The oddball places popular piety can sometimes go

One thing you might not guess about traditionalist Catholicism if your knowledge of it comes from the press is that it very much an individualist conception of the faith. For the Roman Catholic Church is very tolerant of people and groups of people pursuing special devotions that are meaningful to them and traditionalists encourage these special devotions. Most of the time this is a good thing but every once in a while you get some really bizarre notions springing up.

I was reading a book called The Irish Tradition by Robin Flower and came across a beaut. I'd heard of this particular peculiarity before but had no idea where it came from. Now that I know,  it all makes perfect sense. Anyway, I'll let Dr. Flower explain. He is talking about an idea that seems to have sprung up in 15th century Ireland:

There is one strange and characteristic conception found repeatedly in his [a poet named Angus O'Daly] verse which I find it hard to parallel from medieval literature, though I think it can be found implicit in the art of the time. This is the peculiar way of emphasizing the Virgin as the especial representative of humanity before God. Christ in judgment is depicted as showing the wounds received in the Passion and claiming vengeance on mankind for his sufferings. The poet calls on the Virgin to interceded with her son for her human kindred in the character of the nursing mother. (P127)

That is, of course, heretical. In fact, I can't imagine how you could be more heretical for it denies that Jesus intentionally died for our sins and makes His supreme sacrifice a travesty. But this sort of wackiness is not odd by medieval standards. (For example: some medieval morality plays portrayed Joseph as a cuckold having been betrayed by God and Mary.)

The odder thing, for me, is that I remember hearing this sort of thing when I was a kid from hard-core devotees of the Rosary. It usually wasn't quite so explicit as all that but it tended to shade that way. But even if it only shades that way it's heretical.

It's one of the many things that make me a little uncomfortable with my own Irish heritage (contrary to the impression my name gives, there is actually more Irish in me than anything else). Just yesterday I ran into an Irish woman I know at the grocery store and got a good twenty minutes of oddball stuff like you couldn't imagine.