Bring flowers of the fairest

The first of May is one of those things that I've mostly missed out on, being a Catholic convert after Vatican II. It's the traditional date of the May Crowning, when a statue of the Blessed Virgin is crowned with flowers in honor of spring. I'm told that it used to be a much bigger production than it is today, but I don't know; I've never seen it except in our own parish. (There's some background here.)

As an ex-Protestant, I'm usually in a bit of a quandary when it comes to Marian celebrations. On the one hand, I'm kind of leery of things like the May Crowning, especially since it also includes a statue. Yes, I know about the Second Council of Nicea, but I still hear the words "graven image" in the back of my head. You can take the boy out of the First Baptist...

At the same time, I'm rather disappointed in the way we celebrate things like the May Crowning in this country. There's a tendency for American Catholics to feel kind of furtive and half-hearted about these festivals, as though we don't want to be too enthusiastic for fear of scandalizing the neighbors. That's not just evident in our Marian celebrations. Every Christian festival we celebrate, we tone down.

Let's be honest; the United States is culturally a Protestant country. Protestantism, in turn, is not just a set of theological precepts but a cultural current shaped by the dour, spartan cultures of Northern Europe. I don't think I'm being disrespectful in saying that, just as Protestant theology is stripped down to its bare essentials by Luther's Solas, Protestant worship strips away a lot of the pageantry and showiness, stressing decorum and dignity instead. (I'm speaking here of the classic Protestant strains, the Calvinists, Lutherans and the like. We'll get to Evangelicals in a moment.)

Catholics in America are a minority, overall. Even though the censuses show that we're the largest single Christian denomination, we're still outnumbered by the various Protestant churches. More importantly, Protestants were here first, in the sense that when most Americans think of Christianity, Protestantism is the form that comes to mind. Catholics have come mostly from waves of immigration, and tend to feel sort of like newcomers in our country. It's not that we're persecuted or anything (although there was a time), but just that it's mostly a Protestant country.

(I'm in the Northwest, so I may not be seeing a representative sample. How about it, Nightfly? How true is this in a place like New Jersey?)

Because of that, we've kind of evolved our worship to conform to the attitude of our majority neighbors. We haven't changed theology to match, but we tend to go easy on the things that make Protestants uncomfortable, like icons and fancy rituals, especially involving saints. Catholics in other places, countries with a Catholic majority, don't have such constraints. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife has told me about feast day celebrations in San Antonio, where the faithful process through the streets of the city, carrying statues over their heads and singing at the top of their lungs.

Singing and making a joyful noise. Now whom does that remind you of? In a culture that tends to keep religion quiet, the Evangelical churches represent a totally different side of Protestant worship. There's a spectrum, of course, but it runs anywhere from the church my parents attend, with hands in the air and clapping, to the all-out tongues, dancing and shouting of the Assembly of God and other Pentecostal churches. It's so different from the old-style traditional Protestantism that Mark Shea suggested yesterday that the word "Protestant" isn't really applicable anymore. In a parallel development, America has Christians who are just as wild about God and demonstrative in their worship as the Catholics ought to be. It's a weird progression: Protestants repudiated Catholic enthusiasm, Catholics toned themselves down to match, and the descendant churches of the Protestants reintroduced enthusiasm without us.

The difference, obviously, is that Evangelical devotion, as strong as it is, is limited to God alone. Mary, especially, still makes them nervous, although I've heard that that's beginning to change lately, as more Evangelicals explore older Christian traditions from a new perspective. When I first started blogging two years ago, one of my first posts was an explanation of why Marian devotion is appropriate for all Christians. I still stand by that; I think if we love Jesus enough, we'll be wholehearted in our love for His Mother as well. She's the mother of the whole Church, not just the part that's still in union with Rome. Loving her shouldn't be an occasion of division.

It's a shame that American Catholics are so embarrassed of our Mother. That's really what it boils down to. We downplay our devotion to Mary, not because we don't believe in honoring her, but because we don't want the neighbors to see us, kind of like the teenage boy who insists that Mom walk on the other side of the street. What we ought to do is the opposite: invite our Protestant brethren to join us in honoring her without fear of lapsing into idolatry. I'd far rather see us lead other Christians in singing "Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today" than trying to pretend she's not a big deal after all, just so we won't look too different.