After some five-hundred years of largely unchallenged supremacy, it is probably hardly surprising that Catholicism is so embedded into Argentinean culture that that which passes for Evangelical theology here is frequently little more than a reactionary attempt to define ourselves as “not-Catholic”, a fact which was illustrated to me once again this morning while I was teaching the older kids at Sunday-school.
First indication; opening a group discussion on the life of Jesus quickly turned into a discussion on the person of Mary. Second indication; every child had an opinion on the person of Mary whether from their parents or their previous Sunday-school experience.
Thus we abandoned the plan in order to explore a range of intriguing questions from the floor; Did Mary really exist? Was she a real person? Was she really the mother of God? If Jesus was in her tummy, then she couldn’t be a virgin could she? (Cue exegete of Matthew 1:18-20 combined with impromptu sex-education lesson). But my favourite of all was:-
“If Mary used to be a real person then why has she turned into a statue now?”