What WAS the role of Mary Magdalene in Catholic Doctrine????

The Da Vinci Code lifts Mary Magdalene from her traditional status as a repentant prostitute and regulates her to a conventional role of wife and mother. (What is wrong with that???) I see nothing wrong.

The novel tells us that she sits at the table with the other (male) apostles in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous mural, “The Last Supper”—at Jesus’ right hand as his wife, and is viewed as a chalice, a vessel. The mother of Jesus' holy children. (Again I see nothing wrong with that).

Would not Jesus have lived a life as a man yet retained the dignity of his role as the Son of God.

She is specifically named as one who travels with him and the disciples (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). She witnesses his death (Mark 15:40, Matthew 27:56) and burial (Mark 15:47, Matthew 27:61, Luke 23:55), brings spices to anoint his corpse (Mark 16:1, Matthew 28:1), and is named in three of the gospels as the first to see and recognize him after his resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10, Mark 16:9, John 20:14-18).


According to, The Complete Gospels, by Karen King states that the theology of the Gospel of Mary is as follows:

. . . the Gospel of Mary communicates a vision that the world is passing away, not toward a new creation or a new world order, but toward the dissolution of an illusory chaos of suffering, death, and illegitimate domination. The Savior has come so that each soul might discover its own true spiritual nature, its "root" in the Good, and return to the place of eternal rest beyond the constraints of time, matter, and false morality.

The Gospel of Mary exalts Mary Magdalene over the male disciples of Jesus. (Red flag for the Church)....The Gospel of Mary provides important information about the role of women in the early church.

In her introduction in The Nag Hammadi Library, Karen King makes these observations:
The confrontation of Mary with Peter, a scenario also found in The Gospel of Thomas, Pistis Sophia, and The Gospel of the Egyptians, reflects some of the tensions in second-century Christianity. Peter and Andrew represent orthodox positions that deny the validity of esoteric revelation and reject the authority of women to teach. The Gospel of Mary attacks both of these positions head-on through its portrayal of Mary Magdalene. She is the Savior's beloved, possessed of knowledge and teaching superior to that of the public apostolic tradition. Her superiority is based on vision and private revelation and is demonstrated in her capacity to strengthen the wavering disciples and turn them toward the Good.

If one were to look at Jesus and how he was raised to live among the Jews and the culture of that day would it not also dictate he would have had a wife? Besides, what kind of sin would it be for the Saviour to have been married? Perhaps the missing years of Jesus from the bible were intentionally left out by those of the Church BECAUSE it showed he could be human. Human in terms of loving, being a father, having a wife. Could he NOT have these and yet be Divine? How would history, humanity, doctrine portray Jesus if they knew he was indeed someone who was a husband...a father????

Think about how society viewed women in these days of Jesus. Second class status. WHAT would the church have done...any church thereafter if women were given the exalted status that it appears Jesus gave to Mary Magdalene????

I realize not everyone is going to agree with me or with current literature regarding this topic of course. Everyone has their own way of worshipping the Saviour but I for one would like to check out these agnostic gospels in further depth and really learn about what is in there, what these "stories" are of the one so set high by God....about this woman Mary Magdalene...former "prostitute."

I for one think that there is more to this woman than what the church claims. Just makes sense.

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/4453.shtml

http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelmary.html