Society and the Problem of Divine Intervention

1

Daniel B. Lee

CaliforniaStateUniversityChannel Islands

Maria of the Oak:

Society and the Problem of Divine Intervention

Abstract

Maria of the Oak is a religious shrine located within an ancient grove of oaks in Germany. Thousands of religious pilgrims visit the site each year because of the “healing and helping power” of a legendary oak tree. This paper analyzes the content of written documents left by visitors and discusses the religious function and form of society that is reproduced. From the perspective of social systems theory, religion appears to use this specific location to structure personal expressions of the sacred into a relatively organized but freely developing chain of communication that is devoted to solving the problem of recognizing and steering divine intervention. Maria of the Oak functions when the social system of religion successfully shifts responsibility for experiencing divine intervention from itself to individual believers. This shifting creates the opportunity for religion to inform itself with the other-reference of cooperating pilgrims, without breeching its own operational closure.

Citation:

Lee, Daniel B. “Maria of the Oak:Society and the Problem of Divine Intervention. Sociology of Religion (forthcoming).

Maria of the Oak:

Society and the Problem of Divine Intervention

In his introduction to a forum on religion and place, Rhys Williams statesthat “In the study of religion, place may be integral” (2005:239).He continues: “Sacred spaces, as literal locations, are at the center of many human religious and spiritual systems. And for many peoples, these locations are part of the ‘natural world’… There are ‘landscapes of the sacred’ (Lane 2001) that show a deep association between aspects of the natural world and religious expression.” Williams’s interest in the social significance of sacred locations is shared by an increasing number of scholars of religion (Gilliat-Ray 2005; Nelson 2005; Woodard 2006).For instance, Crispin Paine suggests: “What we need now is much more study of people, how we imagine special places, how we agree to define them, why we want them, how we behave toward them. Particularly interesting are those places that attract more than one understanding” (2006:111). Paine draws our attention to the question of how people negotiate definitions and different understandings of sacred places. How do different people come to share the meaning of a special place? How does “a people” organize the variety of individual imaginations about the nature of a place? When Williams speaks of sacred places as being integral and at the center of human religious and spiritual systems, he seems to sidestep the “more than one understanding” quandary. How are scholars of religion and society able to observe what we might call the centering process of religious and spiritual systems? Are there as many sacred centers as there are people? Williams chooses to use the word “system” with reference to both religion and spirituality. Both types of systems, he suggests, are centered by sacred places. However, Williams does not explain what he means with the concept of system, how a system emerges, how spiritual systems relate to religious systems, and how different types of systems can both be centered in space. It seems likely that Williams uses the term system in a casual and uncritical fashion, as do many sociologists, without feeling the need to elaborate on these issues.But if we take the concept of system seriously, can we come closer to explaining the questions raised by Paine?

This paper uses the approach of contemporary social systems theory (Luhmann 1995, 1997) to investigateMaria Eich, Maria of the Oak, areligious shrine located within a grove of trees in Germany that attracts thousands of religious pilgrims every year. This paper explains how Maria of the Oak represents a setting in the commons, in the midst of nature, where individual pilgrims cooperate in making societyand the sacred visible. Data gathered at the site helps unravel the mystery of how society helps individuals meaningfully express their private experience of the sacred. Borrowing the words of Paine, Maria of the Oak is a place which undeniably “attracts more than one understanding.” Nonetheless, it is a site that also demonstrates the improbable connectivity of religious communication and society’s ability to reproduce itself without a center.

Maria of the Oak is described in these pages as a production of folk or vernacular religion (Yoder 1974; Priamiano 1995; Bowman 2003). In Leonard Priamiano’s opinion, vernacular religion includes “the verbal, behavioral, and material expressions of religious belief…” (1995:44). For Marion Bowman, “A vernacular religious approach stresses the importance of the geographical and cultural context in which belief and practice occur, as well as understanding the dynamic and all-encompassing nature of religion” (2003:286). Maria of the Oak is marked by the active role pilgrims play in reproducing the site’s appeal and spiritual power: they read and write texts addressed to Maria that are left at the shrine.

Although the shrine is immediately adjacent to a Catholic chapel that is maintained by a handful of resident Augustine monks, the written contributions of pilgrims are virtually unregulated by priests. This paper provides a content analysis of these “folk” contributions and concludes that visitors are drawn to the site because of the shared opportunity to observe and participate in what will be described as religious communication, or religion as a social system (Luhmann 2000). In the case of Maria of the Oak, religion appears as a system of communication that grows in complexity and social significance with each newwritten contribution. The site illustrates folk religion in David Yoder’s sense: “Folk religion is the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical forms of the official religion” (1974:14). For Yoder, folk religion is “relatively unorganized” and “exists in a complex society in relation to and in tension with” organized religion (1974:11).

This investigation provides a glimpse of how the social system of religionuses a specific location to structure personal expressions of the sacred into a relatively organized but freely developing chain of communicationthat is devoted to solving the problem of divine intervention. The idea that God is able and willing to help people cope with even the most trivial and mundane problems of life finds support in the doctrine of providentia specialis. God has a divine plan that is developing along a previously established general course, but according to this doctrine it still makes sense for individual people to ask him, as Niklas Luhmann relates, “to end wars, heal sickness, protect ships at sea, and to stop the mice from gnawing on the carrots” (2005a:245). If God is willing to extend his help, how does one communicate with him and explain what needs to be done? If divine intervention is experienced, how can one communicate gratitude?

The data presented here was collected by the author during twenty observational visits to Maria of the Oak over a two-year period. Pilgrims were observed visiting the site, writing, posting,reading written prayers, and also kneeling and praying inside the church. While interviews were not used to gather significant material, the author did gain background information by interviewing approximately ten visitors to the chapel and meeting with a monk who oversees the monastery’s archives. Fieldwork focused on documenting and analyzing the actual operations involved in the selectivereproduction of religious communication at the site (Lee and Brosziewski 2007). The author performed an unobtrusive content analysis of approximately 500 letters written to Maria and God. Letters that would have required any manipulation by touch or the turning of pages were not examined. Any posted items that were covered by others, folded, put inside envelopes, or stuck underneath ceiling boards, door,or window frames were also not examined, although visiting pilgrims were frequently observed handling and repositioning one another’s texts. The author also examined Ex Voto artwork and devotional gifts hanging inside the church building. At different stages in time, the artwork and notes posted on the walls and ceiling were photographed. Using a high-resolution digital camera, it was possible to effectively photograph a wall of notes and later enlarge individual items for interpretive analysis. To gain a comparative appreciation for the unique quality of Maria of the Oak, the author also visited five other Marian shrines in Bavaria.[1]

MARIA OF THE OAK: A THRESHOLD FOR PILGRIMS

There is a wealth of research devoted to understanding why religious pilgrims travel to locations such as Maria of the Oak, scholarship that helps explain the value of sacred places for both individuals and society (Stoddard and Morinis 1997; Coleman and Elsner 1995; Coleman and Eade 2005; Carroll 1999). In the opinion of Eade and Sallnow (1991:24), religious pilgrims tend to share a common motivation for journeying to a shrine, which is “to request some favor of God or the shrine divinity in return for simply having made the journey or for engaging in ancillary devotional exercises.” “Religious pilgrimage,”Maria Lee and Sidney Nolan assert, “is a timeless aspect of human behavior” (1989:xix). In their research on European pilgrimages, the Nolans emphasize the importance of pre-Christian and ecclesiastically unrecognized practices. They note the continued cultural significance of natural elements such as trees, springs, caves, and rocks at European shrines. Contemporary pilgrims, the Nolans conclude, appear attracted to many of the same elements that appealed to pre-Christian worshippers.

As the Nolans argue, a pilgrimage site does not necessarily require theological or ecclesiastical support in order to attract visitors. Marion Bowman argues that the focus of understanding vernacular religion must be fixed “on what people actually believe, and how they actually behave, how this is expressed in everyday life, rather than on some idealized notion of what they should be believing or doing. This is the context in which cultural tradition, informal transmission and personal experience of efficacy, are likely to be as important as authoritative texts or the opinions of religious professionals.” (2003: 286). At Maria of the Oak, the authoritative texts, religious opinions, and testimonies of Maria’s efficacy are contributed entirely by non-professionals. Sophie Galliat-Ray (2005:368) describes the roles “formal religion,” dogma, and priests play in the “processes of sacralization” at officially recognized places of worship, such as churches, temples, and mosques. She notes that such processes of sacralization rarely occur at sacred spaces in the public sphere. In contrast, sacralization in the commons takes place “because of the private, interior, and often painful efforts of individuals” struggling to address “crucial questions about life, death, and meaning.”

Understanding the attraction of Maria of the Oak as a pilgrimage site involves an appreciation of four different cultural resources that are produced by communication: the figure of Maria, the figure of the Oak, the semantic legacy of the Catholic Church, and the ability of pilgrims to actively participate in the flow of religious communication. The value of each of these resources will be discussed below.

Situated about twenty miles south of the Bavarian city of Munich, “Maria of the Oak” has served as a popular Marian shrine for more than 250 years. The faithful typically visit the chapel to pray, but many also come to enjoy the quiet beauty of the location. The monastery is situated in the KreuzlingerForest, a public recreational area, in the midst of a grove of ancient oak trees. Maria of the Oak is a unique Marian shrine in that the object of attraction is a particular giant oak. According to historical narratives, two young sons of a local ironsmith originally made a simple statue of Mother Maria in 1710. They placed their statue, only twenty centimeters tall, inside the hollow of an old oak tree. Across the Bavarian countryside, similar statues of Maria and baby Jesus, or of Jesus hanging on the cross, are ubiquitous. One may expect to find them situated in fields, at crossroads, at the entrance to a town, along pilgrimage routes, and hanging on houses and barns. It is related that the “Little Lady of the Oak” was eventually forgotten, and was nearly swallowed up by the growing tree. One day two girls came upon the barely visible statue. The girls, who happened to suffer from a terrible illness, got on their knees and asked Maria to help them regain their health. Maria hat geholfen! Maria helped! To express his gratitude, the father of the girls built a simple wooden chapel in front of the oak. He carefully freed the figure of Maria from the trunk’s grasp and placed it inside the chapel.

Today, pilgrims who seek “the Mother of Grace, Maria of the Oak” find her situated on the altar of a much more permanent, but still very small church building that was built in 1958 and enlarged in 1966. Directly behind the altar and its famous statue—separated by a wall—the trunk of the ancient oak treeremains, sheltered within its own special sanctuary. To visit the tree, pilgrims must use a small door outside of the church. Racks of burning devotional candles surround the entrance to a tiny room in which the massive trunk of the oak marks the center. Sheets of plate glass encase the tree so that it cannot be touched. The trunk rises from the floor and passes into a large hole in the ceiling. Daylight enters the room through a small round window. Many hundreds of cards and letters cover the walls and ceiling of the room, dispatches written on paper of different colors and sizes. While nearly every one is addressed to Maria, a few are addressed to God.

When visitors to Maria of the Oak write or read letters asking for supernatural assistance, they make reference to a longstanding semantic project devoted to describing the helpful character of Maria. This historical project is chronicled by the Roman Catholic Church in the form of archived texts written by saints, popes, and theologians. For instance, in a document entitled, “We can Count on Maria’s Intercession,” Pope John Paul II acknowledges the effectiveness of Marian shrines and writes that Maria’s “maternal heart cannot remain indifferent to the material and spiritual distress of her children” (1997). Writing at about the time the two aforementioned Bavarian boys placed their iron statue of Maria within the old oak tree, Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (1931:136-7) explained the special advantage enjoyed by those who call upon Maria’s help:

St. Anselm, to increase our confidence, says this: “When we pray to the Mother of God we are heard more quickly than when we call directly on the name of Jesus—for her Son is not only our Lord but our Judge. But when we call on the name of His Mother, though our own merits will not insure an answer, yet her merits intercede for us and we are answered.” This does not mean that Maria is more powerful than her Son to save us. We know that Jesus is our only Savior, and that he alone by His merits has obtained and will obtain salvation for us.
However, when we have recourse to Jesus, we regard Him at the same time as our Judge, whose business it is to chastise ungrateful souls. Therefore the confidence necessary before we can be heard may fail us. When we go to Maria, however, she has no other office but to show compassion as Mother of Mercy, and to defend us as our advocate. Hence our confidence is more easily aroused and is often greater than when we go directly to Jesus.
Many things are asked of God and are not granted; they are asked of Maria and are obtained not because she is more powerful than God, but simply because God decrees to honor her in this way…

How quickly this good Mother helps all who pray to her! She not only runs, but flies, to our assistance.

De Liguori’s quasi-psychological account of petitioning for divine assistance is especially illuminating because it alludes to openness and contingency. The individual may pray to God, to Jesus, or to Maria; but a selection must be made in any case. Though they may disapprove of the veneration of saints, contemporary Catholic theologians remain aware that Maria herself has been and continues to be worshiped (Oberroeder 2006:26). In Bavaria, a rich theological discourse is joined by traditional religious folklore to project a clear image of Maria: though she watches from heaven, she remains involved with everything immanent. She knows that God’s children want the good things in life: the nuts and bolts of health, wealth, peace, and social standing. The everyday concerns of men and women in this life appear too small and mundane to attract the attention of God. In contrast, “Maria helps.”

That Maria has the power to help is a constant theme at Maria of the Oak. One finds the two words carved or painted on benches outside the church. Framed signs bearing the words, “Maria hilft,” can be purchased in the gift shop. The same words appear as a mantra on nearly every note written to Maria. Hanging on the walls in the church, dozens of paintings, both old and new, depict terrible events and include the same assertion: “Maria helps” or “Maria helped.” There is, for instance, a painting of a man trapped underneath a horse drawn cart. Another image shows a woman lying sick in bed. There is a painting of a motorcycle crash. A soldier lies low in a trench. Another illustrates an air raid, with bombers flying over burning buildings. A survivor of the Dachau concentration camp presented a colorful illustration of the prison: Maria helped him as well. Maria even came down to save a buck from getting killed by a hunting party. In each painting, an iconographic, stereotypical image of Maria and baby Jesus is placed in a superior position, overlooking the scene. She presides over every crisis, sharing her physical presence with those who suffer. In addition to paintings, individuals helped by Maria also leave devotional gifts in the church. One may see, for example, several framed collections of silver ornaments that represent body parts that Maria helped to heal. The tarnished pieces of metal are cast in the shape of body parts: an eye, leg, feet, breasts, heart, or ear. One may see silver models of children, husbands and wives, and even domestic animals. After Maria helps, one may thank her by purchasing and leaving such a gift inside the church.