Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. Father "Don Jim" Tucker provides a summary, while our Benedictine friend Dom Stephanos synthesizes the real "Gospel of Mary Magdalene" for the benefit of anyone confused by the present hoopla.
Oh, and about that hoopla.
You see, according to various smarty-pants pseudo-intellectuals, the early Christians managed to take enough time out from being hunted down and fed to the lions by the Romans, to engage in a knock-down, drag-out power struggle for control of the Church, between Simon Peter -- who was merely given the keys to the kingdom by Christ Himself, a rather trifling detail if we are to be so easily duped by this school of thought -- and Mary Magdalene. Yes, the resurrected Christ did appear to the Magdalena before anyone else, and it was she who bore witness to his triumph to the Twelve. When you consider that Mosaic law did not hold the testimony of a woman to be reliable (a convention that exists among Orthodox Jews to the present day), such inclusion in the Gospel accounts is a far cry from her being "suppressed," or some such nonsense.
Tradition varies as to her fate after the Ascension. She may have gone to Ephesus with John and Mother Mary to live out her life. Others say she went to Gaul in southern France to spread the Gospel there. Still others maintain that she accompanied Joseph of Arimethea by ship up the coast of western Europe to the British Isles. No one with any sense, however, could rightfully claim that she married Jesus and gave birth to the ancestors of the Merovingian rulers in medieval France.
Any questions?
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