The Virgin Mary got support of a sort from two embattled females at Washington's Catholic University last week. Ti-Grace Atkinson, mighty mouth of Women's Liberation, told an audience of students, priests, nuns and laymen that in the Virgin Birth poor Mary had been more "used" than if her Son had been conceived normally. "I can't let her say that!" yelled Patricia Buckley Bozell, the managing editor of a rightist Catholic magazine, Triumph, and sister of right-wing Columnist William Buckley and Senator James Buckley. To the podium stormed Patricia; she aimed a hefty slap at Ti-Grace, who managed to ward it off. Hustled outside, Pat shouted, "To hell with Catholic University!" then knelt to say the Rosary in protest, together with a group of students that included one of her ten children, Cathy, 19. Ti-Grace, considerably shaken, cut her speech short. "That face," she said later, "I've seen it in so many churches--the hysteria, the desperation. I felt for her. It's outrageous that it's the women who are the sufferers."

Ah! The sweet music of thunderous applause fell upon the pink ears of Prima Donna Joan Sutherland after her premiere performance of Lucia di Lammermoor in Hamburg last week. But oh! Boos followed for the weak conducting of her husband Richard Bonynge in the orchestra pit. Shaking her fist in fury, Miss Sutherland stomped onto the stage and stormed off again --refusing further curtain calls. Next day the Hamburg papers carried jittery editorials, worrying about whether Sutherland & Co. would pack up and go. No problem. Soon she was down at the Hamburg docks, her fist clenched now around a champagne bottle, with which she smilingly christened a new container carrier, Columbus Australia.

It should be an emerald-green evening --St. Patrick's Day Eve at the White House with Ireland's Prime Minister John Lynch himself on hand for the jigs and songs. But it will also be Pat Nixon's birthday, and Daughter Tricia Nixon, 25, is planning to turn the shamrocks into orange blossoms with the announcement of her engagement to Harvard Law Student Edward Finch Cox, 24. The official word adds up to something less than real news; Tricia has been wearing his ring since Christmastime, and Eddie's curriculum vitae (he was once one of Nader's Raiders) has been served up in plentiful quantity in the press. The day will be June 12. The place: the White House. The minister: the Rev. Edward Latch, Methodist chaplain of the House of Representatives. The couple will spend the summer in Manhattan, where Eddie has a temporary job, then go back to Harvard for his final year.

Women are the business of Cosmetics Tycoon Charles (Revlon) Revson, and no one doubts that he knows his business. He divides them into loners and groupies. Groupies, says Revson, "surround themselves with other women because they basically feel unattractive to men. These are the women who take that extra cocktail, who fill their afternoons with card playing because men are a very little source of pleasure and satisfaction to them, and who either neglect their appearance or do so much to their looks that they become unreal and overwhelming." A loner is usually anything but lonely. "Her aloneness is really an independence that comes from confidence. She does everything she can to attract without becoming a slave, or hysterical about the way she looks. It takes so little effort for a woman to taste and smell good. And the rewards are enormous." Gynecophile Revson gave Women's Wear Daily some examples of loners: Marlene Dietrich ("verve without flash"), Mrs. Henry Ford ("men just gravitate"), Merle Oberon ("something marvelous about her skin"), Raquel Welch ("a magnificent body --she just has to learn how to be a little more subtle in revealing it") and Mrs. Charles Revson.

Singer Andy Williams was holding the note, and holding it. "Joan, I'm turning blue," he finally gasped to the pianist. "I'm waiting for a cue," she said. "You're the cue, Joan," said Conductor Henry Mancini. "Oh, I'm really sorry, Andy," said the wife of Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy. They were taping the Andy Williams Show for March 27, and Joan Kennedy was doing her piano shtik like a real trouper. One of the piano's keys got stuck. Then she couldn't read the cue cards. But she ad-libbed her way through without a hitch.

"We could all use a little extra cash these days," said A. & P. Heir Huntington Hartford, putting some of his paintings up for auction at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries last week. The little extra cash they brought included record sums for the works of three artists: $100,000 for a Dali (a 168-by-144-in. picture that Hartford had commissioned called The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus), $150,000 for a Mary Cassatt (Summertime), and $95,000 for a Gustave Moreau (Salome Dancing Before Herod). Total auction haul: $556,000.

The royal yacht Britannia hove to off the Fiji island of Kadavu one day last week, and a boat put out from shore for Britain's Prince Philip and his uncle Louis, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, both on an informal tour of the South Pacific. It turned out to be quite an unusual experience for the two naval personages when, on approaching land, they and the Fiji Prime Minister's wife got a heave-ho from 30 Fijians dressed in their best white Sunday sulus. The idea was to keep the royal feet from getting wet.

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