If early Christianity was the subject of tabloid magazines, Mary Magdalene would be on most of the covers. After all, Jesus' most famous female follower has been the source of much speculation. She's been called a prostitute, an adulteress and even Jesus' lover.
Believers who celebrate Mary Magdalene, whose feast day is Thursday, dismiss the rumors.
They are fascinated by the saint because of her unwavering devotion to Jesus.
She is, to them, one thing above all else: a model of how to follow Christ.
And for some, she reminds them of the denigration of women leaders in the early church.
"Jesus understood and valued the role and the power of women," even if the men who led the early church didn't, said the Rev. Eric Williams, pastor of North Congregational United Church of Christ on the Northwest Side.
On Sunday, the church, at 2040 Henderson Rd., will have its fourth annual Mary Magdalene celebration with a worship service at 5 p.m. followed by a feast of Middle Eastern cuisine. The church is expecting at least as many participants as last year's event, which drew 150 people.
After Jesus' ascension into heaven, Mary Magdalene taught and preached. But because of the sexism of the institutional church, the focus was put on Peter, Williams said. St. Peter is considered the first bishop of the Catholic Church, and as one of the 12 apostles, he helped Jesus establish Christianity.
Many of the women in the Bible are unnamed, and Mary Magdalene's importance has been largely ignored by Christianity with its patriarchal bent, said the Rev. Susan K. Smith.
Her church, Advent United Church of Christ on the Northeast Side, is co-sponsoring Sunday's event.
Protestants aren't the only ones celebrating Mary Magdalene.
So do both traditional Catholics and Catholics who want to change their church.
The Columbus chapter of Call to Action, which advocates for the liberalizing of church policies on female ordination and priestly celibacy, will have a Mass in celebration of Mary Magdalene at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Maple Grove United Methodist Church, 7 W. Henderson Rd. in Clintonville.
The celebrant will be Joan Clark Houk of suburban Pittsburgh, a Catholic woman ordained as a priest as part of a Catholic-reform movement.
She was ordained as a bishop last year by female bishops who were secretly ordained by male Roman Catholic bishops in Europe, Houk said.
Evening prayer in honor of Mary Magdalene will be at 4 p.m. July 25 at her namesake parish, St. Mary Magdalene Church, 473 S. Roys Ave. A picnic will follow.
The Rev. Stanley Benecki, pastor at the Hilltop church, dismisses the rumors about Mary Magdalene, saying she gets a "bad name."
What matters, he said, is that she is a model of discipleship for men and women alike.
"If we want to talk about the perspective of the role of women, how can we miss that one?" he said. "The first person (Jesus) appeared to was a woman, and he gave her the job of spreading the news of the Resurrection."
The Bible also says that Mary Magdalene stood by Jesus during the crucifixion, a time when most of his male followers had deserted him out of fear, Williams said. She was there for his burial as well.
The other places Mary Magdalene is mentioned - or may be mentioned - in the Bible are less cut and dried.
For example, some have interpreted the adulteress whom Jesus saves from stoning in the Gospel of John to be Mary Magdalene, though she is never named. Historically, some also have made her the "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus' feet in the Gospel of Luke. But that woman isn't named as Mary Magdalene either.
She is named as a woman from whom Jesus casts "seven demons." But we don't know what that means - sin or illness, physical or mental?
Pope Gregory VI, needing a female model of penitence, conflated all those female figures in the Bible into Mary Magdalene, said Diane Apostolos-Cappadona. She teaches religious art and cultural history with a focus on gender at Georgetown University.
"Male authorities" throughout the centuries used Gregory's words to indicate she was a prostitute.
In 1969, the Catholic Church officially cleared her name.
Pop culture has been eager to cast her as Jesus' lover, most recently with Dan Brown's 2003 book, The Da Vinci Code.
The evidence used to support that theory partly comes from a badly preserved document, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Apostolos-Cappadona said. The gospel is considered a "Gnostic gospel," a group of writings by early Christians who claimed to have secret knowledge. It is not part of the Bible.
The document says, in reference to Jesus and Mary, that "he kissed her ...," but the next word is gone because of a hole in the papyrus, Apostolos-Cappadona said. So we don't know where he is said to have kissed her or what that could mean.
Some scholars believe she is the "beloved disciple" who appears throughout the Gospels, the one Jesus loved most.
To Mary Magdalene's admirers, the controversy doesn't matter.
Her friendship with Jesus in a time when women had no social status showed that Jesus was "radical in that he viewed all marginalized people as good. He included women in his discipleship," said Pam Highlen, the North Congregational church member who started the Magdalene celebration.
The legends and rumors are "foolish" distractions from the true lesson of Mary Magdalene, said Benecki, the Catholic priest.
"She's an important role model for Christian men and women in their discipleship."
Mary Magdalene was clearly a sinner, though we don't know the nature of her sin, Apostolos-Cappadona said.
"She is a model for redemption. She is a model for prayer, devotion, for spirituality. We can all be saved."
SIC: TCD