What if Mary Magdalene was a good girl?

Mary Magdalene has been painted down the ages, or to be more precise since the sixth century, as the bad girl made good of Christianity. But the Biblical witness actually does not link her to illicit or immoral behaviour but rather places her in the ranks of the apostles as a witness to the Resurrection.
If St. Paul is allowed to call himself an apostle – as he claims he can having encountered the risen Christ – then Mary Magdalene more than deserves that appellation as in three out of four of the Gospels she is a primary, if not chief, witness to the moment and day of resurrection.
Early texts have a strong Magdalene tradition  – one where she is a proclaimer of Christ alongside Peter. In fact, the two are often seen as rivals. Peter states that as a woman Mary is not worthy to be alive in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. Jesus stands up for her saying he will make her a man. This perfection in androgeny is typical of the gnostic heresy towards which these writings lean but the real question is where has Mary Magdalene gone in Western Christianity and does it matter?
The Eastern Church has maintained a much higher place for Mary Magdalene than the West which at the hands of Pope Gregory managed to conflate three Gospel stories into one person – leaving Mary, unlike Peter, with a blemished reputation and a theological narrative of one who is forgiven rather than one who is sent to proclaim.
This diminution of her role is typical of the suppression of the female voice in Christianity. Mary the mother of Jesus is allowed only the word “yes” and then becomes subject to the male hierarchy of the Church. The cult of Mary, of course, tends to seep out around the edges of control, so that when Christ is locked up in cathedrals and councils, Mary becomes idolatrously worshipped as an accessible substitute to the living God.
But what does it say, what does it do for women, if Mary Magdalene was a person of high reputation. If a woman was not particularly weak or sinful, not over ridden by her sexuality, not a temptress but still the one to whom Jesus first appeared? What if this appearance was not a sort of strange consolation prize for the pain of her previous misdemeanours but, in fact, just the way God wanted it?
The Roman Catholic Church actually reversed the damage done by Gregory, well sort of. In 1969 they declared Mary one who points to the Resurrection as opposed to one who stands for sins forgiven – this is a very different place. The popular temptress images gives way to what? Do we even have good concepts of what a woman who witnesses Christ risen and goes to Peter (the foundation of the Church) with this information even looks like?
This is the core of a much deeper problem in the Church. If women are not temptresses, sultry eyed and alluring; if our job is not to derail and control men but to work alongside them in the Kingdom we have a lot of unravelling to do.
Despite the fact that Mary Magdalene was “pardoned” in 1969 it was done with such a low profile that people like me whose Christian formation took place after this date have still been brought up with scarlet and crimson Mary who really only just squeaks into the Saints list by the sheer mercy of God.
Boundless mercy is a good lesson and it is one whose benefits we all share – but is that what Mary teaches us, the joy of a sinner forgiven, or is that something more profound? Is it, perhaps, that there are some lessons of history which need unravelling. Is it that she is to be found, not in the weakness of her sinful constitution but in the strength of her love for her Saviour. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus are too often seen as the opposite faces of femininity – the pure and meek and mild of the one against the storming passion and lust of the other. Because most ordinary women are not the virgin we must be the temptress. This might seem overstated, but time and again it is the story of Christianity – women who submitted mind and body to the Church in religious orders and a self-abrogated sexuality might be holy, but all others, those who bore children and worked and loved and laughed all of them, all of us, are suspiciously sinful. Mary Magdalene, in this creed, is made pure by the overcoming of her rampant sexuality – surely a coded message from a Church hierarchy which was edging ever close towards a celibate priesthood.
So again, what if Mary Magdalene not so bad after all, what if she was a respectable woman from a respectable family with a husband and three relatively well adjusted children. What if she drove and van and owned a slow cooker. What if she went to work and was in a senior management position – and she, she, this ordinary, not particularly daring and very under control and sensible woman was the first to witness Our Lord risen.
What if Mary was a good girl after all?