from The New Yorker

Mistaking Mary Magdalene

The subject of numerous controversies, she is defined by ambiguity, welcoming outcasts to the Church and provoking more imaginative approaches to faith.

By Eliza Griswold

A painting of Mary Magdalene.

An ancient depiction of a naked woman hung on the wall of my father’s study. Skeletal, stupefied, and wildly bedheaded, she contemplated distances across time and space, as saints and mystics do. As with many of the unsettling religious tchotchkes scattered around the rectory where I spent my childhood, I didn’t give much thought to the unkempt icon, until more recently, when I grew curious about Mary Magdalene and began to read into the controversies swirling around her.

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