The Magdalene Review

His Popeness, Benedict XVI, has decided in all of his wisdom to refrain from mentioning Mary Magdalene and Martha in a children’s book he published earlier this year called “The Friends of Jesus.” And it’s not because he only wanted to included the canonical 12 disciples; no, he also mentioned Matthais (who replaced Judas after he committed suicide), and –get this– PAUL, who never even met Jesus.

I’m going to take the position here for a moment that Mary Magdalene WAS Mary of Bethany, since that is a commonly-held view in the Catholic Church.  With that assumption, the Gospel of John says it specifically:

“Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.”

The authors of the Gospels don’t go out of their way too many times to call out a special relationship between Jesus and his followers, but in this case, it’s so. Put aside for just a moment the fact that Jesus entrusted the news of his resurrection to a woman or two, and focus only on the passage from John and what it tells us.  To me it says that the house where Jesus was attended by Martha, with Mary listening at his feet, wasn’t just a convenient place for Jesus and his itinerant band of followers to rest and eat.  He was there because they were friends.

I think that Benedict has done a great disservice to the women in the Church by failing to mention that Jesus also counted women among his friends. The friendship of women doesn’t mean that you have to ordain them (although you SHOULD), it simply means that their presence was valuable to Jesus. I think I speak for many women when I say that failing to be cherished as friends –at the very least–, as Mary Magdalene and Martha were, can lead to an even deeper alienation of women from the Church than already exists.

Related links:

• the other friends of Jesus
• Pass notes No 2,821: Mary Magdalene