No matter how strong the “spirit of antimary” may be, Mary still remains the most powerful woman in the world.
By Carrie Gress, Ph.D.
While writing my latest book, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis, (TAN Books, May 2017), I stumbled upon the idea of an antimary.
I kept running across the notion that Mary is the New Eve—an idea that goes back to the early Church Fathers. Mary as the New Eve is the female complement to Christ, the New Adam. In Scripture, St. John speaks of an antichrist as a man, but also as a movement that is present throughout history (1 John 4:3, 2 John 1:7). This got me thinking: if there is an antichrist, perhaps there is a female complement, an antimary? What, then, would an antimary movement look like, exactly?
It was not hard to come to some picture of what it an antimarian movement might look like, given that the examples in our culture today are legion.
While this article offers a basic blueprint for understanding the antimary, it scarcely scratches the surface about why Our Lady is the most powerful woman in the world. Nor does it get at the role she plays in culture, geopolitics, and even in the mundane details of our daily lives. For these and more, I’m afraid you will have to wait for the book. I will let you know when it is available for purchase.
The Journal for Catholic Culture & Arts 