Op-Ed: How Mary Feels About Being a Virgin

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Maureen Down

Pope Benedict XVI departing St. Peter’s Square in a helicopter on
Thursday, leaving behind questions about how the church might evolve.

BROADWAY---Colm Toibin has plenty of experience getting inside women’s heads. In “The Testament of Mary,” a one-woman show with Fiona Shaw previewing later this month on Broadway, Toibin imagines his own version of how the Virgin Mary felt about crucifixion — “the most foul and frightening image that had ever been conjured up by men” — and whether she really had not known Joseph in a biblical sense. Toibin, who describes himself as a lapsed Catholic, said he was inspired when he went to Venice and saw Titian’s radiant “Assumption of the Virgin,” and then “up the road” saw Tintoretto’s chaotic crucifixion painting. Toibin says that the church must have tolerance, and that its leaders have lost any sense of how their sanctimonious denunciations clash with their scandals and imagery, causing nothing but pain. [link]