Abstract

The Army of Mary is a conservative Catholic Marian devotional organization that centres its religious identity on the Virgin Mary, the Catholic Eucharist, and Papal primacy. However, this group was recently excommunicated from the church for the heterodox ideas of their charismatic foundress, Marie-Paule Giguère, who claims to be the incarnation of the Virgin Mary. Though causing a decisive break with the church, this revelation has aided the Army of Mary in their continued existence by becoming the foundation of their theological and eschatological worldview. The main purpose of this thesis is to question and elaborate upon how someone like Marie-Paule, a woman mired in a conservative socio-religious and moral framework, is able to gamer modes of gendered agency that allow her to act in ways that emphasize her rather distinctive ethical convictions and religious worldview. This research will demonstrate how Marie-Paule is able to navigate the fine line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy by subscribing to a conservative and patriarchal moral outlook that favours traditionalist views of women's roles and behaviours, while engaging the unambiguous power offered tacitly through the social and symbolic gendered role of motherhood. Hence, through the notion of motherhood, Marie-Paule and the Army of Mary are successfully able to negotiate their particular eschatological worldview without undermining their conservative ideals of Catholic tradition and gendered morality.