Originally published at crisis magazine
When I was speaking with someone about Mary, the new film on Netflix, they commented to me that it was largely based on the apocryphal second-century text the Protoevangelium of James and the mystical writings of Maria of Agreda and Anne Catherine Emmerich.
I thought the comment was off and incorrect. I’ve personally read all four volumes of The Mystical City of God by Venerable Maria of Agreda as a podcast for TAN Books and now am doing the same for The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelation by Anne Catherine Emmerich. At the time when I spoke with the person, I had only watched twenty minutes of my pre-screener link and not the whole thing in its entirety. When I sat down to watch from beginning to end, I concluded two things: 1) Several depictions do not align with the Protoevangelium 2) The Mary presented in the Netflix film is not the Mary I have studied and written about over the years as a Marian theologian.
The opening seconds of the movie have Mary saying, “If you think you know my story, trust me you don’t.” I’m not sure the screenwriters of Mary knew her story either. Let
