Virgin Mary

Religion Writer Forwards New Feminist Complaint: We Never See Depictions of Virgin Mary Breastfeeding Jesus!
By Ken Shepherd | December 11, 2012 | 6:45 PM EST

As I argued yesterday, the Advent season is exploited every year by the liberal media to tweak faithful Christians, using the holidays as a hook for liberal political and religious themes or to advance ancient heresies. Ditto with the Lenten season.

Well, the latest example comes from David Gibson of the Religion News Service, who has picked up on a new complaint from a feminist scholar, Margaret Miles, which boils down to essentially this: How come we never see depictions of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the baby Jesus? I kid you not.

Karen Long Sings Praises of Colm Toibin's 'Testament of Mary'
By Ken Shepherd | December 10, 2012 | 4:57 PM EST

As we at NewsBusters have noticed, Advent and Lent seem to be the times of year that the liberal secular media loves to tweak devout Christians with attacks on historic, orthodox Christian teaching. The latest example is the media being abuzz over Irish playwright and novelist Colm Toibin's "The Testament of Mary."

The "silent, obedient, observant" Mary of Scripture that has "echoed down" through church history is ripped apart by "the masterful Irish writer Colm Toibin" who "puts a jackhammer to the cozy, safe, Christmas-card version" of the Mother of God, gushed Karen Long of the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a December 7 Religion News Service piece accessible at the Washington Post's "On Faith" section.

NPR Deeply Enjoys 'Playing With Fire' with 'The Basic Tenets of Christianity'
By Tim Graham | December 6, 2012 | 11:31 PM EST

As if a puffy seven-minute-plus story on Morning Edition wasn't enough publicity for Irish novelist Colm Toibin's abrasive takedown of the Virgin Mary, NPR's Terry Gross offered another promotional 45 minutes on Monday's Fresh Air. There's nothing NPR likes better than taking this humble, devout disciple and transforming her into some sort of bitter Real Housewife of Nazareth.

Toibin was encouraged to read passages from this vicious little Bible-shredding screed, about how Mary couldn't stand the sound of her own son's preaching: "my son would insist on silence and begin to address them as though they were a crowd, his voice all false and his tone all stilted, and I could not bear to hear him." Gross asked the obvious softball. Ahem, you know this sounds like you want to push Christianity down and steal its lunch money?

Here We Go Again: MSNBC's Harris-Perry Uses Virgin Mary to Push Liberal Talking Point on 'Evolving' View of Family
By Ken Shepherd | November 27, 2012 | 5:33 PM EST

Ah, the holiday season. It's that time of year when the liberal media loves to use Jesus and the Virgin Mary to push liberal talking points if not outright push the envelope. So while NPR is busy promoting a new novel that presents the Virgin Mary as a skeptic who believes her son Jesus was a fraud, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry went a safer but equally trite route, using the story of Jesus's nativity to erroneously lecture viewers that Jesus was the son of a single mother and that, as such, we should celebrate all kinds of families, not just the "1950s Leave It to Beaver"- style nuclear ones.

From her November 24 program (see video below):

WashPost's Miller Sad That Nuns No Longer Escape the 'Oppression of Marriage'
By Tim Graham | April 30, 2012 | 8:33 AM EDT

In Saturday’s Washington Post, religion columnist Lisa Miller brought her usual radical feminism to the table insisting Mary be “heard” as the Vatican insisted that American nuns and sisters actually act like they belong to the Catholic Church.

But this line stood out: “For more than a thousand years, women like Mary have entered religious life hoping to find a safe place where they might receive an education and protection from the oppression of marriage and the dangers of child-bearing.” The oppression of marriage?