Found at the website for The Tidings, a weekly newspaper by the Los Angeles Archdiocese:

Mary Magdalene: Setting the record straight
by Jerry Filteau

This article focuses on the effort to redeem Mary Magdalene from her reputation as a penitent sinner. Some excellent points are made in the process:

Of the repentant prostitute version of the Magdalene, she said, “What a lot of us who’ve done some work on her say is … it’s a wrong one and in the process it’s robbing us of (appreciation of) women’s leadership at a crucial moment in the early church. In other words, in a way it’s easier … to deal with her as a repentant sinner than as she emerges in the Gospels in her own right.”

The article hits on some salient points of this issue, such as Mary Magdalene’s demon possession, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, the fact that she witnesses the resurrection, etc. It’s the standard position for Christian feminists on Mary Magdalene, but worth a read. I was particularly impressed by the snappy wrap-up by Sister Elizabeth:

Summing up the real Mary Magdalene with what she called the “w’s,” Sister Elizabeth said, “Let’s get this straight: She was not Jesus’ wife … neither a wife nor a whore, but a witness.”

That’s a newsbite worth repeating.

Also in the news is an article about Margaret Starbird from the website for a local Puget Sound newspaper called The News Tribune:

Steilacoom writer backs mystery of ‘Da Vinci’
by Steve Maynard

(Steilacoom is a place name for those not from Washington State.)

Here the author of this article gives a few details from a local talk given by Margaret last week. Hinging on the references made to her books in DVC, Maynard includes a few quotes from members of her audience about the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married as well as the upcoming DVC movie.

Before listening to Starbird, Billie Blattler of Steilacoom said she couldn’t wait to see the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code” the day it opens.

But some of her friends – while Christians like her – refused her invitation to go. “They said, ‘It’s all lies,’” Blattler said. “It’s a fictional story,” she said, but “it has a lot of facts in it.”

The article goes on to say:

Boosted by Brown’s references, Starbird speaks around the country on evidence from the Bible, folklore and medieval art that she believes shows Jesus and Mary Magdalene were husband and wife. She also believes Jesus and Mary Magdalene produced a child – a daughter.

Interestingly, I just got a catalog from Margaret’s publisher the other day (Inner Traditions). Since last August, she’s sold 24,000 copies of her most recent book, Bride In Exile. Her first book, The Woman With The Alabaster Jar, one of two of her titles to be mentioned in DVC, has sold 140,000 since it came out in 1993. Previous to the publication of DVC in 2003, it had sold fewer than 50,000 copies, according to the Inner Traditions catalog. So in the last three years, her first book has almost tripled in sales compared to what it had done during the previous decade.

Margaret is the hardest working Mary Magdalene author I know. She tours the country doing speaking engagements regularly, and did so even before the publication of DVC. Even before Dan Brown’s book hit shelves, Margaret was filling workshops from coast to coast. Certainly the number of invitations has increased since 2003, but she is serious about spreading her message. And there are a great number of people listening.

This isn’t all about The Da Vinci Code. The way I see it, DVC is merely shining a great big light on something that has been happening for a number of years. This is why I think that the interest in Mary Magdalene will continue far beyond the DVC mania.

I received an email from a gentleman just a little while ago that is very interesting. He’s articulate, a good speller, and seems like a very intelligent person. And yet he says:

I was very moved when I read in the gospel the even though Mary was a sinner and a prostitute that Jesus Christ did not look down on her but forgave her for her sins.

He goes on to say, ironically, that the Gospels are the most accurate source of information that we have about Mary Magdalene. I agree, but where did he get his Gospels?

I suspect that his knowledge of MM as a sinner relies on her composite identity with Mary of Bethany and Luke’s anonymous sinner. But still, I remind my gentle readers, the Gospels do not say that Mary Magdalene was a sinner or a prostitute. Anywhere. Or that Jesus forgave her.

For some time I’ve given consideration to putting a challenge up on Magdalene.org. It would go something like this:

$1,000,000 for the first person who can point out the passage in the Gospels that says Mary Magdalene, specifically, was a sinner of any kind!

It’s a safe bet as far as I’m concerned. It is a bit snarky though, which is why I haven’t done it. Still, on my more cynical days, I find emails like the one I received earlier discouraging. It isn’t that Mary Magdalene is still considered a redeemed harlot. It isn’t that some people believe she was a sinner, or even that she was a prostitute. I find all of that understandable just based on tradition.

What bothers me is when people claim to have read these things in the Gospels themselves. The fellow who sent me the email did not read in his New Testament that Mary Magdalene was a sinner and a prostitute and that Jesus forgave her sins. That is what he believes happened according to his reading of the Gospels.

There’s a difference between what is there and what we believe is there. Sometimes the difference is subtle, and sometimes, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, the difference is glaringly obvious. It seems to me that a great deal of the disagreement that arises between Christians and non-Christians, and even between Christians of different stripes, is caused by differences in the material believed to be there.

That’s fine. We are all entitled to interpret our experience of a text in different ways. But for heaven’s sake, don’t claim to have read something if it just isn’t there.