Our Lady: Not Just for Catholics

In some Catholic parishes it’s a bigger day than Christmas or Easter: the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Beginning well before dawn, worshipers today will gather to celebrate the brown-skinned mother of Jesus who, legend says, appeared before a poor Mexican peasant in 1531.

But the celebration isn’t just for Catholics anymore. Increasingly, the pregnant Virgen de Guadalupe is turning up in other Latino-dominated churches as a way to make worshipers feel at home while honoring the mother of Christ and champion of the downtrodden.

Any church wanting to attract Latinos “that doesn’t take into account how deeply that message [of Our Lady of Guadalupe] is rooted in the Latino identity ... is pretty well doomed,” said Father Francisco Schulte, a scholar at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.

The trend is particularly noticeable at Episcopal and Lutheran churches, whose liturgical traditions are closest to Catholicism. Parishioners at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in National City, south of San Diego, will gather this evening to sing and bring roses for Our Lady of Guadalupe. During the service, eight children will have their first communion. “Mexicans identify with her because she looks like them,” said the Rev. Patricia Andrews-Callori, rector of the parish. “She’s been a consolidating force for Mexicans.”

In Berkeley, theology students and faculty at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a major West Coast seminary for Episcopalians, honored her Thursday evening with a service that mixed Catholic readings into the standard liturgy.

“The students have decided to do [a liturgy with] Our Lady of Guadalupe,” said the Rev. Lizette Larson-Miller, dean of the school’s chapel, adding that the class consists mostly of white and Asian American students. “They jumped wholeheartedly into it. They want to bring this to their parishes” after they are ordained.

In San Clemente on Sunday, St. Clement’s by the Sea Episcopal Church will have mariachis as part of its morning service devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Afterward, parishioners will parade through a nearby park for a picnic of tamales, enchiladas and homemade regional specialties of Mexico.

“Some people don’t understand it because these things are Catholic,” said Margarita Farias, a 33-year-old parishioner and mother of two who lives in San Clemente. “But I felt that [the Virgin of Guadalupe] is the mother of us all. I feel we can have her, celebrate her and be a part of this church too.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe’s appearance in non-Catholic services has scholars and others wondering whether the beloved apparition that has united Mexicans for nearly five centuries can bring together Christian denominations.

“If we can come together through her, then thanks be to God,” said Jaime Soto, auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. “It makes a lot of sense that the mother in a dysfunctional family keeps everyone together.”

Many scholars doubt the Virgin Mary’s appearance in the hills just outside present-day Mexico City, or even the existence of Juan Diego, the Aztec whose rough cloak is said to have miraculously carried the imprinted image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

But the hope given to oppressed Mexicans by the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe was real. Spanish missionaries spread the story of her apparition -- and her Indian features -- to convert Mexico’s indigenous tribes from their devotion to the Aztec mother-goddess, Tonantzin, to the Virgin Mary.

Today, there’s a saying that 90% of Mexicans are Catholic but 100% are guadalupano. So to connect with Latino congregants, especially Mexicans who’ve strayed from the Catholic Church, Protestant leaders find themselves grappling with what to do with her.

Traditionally, Latino Protestants, especially conservative evangelical pastors, have barred Our Lady of Guadalupe from their churches. Since its early years, the Catholic Church has had a special devotion to Mary and the saints, putting up statues of them in churches and praying to them as intermediaries of God. With the Reformation, Protestants drastically reduced their status, believing that any prayer to Mary or the saints was a sign of idolatry.

Arelis Torres recalls celebrating the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe in her native Dominican Republic. But now, as one among the 700 who attend services at Iglesia de Dios (Church of God) Pentecostal in Santa Ana, she has abandoned the tradition.

“You begin to understand the word of God, which is the Bible, and that does not include this sort of celebration,” Torres said. “We recognize Mary as the mother of Christ, but we do not give any honor. We do not believe in saints, just God.”

Some Protestants are reconsidering whether the banishment of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been too harsh -- if there’s a way to celebrate her work without seeing her as an intermediary to God.

“Even the original reformers of the church still honored Mary as a model of faith and a unifier,” said Jesse Miranda, president of the evangelical group AMEN, believed to be the nation’s largest Protestant Latino organization. He argues that Protestant churches have gone too far in downplaying the significance of Mary.

In a book about the spreading influence of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Maxwell E. Johnson, a Lutheran minister and Notre Dame professor, points to Lutheran churches in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas that honor the Brown Virgin. In his book, the pastor of a church in Carpentersville, Ill., writes about her parish’s celebration: “The feast of Guadalupe is one of the ways in which we ... express both our ‘catholic’ heritage and our Hispanic culture.”

Since 1997, a Lutheran liturgical planning book has suggested ways to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12.

Bishop Soto said he has some concern that Protestant churches could use the icon only as a kind of advertising to attract Latino congregants. In past years, storefront churches have lured Latinos into worship with Our Lady of Guadalupe, only to denounce the image as idolatrous.

“[They say it] needs to be removed not only from their churches but from their lives,” said Father Schulte, the Minnesota scholar.

Soto said Our Lady of Guadalupe is available to everyone. “It would be wrong for the institutional church to assume that we control this like a trademark,” he said. “I hope as other Christian churches learn to understand the evocative power of Our Lady, they too will learn that you do not use her; she uses you.”