Miriam (Mary), a 1st century Jewish woman of the House of David, is the mother of Jesus. She has been and still remains a source of enigma and inspiration for millions of Christians.

For Catholics, the figure of Mary represents purity, submission to the will of God, perfected femininity, the Church, ideal motherhood, and the new Eve. She is associated with the scent of roses and the colors pink and celestial blue.

In Catholic folk religion, as distinguished from official Church dogma, she is frequently treated as a de-facto mother-goddess, a semi-divine being.

Protestant Christians rarely discuss Mary. She is given no titles by them other than "Mary The Lord's (i.e., Jesus') mother." She is assigned no particular role in salvation, beyond the obvious fact that she physically bore the Messiah. The doctrine of Mary, therefore, is one of the major points of difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic theologies.

Protestants, that is, emphasize the historical personage of Miriam, conceived of as "Mary, the Lord's mother," or "Mary the mother of Jesus," an ordinary, earthly woman who is an example of faith. Marian Catholics look more upon Mary as Virgin Queen and Lady. It is the putative roles of the Lady, in salvation and post-Assumption exaltation, which have made her become the Mother of all Christians. This is the Mary of Roman Catholicism, La Madonna, or feudal Lady, who is both humble handmaiden, and Celestial Virgin Queen.

It is this Mary, the Roman Catholic "Blessed Virgin Mary" who delivers apocalyptic prophecies , it must be said, and not the historical Miriam. The tone of the Virgin Mary's prophecies and those of her followers are distinctly feudal, medieval, monarchist, anti-modernist, and virulently anti-communist. Further, this Mary endorses all the key and unique aspects of Roman Catholicism that distinguish it from all other Christian sects, groups, or churches, for example the adoration of the Eucharist, the Rosary, papal primacy, papal infallibilty, and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The Mary of Fatima and Lourdes certainly, but even she of Medagorge and still more recent apparitions is decidedly traditionally Roman Catholic in character and style. At times, her prophecies have the feel of pre-Vatican II style Roman Catholicism.

For Catholicism, there is a necessary historical connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the young Jewish girl who, according to the apocryphal infancy gospels of James and Pseudo-Matthew, was raised in the Jewish temple, her piety and chastity being highly regarded by the her fellow Jews, until she rather inexplicably became pregnant without benefit of marriage.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, some Catholics claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary. Through [St.] Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France, Mary proclaimed herself "The Immaculate Conception" and at Fatima, Portugal she gave three secrets to three Shepherd Children relating to the end of the world. Her most recent major appearances have been in Medugorje, in the former Yugoslavia.

An interesting aspect of the visions has been their association with balls of light and strange manifestations in the corona of the Sun. There are some parallels with these phenomena and UFO's which sometimes appear as balls of light. Some UFO enthusiasts believe UFO's hide themselves in the sun's corona.