition of the use of ‘sister’.
Given the scarcity of information about the early Latin hermits on Mount Carmel, it is not possible to establish an incontrovertible view about the possible Eastern influences on Carmelite Mariology. Rather there are two thematic strands which come together in an Eastern monastic environment, which was undoubtedly a feature of the mountain range where the Latin hermits settled at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The archaeological evidence speaks very clearly of a number of Eastern settlements, both eremitical and coenobitic. This gives an unmistakably Eastern ambience in which the Latin hermits lived. The first thematic strand, that of the prophet Elijah, is also represented by the traditional identification given to several sites on Mount Carmel, not least by the ‘dwelling of Elisha’ and the ‘cave of Elijah’. The Elijan theme is taken up strongly by the first Carmelites in the West as they sought to justify their existence and to create a sense of identity. The second theme, that of Mary, is also represented by both physical evidence and documentary accounts with a very solid convergence of evidence regarding the dedication of the first oratory of the Latin hermits to Mary, even if the motivation is not clear. The dominant subject that gradually unites Elijah and Mary is that of virginity. Elijah is the first man to take a vow of virginity and Mary the first woman. Initially, Mary’s vow is seen as an imitation of Elijah’s. Later there is a reversal of the sequence and Mary’s vow becomes the inspiration for Elijah, and the first Carmelites. The common vocation to virginity shared by the hermits and Mary is expressed in the term ‘sister’, characteristic of Eastern Mariology. This is the dominant meaning of ‘sister’ for the medieval and early modern Carmelites. It is not a term that appears often in Carmelite Mariology, but it occurs sufficiently often to call it a distinctive trade mark of the Order’s approach to Mary.
It would be reductionist, however, to limit the significance of Mary as sister to medieval shorthand for a shared commitment to virginity. What space might there be for a new interpretation and application of this way of thinking about Mary in the present-day Church? How might the concept of Mary as sister be modern shorthand for solidarity with those searching for a space in the contemporary Church?