A Response to: Mary Garden

On 16 July 2011 on page 9A there was an article entitled, “Mary Garden honors mother of Jesus.” Finding this quite interesting, I read the article. After checking into the basic facts listed in the article I noticed some discrepancies, and contacted the author using the email address listed. The owner of the email address has forbidden me to use our conversation in this article, so I will go on without it.

My first initial response was to check the Catholic Dictionary on the entire available Saints throughout history, and those the Catholic Church Officially recognizes. In this article it mentions St. Fiacie in Seventh-Century Ireland. To my surprise there is no St. Fiacie, but instead a St. Fiacre according to http://newadvent.org. He lived from around the middle of the 6th Century and is said to have died on August 18, 670 AD. I am quite positive this is nothing more than a typographical error. However, if the author wishes to disclose her source for this information, I am quite willing to detract the above statement.

The author then goes on to say that the “Mary Garden” can be large or small. It can fill an acre or it can be a statue with one potted plant. She furthers states that they are meant to be a place of peace and reflection. At this point I know of no specific scriptural reference to making gardens in the honor of anyone. The only garden I know of, scripturally speaking, is the Garden of Eden. This is the very garden that Adam and Eve were kicked out of due to their sin against God. God, in turn, placed a flashing sword barring entrance to that garden ever again. In this garden, it was Eve that was tempted by Satan and was thoroughly deceived into taking a bit of that apple.

At any rate, since there is no scriptural reference mentioning gardens in honor of someone, we are free to go looking for those, “legends” the author mentions. In the article she states, “Most common people during the Middle Ages were illiterate and the flowers, with the...