Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother. Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary.

Allen, William Cully ; Weiner, Samantha K.

Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother. Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary. Oxford. U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 264, $45.00.

In this book, Clooney engages in a theological experiment, arguing for the value of comparing what we learn of Hindu goddess traditions with specific strands of Christian tradition. As he began translating the three Hindu hymns--the Sri Guna Ratna Kosa, honoring the luminous Sri; the tantric Saudarya Lahari, honoring the great Dev; and the Saiva Apirami Antati, honoring the beautiful Apirami--he explored how those of us who are not Hindu can learn from them about Hindu goddesses, about what it means to worship a goddess, and about how gender matters in a cross-cultural study of divinity. By engaging in this line of inquiry, Clooney seeks to take divine gender seriously and to render these Hindu goddess hymns a resource for rethinking goddesses in feminist theory and feminist Christian theology.

Clooney includes readings from the Marian tradition in each chapter of this work to help a primarily Western audience encounter and think through the traditions of Sri, Devi, and Apirami. Clooney explains that if the study of goddesses also illuminated and brought new life to reflection on Mary, it would have been an additional benefit, not his principal intention. The Marian hymns that Clooney implements to serve as portals by which to enter the goddesses' worlds include the ancient orthodox Christian Akathistos, the thirteenth-century Stabat Mater, and the Tamil hymn Mataracamman Antati. Each of these Marian hymns explores strategies for veneration of Mary, to aid in answering whether or not speaking to Mary is functionally the same as speaking to a goddess. In both the Marian and goddess traditions, hymns are the central vehicle by which to communicate with Mary and the goddesses, because they speak not simply about but also to the one who is praised and loved. Although the Marian encounter does not exactly replicate the three Hindu encounters with goddesses, it does approximate, as nearly as may be possible in the Christian tradition, what such encounters might possibly mean. This is because Mary is a both/and figure: She is a human person, and she is the exalted, nearly divine Mother of God. This makes her the one figure in the Christian tradition that most effectively helps Christians to see beyond their tradition to where Sri, Devi, and Apirami stand as ideal, divine women. In this way, one becomes able to see Mary and Sri, Devi, and Apirami as mutually illuminating female persons.

Although Clooney's contribution is somewhat modest, he succeeds in demonstrating that goddess theologies are intelligent, plausible, and attractive and cannot be dismissed on intellectual grounds. He explains that, even if Christians do not take so bold a step as to affirm gender differences in God, Christians can be more aware of the choices made in moving between a God who transcends all matter and is not gendered and a Mary who, though not God, seems to resemble and stand in for the divine female, even as she is declared not divine.

William Cully Allen and Samantha K. Weiner, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA