14 DAY TRIAL // In preparation for Christmas and the winter holidays, St. Matthews-in-the-City Church in Auckland, New Zealand has come out with another billboard meant to put things into perspective and provoke debate: one showing Virgin Mary learning she's pregnant.
Two years ago, St. Matthews put Mary and Joseph in bed with the tagline, “Poor Joseph, God was a tough act to follow.”
For 2011, the church is choosing to ditch the tagline, thus allowing believers to add their own, whichever they deem more appropriate in the given context.
The ad, which you can also see attached to this article, shows Virgin Mary holding a pregnancy test. It's pink, which means she's with child.
Obviously, hearing that she's pregnant is not welcome news for her: she's holding a hand to her mouth, as if still in shock, perhaps wondering what she'll do next, now that she landed herself in this predicament.
Asked to explain the ad, Vicar Glynn Cardy says its aim is to get people thinking about real people in real situations, to look behind the myth and face facts.
“It's real. Christmas is real. It's about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child. It's about real anxiety, courage and hope,” Cardy says in a statement cited by the Daily Mail.
The idea is not to cause offense for no reason, but to encourage people to talk about pregnancy and single motherhood.
“Regardless of any premonition, that discovery would have been shocking. Mary was unmarried, young, and poor,” the Vicar says of how Mary must have received the news that she was with child.
“This pregnancy would shape her future. She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last,” he adds.
Regardless of the good intention behind the ad, many voices online are saying that St. Matthews is trading respectability for publicity and fame.
What's worse, it doing so by “downgrading” Virgin Mary – and this should not be condoned, let alone hailed as revolutionary or open-minded.