Mary Garrigan: Beloved icon offers lesson in free speech

| Tuesday, March 14, 2006

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In Rapid City this week, the Blessed Virgin Mary taught the Prophet Muhammad something about free speech.

First, let me say that I think Muhammad is a holy prophet who said some very spiritual things.

It’s just that I’m a bigger fan of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In my home, I have images of her as a young girl, as an old crone, as an Orthodox icon. I keep a little white Madonna and child statue by the kitchen sink and a tiny blue Mary medallion in my jewelry box. I thought she was, going away, the best thing in Mel Gibson’s movie, “Passion of the Christ.”

“Let It Be” is my favorite Beatles’ song because she’s in it.

The BVM has saved my spiritual bacon too many times to count, usually at some point in life when I badly needed a maternal sort of spiritual comfort. Mother Mary has always been accessible.

So I understand that many of the people who love her like I do are upset about the postcard sent out by HB1215 foe Bob Newland.

The postcard is an icon of Mary holding Jesus Christ to her heart. With a little help from PhotoShop, Newland has superimposed a picture of state Sen. Bill Napoli’s face on Jesus’ body and re-printed Napoli’s bizarre statement on the card about pregnancy resulting from the rape of a virgin. Newland titled the whole thing “The Sodomized Religious Virgin Exception SDCL 1215-1-1,” mailed it and made his own political statement.

Some people think it’s offensive. They think it’s irreverent, blasphemous and sacrilegious. They think it’s anti-Catholic.

Maybe it is all of the above. The blurry line between blasphemy and humor is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

But even if it is, don’t worry about Mary.

This is a woman who endured the brutal crucifixion of her only child. I don’t think a little computer manipulation by Bob Newland is going to bother her much. She has survived much worse from the “art” world. Persecution, as the Virgin Mary well knows, comes with the territory for Christians.

Besides, I like the suggestion that the Blessed Mother is holding Bill Napoli close to her heart. He needs all the help he can get.

But I’m pretty sure that Newland is not mocking the Virgin Mary, or religious virgins, or virgins at all. He’s mocking Napoli and the rest of the state legislators who voted for what Newland considers a mockery of the Constitution.

In America, he gets to do that. I’m thrilled that he does, even if I’m less than thrilled that he used a religious image that I hold dear to make his political statement. I defend his right to offend.

It may not be in good taste, but it is good democracy.

That’s the way it works in a society that is based on free speech, and it is one of the many cultural differences that makes me despair of the Bush administration’s pipe dream of plopping a U.S.-style democracy down in Islamic states run by the same clergy who lead the mosques. If the violent reaction in the Muslim world to the publication of those 12 Danish cartoons didn’t show us the difference between a theocracy and a democracy, nothing will. It is a good lesson in the dangers inherent in mixing religion and government, for people of all faiths, and I hope it serves as a reminder to extremists and fundamentalists of all stripes that our Constitution separates the secular and the sacred for a reason.

A society that stifles free expression, in the name of Muhammad or in the name of the Holy Mother, is not a society in which I want to live.

I don’t like Newland’s cartoon any more than I liked Napoli’s comment. But I love living in a land where they are both free to produce either. That’s a blessing that transcends any religion.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8410 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com