I read your essay with real appreciation. Not only because it is beautifully written, but because I can feel the sincerity behind it. You are not trying to score easy points or flatten Protestant concerns into caricature. You are describing, from the inside, how something that once seemed alien or even troubling to you began to appear more beautiful through Catholic eyes. I respect that. And though I have not followed you back to Rome (for I believe I have mentioned before to you that I was baptized Catholic), I do not condemn you for doing so.
I also think you are right about something important: many Protestants have not known what to do with Mary. We can be so anxious to avoid excess that we end up saying far less than Scripture itself says. Mary is blessed among women. She is the mother of our Lord. She receives the Word of God with obedient faith. She stands at the hinge of salvation history. In that extraordinary line from Miracles, Lewis captures this beautifully: all of humanity, as concerns redemption, narrows to “a Jewish girl at her prayers.” That is not a small view of Mary. It is reverent, serious, and full of wonder.
So yes, I think Lewis lifts up Mary. He does not treat her as incidental. He sees her as uniquely chosen, uniquely obedient, and uniquely close to the mystery of the Incarnation. And I agree that many of us Protestants could learn from that. We should speak of Mary with more gratitude, more biblical attentiveness, and perhaps more awe.
But I am less persuaded that Lewis leads us all the way to Catholic Marian devotion or doctrine. The passage from Mere Christianity seems especially important here. Lewis does not affirm the Roman Catholic position; he carefully names it as controversial. He recognizes the chivalrous love Catholics feel for Mary, but he also recognizes the deep Protestant concern that the distinction between Creator and creature may be imperiled. His tone is respectful, but also cautious.
This is where I think your essay is both compelling and, at points, a bit overextended. The Sarah Smith passage in The Great Divorce is fascinating, and I can see why you read it in a Marian direction. The narrator’s startled “Is it?” almost certainly suggests Mary. But the reveal that it is not Mary seems central to the scene. Lewis is showing us the hidden glory of an ordinary saint whose love, in Christ, has become unimaginably fruitful. That may echo Mary, but it does not necessarily establish a Marian theology. It may simply show that sanctity itself is far greater than we imagine.
Likewise, Lewis’s medieval imagination gives him a much richer appreciation for Mary than many modern evangelicals possess. He is not embarrassed by the title “Blessed Virgin.” He is alert to her role in the drama of redemption. He can see how meditating on Mary may illuminate Christ. But reverence is not the same as dogma, and literary sympathy is not the same as Catholic doctrine.
For me, the decisive question is not whether Mary should be honored. She should. The question is whether the forms of Marian devotion that developed in Catholic piety are required, warranted, or pastorally wise for all Christians. That is where I remain Protestant. I want to honor Mary because Scripture honors her. I want to call her blessed because the gospel teaches me to do so. I want to see in her faith a model of discipleship. But I remain cautious about prayers to Mary, Marian processions, and doctrines that seem to ask more of the Christian conscience than Scripture clearly requires.
Still, your essay helps me see something I do not want to lose: Protestant caution can become Protestant poverty. If my only instinct is to say, “Not too much,” I may fail to say enough. Mary is not a threat to Christ when she is received as Scripture presents her: the Lord’s servant, the mother of Jesus, the woman who says, “Do whatever he tells you.” In that sense, every faithful reflection on Mary should end where Mary herself points us—to her Son.
So perhaps Lewis is a helpful guide after all, though maybe not in quite the way you suggest. He teaches Catholics to be patient with Protestant fears, and he teaches Protestants not to be stingy with Marian honor. He refuses to let Mary become either a battleground or an afterthought. He keeps the wonder of the Incarnation at the center, and from that center he allows Mary to appear in her proper light.
That is a place where I can stand with you, even if we still disagree. I can give thanks for Mary. I can learn from her obedience. I can admire the beauty Lewis saw in her. And I can do all of this while still believing that Christian devotion must finally and directly rest in Christ alone, the one Mediator, the Word made flesh, the Son whom Mary bore and worshiped.
Thank you as always for a thoughtful and charitable comment. You have become one of my favorite Protestant interlocutors on Substack, and the fact that I knew you first in person makes it that much more enjoyable! I get a small kick out of the fact that we've exchanged more words (and more substantive ones) online than we did when I lived in the Harbor, though my being 18 and uneducated may have had something to do with that. Hopefully we can rectify that over coffee or a pint on my next visit home :)
I should clarify that this essay is NOT merely, or even primarily, Lewis exegesis. I agree with you that Lewis himself does not get us all the way to the Catholic doctrines or practices. I am thinking of him somewhat like Dante's Virgil: he brings us to the edge, and no farther--from there he can only point. I mention this somewhat elliptically at the end of the last footnote, but I think what happened is that the mytho-poeic dimensions of his thought were always in some tension with his deep distrust of Catholicism. The veneration of the saints in particular remained one of Lewis's greatest hurdles to Rome. I am inclined to read this as a prejudice; although he expresses the aversion several times (here in Mere Christianity, in Letters to Malcolm, in The Discarded Image, in God and the Dock, in Allegory of Love), he never gives an argument for it. His letters and personal life reveal a long and complicated relationship with Catholicism, ranging at times from unreasoned distaste to deep attraction. It is also true that by the end of his life, he had moved solidly into the Anglo-Catholic "high church" camp, even referring to the liturgy as "the Mass." He believed firmly in purgatory and prayers for the dead, as I'm sure you know.
So on the one hand, he had an acute case of the Cathol-ick, perhaps, as many have suggested, due to his Ulster upbringing. On the other hand, he was often finding his way to Catholic conclusions through constant meditation on the mythic dimensions of the Faith, especially the Gospels. When it comes to Mary, then, I think he has effectively intuitively arrived at many Catholic conclusions, even if he's not willing to extend them all the way. That's why I turn away from Lewis at key points to let Scripture or the saints lead us past where my old master stops, since he stops short. In a way, this is precisely what makes him such an effective guide: he isn't repeating anyone's party line, he's giving us the fruits of his own prayer. It's also what ultimately limits him: this method can only take you so far, and is especially vulnerable to being skewed by one's own predelictions.
As for Sarah Smith in particular, though, I think my argument is sound. The emphasis on her spiritual motherhood, her apparently ordinary love that makes her famous in heaven, and the procession attending her, seem clearly to be Mary-in-miniature. Certainly, by the logic of the story, if the ghosts cannot even bend the grass, they will not be able to withstand the presence of Mary. Additional support for this reading comes from Lewis's favorite depiction of purgatory, St. John Henry Newman's "The Dream of Gerontius." In the poem, when the soul first arrives in heaven, he zips straight to the feet of Jesus, but, being incomplete in grace, experiences the Presence as burning, incapacitating pain that his guardian angel has to rescue him from. Now of course, Mary is to Christ as a candle to the sun, and even less than that. But still, that little candle is itself like the sun when compared with our own feeble souls.
Another way to think of this is as a kind of defamiliarization. The genius of the Screwtape Letters is that by presenting everything from the other perspective, Lewis is able to make the apparently commonplace truths of the Faith feel like fresh insights. Similarly, the point isn't that Sarah Smith is "not Mary," but rather that, precisely by being "not Mary," she opens up Marian insights we might otherwise miss. And I should add that while Christians have made Mary famous because of her love for her Son, she was of course as anonymous as Sarah Smith to the worldly powers of her day, and even to God's chosen people!
I am unsure how seriously to take his use of "Blessed Virgin." In medieval Christianity, and indeed in Patristic Christianity, the title ALWAYS referred to her perpetual virginity. The doctrine is commonly accepted by Anglo-Catholics, presumably including one of Lewis's favorite correspondents, Sister Penelope, an Anglo-Catholic nun of the Community of St Mary the Virgin. I can't imagine he thought it merely referred to Mary's state before the conception of Christ, and I haven't come across him saying that he meant the term in a way different from its standard usage. So I take his use as genuine but inconclusive evidence that he (like Luther!) accepted the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary.
The big point, though, is that all Marian theology, art, and devotion, is Christocentric. It's all about Jesus Christ, top to bottom. I know this will strike you as implausible, and I understand why. But you understand why loving your wife or children can be a way of loving Christ--Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East) simply think the same logic extends to loving Mary. The competitive mode is more and more a foreign way to think about love for me. And, if that experience is anything to go by, my own prejudices against Mary and Marian devotion didn't finally come undone until I (gingerly) tried it and found it breathing even more fire into my love for Christ just when I thought I had maxed out my Christic capacities. According to Protestant fears, my deep and growing love for Mary ought to be detracting from my focus on Jesus. This reasonable worry died in a fatal collision with the empirical fact that spiritual fruit positively exploded in my life when I fell in love with Mary. I didn't know I was capable of loving Christ as much as I have come to now under Mary's tutelage. I seem to recall a saying from somewhere about good fruits and good trees... ;)
Looking forward to keeping the conversation going, here and/or on future posts, but most of all in person! With love and gratitude,
This is all here say, but I was told that someone who was contemplating crossing the Tiber, once wrote to Lewis and asked him why he never converted to Catholicism. Apparently without giving any detailed reasoning, he replied that he couldn't accept the Catholic approach to Mary. His response was more of an expression of a sentimental aversion than any theological objection (surprisingly). The person who wrote to him, I was told by a much younger friend of his, was so struck by what poor justification it was, that he can converted to Catholicism himself. ....I can't back this story up, I've forgotten at this point who told me.
Hah that’s lovely! And also sad. I said this in my reply to Judson, but I think Lewis was somewhat caught between his own prejudices (I do not use this term lightly) and the deliverances of his own contemplation.
Yes, the same person who told me the story remarked that we have to remember that he came from a Protestant family in Northern Ireland, which might have left an anti Catholic prejudice in him, however much he have tried not to let it affect him.
Consciously, I think it was Tolkien and GKC who converted (confirmed?) my imagination on the point; but you have got me wondering about Lewis' part in all this.
Wonderful article, compelling argument, and it best of all, it accomplishes what any Marian reflection should: increased my love for that heavenly Lady!
Kudos for this wonderful essay! I wonder how this can shed light on de-constructioners' doubts regarding our Lady's fiat. Obedience is not unique to Mary in the Scriptures, but what makes her consent exalted than the rest is its singular effect on the salvation of the universe. Reading this, especially in the context of the "quiet culmination of a millennium’s labor," makes their arguments frivolous.
Eric,
I read your essay with real appreciation. Not only because it is beautifully written, but because I can feel the sincerity behind it. You are not trying to score easy points or flatten Protestant concerns into caricature. You are describing, from the inside, how something that once seemed alien or even troubling to you began to appear more beautiful through Catholic eyes. I respect that. And though I have not followed you back to Rome (for I believe I have mentioned before to you that I was baptized Catholic), I do not condemn you for doing so.
I also think you are right about something important: many Protestants have not known what to do with Mary. We can be so anxious to avoid excess that we end up saying far less than Scripture itself says. Mary is blessed among women. She is the mother of our Lord. She receives the Word of God with obedient faith. She stands at the hinge of salvation history. In that extraordinary line from Miracles, Lewis captures this beautifully: all of humanity, as concerns redemption, narrows to “a Jewish girl at her prayers.” That is not a small view of Mary. It is reverent, serious, and full of wonder.
So yes, I think Lewis lifts up Mary. He does not treat her as incidental. He sees her as uniquely chosen, uniquely obedient, and uniquely close to the mystery of the Incarnation. And I agree that many of us Protestants could learn from that. We should speak of Mary with more gratitude, more biblical attentiveness, and perhaps more awe.
But I am less persuaded that Lewis leads us all the way to Catholic Marian devotion or doctrine. The passage from Mere Christianity seems especially important here. Lewis does not affirm the Roman Catholic position; he carefully names it as controversial. He recognizes the chivalrous love Catholics feel for Mary, but he also recognizes the deep Protestant concern that the distinction between Creator and creature may be imperiled. His tone is respectful, but also cautious.
This is where I think your essay is both compelling and, at points, a bit overextended. The Sarah Smith passage in The Great Divorce is fascinating, and I can see why you read it in a Marian direction. The narrator’s startled “Is it?” almost certainly suggests Mary. But the reveal that it is not Mary seems central to the scene. Lewis is showing us the hidden glory of an ordinary saint whose love, in Christ, has become unimaginably fruitful. That may echo Mary, but it does not necessarily establish a Marian theology. It may simply show that sanctity itself is far greater than we imagine.
Likewise, Lewis’s medieval imagination gives him a much richer appreciation for Mary than many modern evangelicals possess. He is not embarrassed by the title “Blessed Virgin.” He is alert to her role in the drama of redemption. He can see how meditating on Mary may illuminate Christ. But reverence is not the same as dogma, and literary sympathy is not the same as Catholic doctrine.
For me, the decisive question is not whether Mary should be honored. She should. The question is whether the forms of Marian devotion that developed in Catholic piety are required, warranted, or pastorally wise for all Christians. That is where I remain Protestant. I want to honor Mary because Scripture honors her. I want to call her blessed because the gospel teaches me to do so. I want to see in her faith a model of discipleship. But I remain cautious about prayers to Mary, Marian processions, and doctrines that seem to ask more of the Christian conscience than Scripture clearly requires.
Still, your essay helps me see something I do not want to lose: Protestant caution can become Protestant poverty. If my only instinct is to say, “Not too much,” I may fail to say enough. Mary is not a threat to Christ when she is received as Scripture presents her: the Lord’s servant, the mother of Jesus, the woman who says, “Do whatever he tells you.” In that sense, every faithful reflection on Mary should end where Mary herself points us—to her Son.
So perhaps Lewis is a helpful guide after all, though maybe not in quite the way you suggest. He teaches Catholics to be patient with Protestant fears, and he teaches Protestants not to be stingy with Marian honor. He refuses to let Mary become either a battleground or an afterthought. He keeps the wonder of the Incarnation at the center, and from that center he allows Mary to appear in her proper light.
That is a place where I can stand with you, even if we still disagree. I can give thanks for Mary. I can learn from her obedience. I can admire the beauty Lewis saw in her. And I can do all of this while still believing that Christian devotion must finally and directly rest in Christ alone, the one Mediator, the Word made flesh, the Son whom Mary bore and worshiped.
With affection and gratitude,
Judson
Judson,
Thank you as always for a thoughtful and charitable comment. You have become one of my favorite Protestant interlocutors on Substack, and the fact that I knew you first in person makes it that much more enjoyable! I get a small kick out of the fact that we've exchanged more words (and more substantive ones) online than we did when I lived in the Harbor, though my being 18 and uneducated may have had something to do with that. Hopefully we can rectify that over coffee or a pint on my next visit home :)
I should clarify that this essay is NOT merely, or even primarily, Lewis exegesis. I agree with you that Lewis himself does not get us all the way to the Catholic doctrines or practices. I am thinking of him somewhat like Dante's Virgil: he brings us to the edge, and no farther--from there he can only point. I mention this somewhat elliptically at the end of the last footnote, but I think what happened is that the mytho-poeic dimensions of his thought were always in some tension with his deep distrust of Catholicism. The veneration of the saints in particular remained one of Lewis's greatest hurdles to Rome. I am inclined to read this as a prejudice; although he expresses the aversion several times (here in Mere Christianity, in Letters to Malcolm, in The Discarded Image, in God and the Dock, in Allegory of Love), he never gives an argument for it. His letters and personal life reveal a long and complicated relationship with Catholicism, ranging at times from unreasoned distaste to deep attraction. It is also true that by the end of his life, he had moved solidly into the Anglo-Catholic "high church" camp, even referring to the liturgy as "the Mass." He believed firmly in purgatory and prayers for the dead, as I'm sure you know.
So on the one hand, he had an acute case of the Cathol-ick, perhaps, as many have suggested, due to his Ulster upbringing. On the other hand, he was often finding his way to Catholic conclusions through constant meditation on the mythic dimensions of the Faith, especially the Gospels. When it comes to Mary, then, I think he has effectively intuitively arrived at many Catholic conclusions, even if he's not willing to extend them all the way. That's why I turn away from Lewis at key points to let Scripture or the saints lead us past where my old master stops, since he stops short. In a way, this is precisely what makes him such an effective guide: he isn't repeating anyone's party line, he's giving us the fruits of his own prayer. It's also what ultimately limits him: this method can only take you so far, and is especially vulnerable to being skewed by one's own predelictions.
As for Sarah Smith in particular, though, I think my argument is sound. The emphasis on her spiritual motherhood, her apparently ordinary love that makes her famous in heaven, and the procession attending her, seem clearly to be Mary-in-miniature. Certainly, by the logic of the story, if the ghosts cannot even bend the grass, they will not be able to withstand the presence of Mary. Additional support for this reading comes from Lewis's favorite depiction of purgatory, St. John Henry Newman's "The Dream of Gerontius." In the poem, when the soul first arrives in heaven, he zips straight to the feet of Jesus, but, being incomplete in grace, experiences the Presence as burning, incapacitating pain that his guardian angel has to rescue him from. Now of course, Mary is to Christ as a candle to the sun, and even less than that. But still, that little candle is itself like the sun when compared with our own feeble souls.
Another way to think of this is as a kind of defamiliarization. The genius of the Screwtape Letters is that by presenting everything from the other perspective, Lewis is able to make the apparently commonplace truths of the Faith feel like fresh insights. Similarly, the point isn't that Sarah Smith is "not Mary," but rather that, precisely by being "not Mary," she opens up Marian insights we might otherwise miss. And I should add that while Christians have made Mary famous because of her love for her Son, she was of course as anonymous as Sarah Smith to the worldly powers of her day, and even to God's chosen people!
I am unsure how seriously to take his use of "Blessed Virgin." In medieval Christianity, and indeed in Patristic Christianity, the title ALWAYS referred to her perpetual virginity. The doctrine is commonly accepted by Anglo-Catholics, presumably including one of Lewis's favorite correspondents, Sister Penelope, an Anglo-Catholic nun of the Community of St Mary the Virgin. I can't imagine he thought it merely referred to Mary's state before the conception of Christ, and I haven't come across him saying that he meant the term in a way different from its standard usage. So I take his use as genuine but inconclusive evidence that he (like Luther!) accepted the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary.
The big point, though, is that all Marian theology, art, and devotion, is Christocentric. It's all about Jesus Christ, top to bottom. I know this will strike you as implausible, and I understand why. But you understand why loving your wife or children can be a way of loving Christ--Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East) simply think the same logic extends to loving Mary. The competitive mode is more and more a foreign way to think about love for me. And, if that experience is anything to go by, my own prejudices against Mary and Marian devotion didn't finally come undone until I (gingerly) tried it and found it breathing even more fire into my love for Christ just when I thought I had maxed out my Christic capacities. According to Protestant fears, my deep and growing love for Mary ought to be detracting from my focus on Jesus. This reasonable worry died in a fatal collision with the empirical fact that spiritual fruit positively exploded in my life when I fell in love with Mary. I didn't know I was capable of loving Christ as much as I have come to now under Mary's tutelage. I seem to recall a saying from somewhere about good fruits and good trees... ;)
Looking forward to keeping the conversation going, here and/or on future posts, but most of all in person! With love and gratitude,
Eric
This is legitimately one of the best articles I’ve ever read.
:’) I am grateful you found it edifying
This is stellar. Thank you
This is all here say, but I was told that someone who was contemplating crossing the Tiber, once wrote to Lewis and asked him why he never converted to Catholicism. Apparently without giving any detailed reasoning, he replied that he couldn't accept the Catholic approach to Mary. His response was more of an expression of a sentimental aversion than any theological objection (surprisingly). The person who wrote to him, I was told by a much younger friend of his, was so struck by what poor justification it was, that he can converted to Catholicism himself. ....I can't back this story up, I've forgotten at this point who told me.
Hah that’s lovely! And also sad. I said this in my reply to Judson, but I think Lewis was somewhat caught between his own prejudices (I do not use this term lightly) and the deliverances of his own contemplation.
Yes, the same person who told me the story remarked that we have to remember that he came from a Protestant family in Northern Ireland, which might have left an anti Catholic prejudice in him, however much he have tried not to let it affect him.
Consciously, I think it was Tolkien and GKC who converted (confirmed?) my imagination on the point; but you have got me wondering about Lewis' part in all this.
Wonderful article, compelling argument, and it best of all, it accomplishes what any Marian reflection should: increased my love for that heavenly Lady!
It was a pleasure to write! If it was helpful even in some small way, mission accomplished. Ad majoram gloria Dei!
Thank you for this. As a Catholic, I have always wondered about the veneration of Mary as part of the faith. This helped to clarify it for me.
Kudos for this wonderful essay! I wonder how this can shed light on de-constructioners' doubts regarding our Lady's fiat. Obedience is not unique to Mary in the Scriptures, but what makes her consent exalted than the rest is its singular effect on the salvation of the universe. Reading this, especially in the context of the "quiet culmination of a millennium’s labor," makes their arguments frivolous.