I'll Take the Virgin Mary Over Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman, the comic strip heroine, comes from a long line of ancient mythological mothers and goddesses. When creator William Moulton Marston, aka Charles Moulton created her in 1941, he combined these ancient stories with his own ideas and gave her a biography.

Her immaculate birth occurred when her mother, Hippolyte, fashioned a clay statue and the earth mother Gaea enlivened it with a soul. Hippolyte named her Princess Diana and endowed her with gifts from the goddesses of Olympus. The Amazon nation, a race whose goal was the lead humanity in the ways of virtue, helped her mature. Diana possessed super-strength and powers, including phenomenal sensory abilities and immunity to diseases and poisons. She had incredible courage, leadership ability, and combat and rhetorical skills. In addition, she used magical weapons, such as the Golden Lasso of Truth, which forced anyone under its power to speak the truth. When the opportunity came to send an Amazon champion as an ambassador to the Man's World, Diana volunteered. She took the identity of Diana Prince, a demure army nurse, as her alias and began her career as Wonder Woman.

Throughout her adventures as Wonder Woman, Diana vanquished a variety of foes, joined the Justice Society of America, lost and regained her superpowers, and morphed from an Amazon to a married mortal to a virginal goddess along the way. Since 1941, she remains the image of--femininity.

What?

When Moulton - the chap Bishop Spong would like to canonize - first conceived his female superhero, he reasoned: "It seemed to me, from a psychological angle, that the comics' worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity. A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to the child as the breath of life." So, he created a superwoman, with a mission to an evil "man's world": to fight for virtue and justice. Not so different from the mission accepted by the Virgin Mary.

Hymns to the Virgin Mary in the Eastern Church claim she "possesses invincible might" and "sets us free from every calamity." Her weapon to repel evil is her integrity, reflected in her bodily virginity. In the ancient world, virginity represented not an absence of experience, but ripeness, a singleness of purpose, ready to be given to one man or to one cause. Women did not fragment their hearts and bodies and split their loyalties. Virginity offered led to fruit and fecundity, whether in marriage or another endeavor.

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