relief, painting, or another medium). “Look,” I said to Michael, “where do you Catholics get this idea that Mary is Queen of Heaven? Isn’t that title on the verge of blasphemy? I challenge you to point to any scriptural evidence at all that Mary is ‘Queen of Heaven’!”
I sat back in my chair, a little self-satisfied that I had “pinned him to the wall” with the barbed shaft of a theological weapon. But Mike didn’t seem taken aback at all. He was neither shocked nor impressed. Without missing a beat, he said, “What about Revelation 12?”
“What do you mean? What about Revelation 12?”
“You’ve read it, right?”
“Of course. I’ve read the whole book of Revelation at least three times. My mom started me reading the Bible through each year when I was twelve.”
“Well, let’s think about it. You know how it has a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, right?”
“Right.”
“So she’s in the heavens?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s got a crown of twelve stars, so she’s a queen, right?”
“I suppose.”
“And then she gives birth to a male child who’s destined to rule the nations with a rod of iron. No doubt about who that is, right?”
“No, that’s a reference to the messianic ‘son of David’ from Psalm 2.”
“So we have a heavenly queen who gives birth to the Davidic Messiah. Couldn’t that be a reference to Mary, the only woman in Scripture who gives birth to a Messiah?”
I just looked at him in silence, and then glanced away in a huff. “You’re so clever I feel like you could prove to me this trash can over here is worthy of divine veneration,” I said in frustration.
But inside, I was impressed. Later, when I had the opportunity, I looked at Revelation 12:1–5 again and thought about it. I had spent several years of my childhood in Baptist churches near the various military bases where we lived. There I was exposed to Baptist end-times teaching. It was often quite elaborate, with various current events linked to different verses of Revelation by an exegetical hair. Inevitably, they found ways to see the threat of Russian communism and other current affairs in the text.
I would ask my father about these interpretations, and he just told me to keep an open mind. “Maybe,” he would say. “It’s a possible way to read the text.” Personally, he was unconvinced — as was I — but we allowed it could be true. So, I had always given the benefit of the doubt to my Baptist friends.
But now I was being confronted with a Catholic interpretation of Scripture that was relatively straightforward. The logic was not excessively contorted. It wasn’t contorted at all: “We have a heavenly queen here who gives birth to Jesus; may it not be a reference, in some way, to the woman who actually gives birth to Jesus?” I had always given the benefit of the doubt to my Baptist friends with their proofs that the “beast from the sea” (13:1) was Russia or some similar view. Could I, in all honesty, deny the same benefit of the doubt to my Catholic friend? Could it be that there was some scriptural basis for Mary as “Queen of Heaven”? Could one plausibly interpret the Bible that way? If so, could there be scriptural support for other Catholic doctrines as well?
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