Joe reviews the Vatican’s latest document on Mary, “Mater Populi Fidelis.” Some Catholics are concerned that age-old titles of the Blessed Virgin (Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix) are being banned. Is that actually the case?

Transcript:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to explore some controversial Marian titles and the Vatican’s recent intervention into whether we should use these kind of terms or not. And the two in particular I want to focus on are the terms whether we should call Mary Co-Redemptrix and whether we should call her Mediatrix or sometimes Mediatrix of all graces.

And as I said, the Vatican specifically what’s called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith, it was the CDF before DDF now just released a document called Mantra Popule Fidelis warning against those two titles in particular, it’s particularly averse to Coem Trix. And we’ll get into all of the details of why, what we can’t say about Mary’s role and unpack a little more theologically nuanced understanding of the role Mary has and what we should and shouldn’t say about her. I will say already I’ve seen some triumphalistic posts from Protestants who claim this is a doctrinal reversal, that this is something that Rome once claimed was true with divine authority and all of that is just not true. I had someone spamming my page on Facebook just saying, did you see the Vaticans changing the status of Mary flip flop bunch? And it’s like, no, not really.

As we’re going to see the things the DDF is now saying are very consistent with things Bill Francis said that Benedict the 16th said, et cetera, and that there’s good reason for it. That this is not a case where this substance is at issue. This is a case where we are trying to articulate a true thing with some language that risk being misleading, confusing, and even spiritually dangerous. If you want a much better, I think Protestant take on it, I would recommend I just watched Dr. Jordan Cooper’s video, a Protestant theologian’s thoughts on the Vatican’s new document about Mary. It’s short. It’s to the point he explains what it does and doesn’t say and why he likes it and I think he does a good job with it. So let me offer my own kind of 2 cents on it. I also like the document. I think it’s really good.

Those titles were things where it’s like this. If somebody takes 10 minutes to explain what they do and don’t mean by it, then you say, yeah, okay, that’s all right. But if you’re using a title that requires you to do that every time, maybe find another way to say what you’re trying to say. That’s what I’ve thought for a long time and that’s very much what Cardinal Fernandez says. So I know a lot of Catholics are upset or disturbed by the document, afraid that it is this kind of flip-flop people are claiming it just isn’t. It’s just saying what are smart ways of talking about Mary? What are ways that are more precise? What are ways that are less scandalous? And let’s use these because we have better language to use. So why does the document exist? I think I’ve kind of explained that already.

But on the positive side, modern popular Dels, which means again the mother of the faithful people of God, it’s the document is called that because we want to remember Mary is viewed with affection and admiration by Christians because since grace makes us like Christ Mary is the most perfect expression of Christ’s action that transforms our humanity. I love that framing that if you want to understand why Mary matters, you should know two things. Number one, that the goal of the Christian life is to be made like Christ. And number two, that we believe that he does that in no creature more than he does it in Mary. Remember, Jesus is not himself a creature. He doesn’t experience this same process. He doesn’t have faith. He is a divine person with the human nature which is different than Mary, who is this disciple, this faithful follower who is transformed.

And so as the document says, she is the feminine manifestation of all that Christ grace can accomplish in a human being. So notice this way of framing explains why we care about Mary by explaining that we care about Jesus and what Jesus wants to do for every one of us. And two Corinthians three says exactly this in verse 18. And we all with unveiled faith beholden the glory of the Lord are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the spirit that the Christian message is not simply that will be part of a list that makes it to heaven and that heaven will just be like pleasure and joy. The Christian message is something much more radical than that, that we are being transformed to be like Christ, that when we see him, we’ll see him as he is because we’ll be like him or we’ll be like him or we’ll see him as he is as first John three says.

So that’s pretty significant. And so Mary has this special role and so there are a bunch of titles from Mary in the early church, but as the document notes some of those titles, even some of the ones we find in say the church fathers for instance, are not always being used very precisely. Sometimes their meanings kind of change or get misunderstood over time. So the mere fact that a saint uses a term doesn’t automatically mean that we should use that term today. And there’s plenty of examples of this in other areas of theology where maybe the way a doctrine was originally articulated, we can in hindsight say there are better ways of articulating that and we share the same faith as the people who came before us, but we might find that there’s better terminological issues. You could, for instance, St. Cian, there’s kind of a famous controversy in the way he uses terms like nature and describing the trinity.

He doesn’t have kind of a frame of reference nature and person, I don’t remember all of the details with it, but he’s using terms in a way that if understood one way is completely correct and orthodox and understood in another way would be heretical. And the problem is the language kind of evolves. And so what meant one thing to him sounds very different even a century later. And so we should be mindful of that when we’re using any kind of precise terms or when we’re using any kind of devotional terms. It might be misunderstood as making theological claims we don’t want to be making. So the DDF goes on to note that beyond the just these terminological issues, these can also lead to a mistaken understanding of what Mary’s role is, that we don’t want to become that kind of caricature where we say, oh, Jesus is too tough or He is not powerful enough, so I’m going to go to Mary instead.

And so we want to make sure our language doesn’t risk scandalize anyone into either thinking that’s what we believe or having the ordinary layperson in the pews come away thinking that’s what they’re supposed to believe. Those would be bad results. So we’re warned to kind of watch out for the bad repercussions that imprecise language can have in terms of Christology, ecclesiology and anthropology that we can misunderstand the role of Christ, of the church and of the human person. The main problem in interpreting these titles is precisely, this is the heart of what the document is trying to capture. What is the meaning of Mary’s unique cooperation in the plan of salvation? So notice we want to say on the one hand, yes, Mary does have a unique way that she cooperates in the plan of salvation. And if you’ve never noticed that, I hope that at the end of this video you’ll have a clear sense of that.

And if not, go read the document. I think you’ll really come away with a clear sense of it. But number two, given that unique cooperation, how do we still preserve Christ’s soul mediation? So we want to keep these two things in view. On the one hand, Christ is our soul mediator. And on the other hand, Mary has this special role of cooperating in the work of salvation. And in a broad sense, everybody is going to cooperate in the work of salvation. So I guess one way, this isn’t how the document frames it. Here’s how I would frame the issue that there are these two strands in scripture. And a way to approach this would just be to say, can your neighbor save you? Well, it depends entirely what you mean by that. If you mean we don’t need Jesus anymore, we just need our neighbor, then obviously not and can’t save another person in that sense after all.

As Acts four says, there is salvation and no one else for, there is no other name under heaven given un meaning by which we must be saved. But on the other hand, there’s a way of talking about our neighbor saving us or us saving our neighbor that is perfectly orthodox and indeed perfectly biblical. So for instance, verse 23 of the epistle of Jude says, convince some who doubt save some by snatching them out of the fire. So obviously your role in snatching your neighbor out of the fire isn’t the same role that Jesus has in dying on the cross for your neighbor, but there is clearly some sense in which we can talk about saving others and in fact, even of saving ourselves as well. St. Paul in one Timothy chapter four says, take heed to yourself and to your teaching. Hold to that for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your heroes.

You can see these two strands together in one Timothy chapter two. On the one hand, we’re all told to offer up prayer and intercession, and then just a few verses later, we’re told there’s only one mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ. So you could say, well, look, all of us are called to stand in the gap between God and man. This is part of our intercession. Or you could say only Jesus is because he’s the one mediator between God and man. Well, who’s right about that? Well, it depends what you mean and that’s what we have to kind of carefully navigate. What is Mary’s role in salvation and what is the role more broadly for every individual, but particularly for Mary because she has this special, this unique role in salvation. That’s what the whole first part of the document lays out, and I like how biblically it lays it out.

If you are someone who’s maybe exploring the Catholic church for the first time, or this is something you struggle with and grapple with and maybe some of the really flowery highfalutin language that the document warns against has turned you off to this. And you’ve heard Catholics speak about marrying a way, you find something between saccharin and heretical idolatrous even. Well, I hope you’ll approach at least giving a read to this first part of mantra Popule because I think it does a good job of making a good biblical case that yeah, Mary actually has a very important and unique role. It starts by making a distinction. When we talk about Mary’s cooperation in the role of salvation, we mean both the objective redemption that historically she plays this really important role and then the influence she currently has that those two things are distinct, but they’re obviously interconnected.

So when it comes to first century, her role in redemption, it is well attested. The document says in the scripture because we start not only just with the New Testament evidence, but going all the way back to the Old Testament, Genesis chapter, verse 15. Now if you’ve watched this channel, I love this passage and have talked about it several times, but it’s good to see the Vatican explicitly just saying that Mary is the woman who shares in the definitive victory over the serpent in Genesis three 15. So in Genesis three, Eve is known as woman and in the curse put on the serpent, God says that he’ll put enmity strife division between you and the woman that is between the serpent who we know to be the devil and the woman and between your seat and her seat. Now on its surface, that might sound like it’s just about Mary, excuse me, eve verse Satan.

But we know that something deeper is going on. I’ll explain why in a second. Our first clue is actually right after that he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise and seal where you say, okay, who is that about? Well, it seems to very clearly be about Jesus Christ. Well, who’s son is Jesus? Well, Mary’s son, but it’s more clear actually in the expression her seed because the seed was normally measured through the man Zara. In Hebrew, it is a term both for offspring but also for semen. And in fact, the word seed has that function in Latin as well. And this was pretty common back when people didn’t really understand how babies were made. They thought of it like planting a seed. And so the fact that Jesus is described as Mary the woman’s seed rather than the man’s seed seems to clearly be a reference to the virgin birth that it’s not.

I’ll put enmity between you and the man and between your seed and his seed, her seed language is pointing to Marion to the virgin birth. And I think we can show that biblically if you believe in the virgin birth, if you believe that Jesus is the person foretold in Genesis three 15, and that is absolutely how the early Christians saw it. Then it follows that this is a prophecy not only of Jesus but of Mary and the virgin birth as well. It seems to me something else follows from that as well. Revelation 12 ties itself to Genesis three in a special way. It refers to the devil as the dragon and the ancient serpent. And so it’s the only other time we see the kind of serpent language used for the devil in just this way. And the devil is presented at war with a woman, and this woman is described as the mother of the one destined rule, the nations of the rod of iron.

It seems very clearly to be once again the mother of Jesus. And in Revelation 12, verse 17 we’re told the dragon was angry with the woman. So imagine my own commentary here, but I think Genesis three 15, you should link that with Revelation 12 because Revelation 12 seems to go out of its way to connect these two parts of the Bible that is talking about the fall of Satan. And he is talking about this event that involves him being mad at the woman and the woman is supernaturally protected. He can’t go now after her, and so he goes after her children as well. We’re going to get into that half in a few minutes, but that gives us our first indication. Mary actually matters in the biblical story. She’s not a bit character and this is supported when we see things. For instance, when Jesus addresses Mary as woman both at the wedding feast of Cana and then at the cross and at the wedding feast of Cana, there is this nod towards the hour, his hour has not yet come, which is then fulfilled of course on the cross.

So you’ve got to put a few pieces together here. You got to put together John two in John 19 with what we’ve already seen from Genesis three. But in Genesis three, Eve goes from being named woman to being named Eve, which means mother, mother of the living. And in John 19, Jesus goes from describing Mary as woman to presenting her as mother. And that’s exactly what the DDF points out, that Mary has renewed her cooperation, she’s renewed the yes, the fiat in the enunciation. She has simply cooperated with him laying down his life. She’s not asking him to come down from the cross, she’s not doing any of this. She’s being present as a faithful disciple in a way that virtually none of his other disciples were. And in this moment, the beloved disciple, the other person to show up, the one from the 12, he entrusts Mary to the beloved disciple and it would be a mistake to take a very superficial reading of this.

Now, one sense of that of course is just the pragmatic that Mary doesn’t have any of their children, and so it makes sense to make sure that she is seen to because she’s going to be a widow, but there is something much deeper, much richer going on because you don’t need to record that as one of the final words of Jesus if he’s just figuring out the practical logistics. We don’t get details of how they packed food for the journeys when they packed food for the journeys because those aren’t relevant details. This was a relevant enough detail that this is one of the few moments from the hours that Jesus was on the cross that has come down to us in scripture. Why?

Well, the next verse gives us an added reason to take that seriously as the DDF knows, it’s only after he entrusts Mary as mother of the beloved disciple that Jesus sees it all is now fulfilled that this was the final thing he had to do before giving up his spirit. You can read in John 19 for yourself that this is the case. And so it’s not a stretch to see the beloved disciple as a stand and for all of the beloved disciples that, and that of course ties in very neatly with what we already saw from Revelation 12, that Mary’s motherhood is given to all of us and that’s why John can later say that Mary’s children are all of those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. So this is again, just biblically we can see that Mary has this really special role.

Then you look at how the early Christians kind of considered these things and they were principally concerned with things like her divine motherhood. She’s theotokos, she’s mother of God, her perpetual virginity, her perfect holiness is one who is free from sin throughout her life, her role as the new Eve. And then they also reflected upon her association with Christ’s redemption in the context of the mystery of the incarnation, that there is this radical moment where the angel Gabriel presents the plan of salvation to Mary and she is freely given the opportunity to say yes, let it be done unto me according to thy word. And she does. And that in this, yes, she actually plays a role in the incarnation. You and I can say we’ve offered nothing to Christ in his redemption. He’s offered everything to us. We’ve offered him literally nothing. Mary gives him his humanity, she gives him her body, she gives him her motherhood. She actually has something to offer and none of us can say the same, which is really a radical thing to think about in terms of Mary’s role.

So as the DDF says, marries yes to Gabriel’s message. So the word of God might become flesh in her womb, opens for humanity the possibility of divinization. This is based on a much deeper concept sometimes called theosis that God became man so that man can become God. It’s getting back to that very first point that the document started From that we are made to be like Christ, but the way we are made to be like Christ is part of this story of redemption that begins with the incarnation. And Mary has this really critical role to play in the incarnation. She is not some IVF surrogate. And if that’s your understanding of Mary, that is a woefully inadequate and unbiblical one, she’s the true mother of the second person of the holy Trinity. That’s incredible. And he takes his human nature through her for this reason, the DDF goes on to say, Saint Augustine calls the virgin cooperate in Christ’s redemption.

So you can see how she’s cooperating and this is actually something that early Christians were pretty emphatic on. Even when you read the stuff about Mary being the New Eve, you read for instance about how Mary unties the knot of Eve’s disobedience by her obedience that’s in 180, that’s as old as our knowledge of the four gospels. So super early on you have this recognition that Mary Biblically has this really important role to play at the Annunciation at the cross and throughout the whole story. But the document said Augustine was emphasizing both Mary’s action at Christ’s side as well as her subordination to him. Notice cooperate doesn’t suggest she’s equal to him. She’s cooperating with him for Mary cooperates with Christ. So the faithful may be born in the church for this reason. We can call her the mother of the faithful people of God mantra her popule Fidel.

And this cooperation is something that the church has endorsed, for instance at the Second Vatican Council, where it talks about how Mary isn’t just a passive instrument in the hands of God, but she’s someone who freely cooperates in the work of human salvation through her faith and her obedience in this cooperation is present not just in Jesus’ early life and we see it in an obvious place, misconception and his birth, but then later on his death and resurrection. But is also true throughout the life of the church that Mary continues to have this kind of maternal intercession and she cooperates with trying to bring about God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. And hopefully that doesn’t sound pagan or idolatrous because that’s literally the Christian calling. All of us should be doing that. All of us should be cooperating in our own ways.

Mary’s called to cooperate in a pretty obvious and special way, in a unique way. St. Paul six talks about how in Mary everything is in reference to Christ and is dependent upon him. It was with a view to Christ that God the Father from all eternity chose Mary to be the all holy mother and adorned her with gifts of the spirit granted to no one else. And if you want to understand predestination, look at Mary. If you want to understand Mary, think about predestination. But the point of all of this is that grace is preparing Mary for this special role, not just for her own good, but because of this unique role she’s to have in relation to her son. And so the document goes on and say Marries yes isn’t just a precondition for something that could have been accomplished without her consent and cooperation.

Her motherhood is not only biological, nor is it passive in nature, but it is a fully active motherhood that is joined to the salvific mystery of Christ as an instrument willed by the Father and his plan of salvation. Hopefully your understanding of your human biological mother is not that she was simply a vessel who bore your genes and body hopefully recognize this, a human person with agency and will hopefully you have the kind of relationship where she’s advocating for you and fighting for you and wants a good for you. And that’s no less true of our mother in faith. She is the guarantee that Jesus is truly man, right? This is what I said before, it’s important that he is born of a woman as St. Paul points out in Galatians four. And it’s important as the first council of NAIA reminds us and the council of emphasis really draws I think to its fullest clarity, is that she is a theotokos, the God bearer all of this matters.

She bears God in her womb and she ensures that he is not just God, but also man through her. Yes. Not that she can do that by her own power. Hopefully that’s obvious, but through her, yes. So that’s the kind of background given that we’ve got a bunch of different titles people use for Mary, and this has been a longstanding practice. You give a lot of honorary titles, you have a lot of anything from pet names to devotional titles, et cetera, but some of them are trying to express this true thing that she cooperates in the redemptive work of Christ. And there are two that the document wants to focus on because they’re problematic coem tricks and media tricks. So let’s talk about them both what they are trying to say, which is true and why we should approach terms like this with caution. So number one, coem tricks should we call Mary Coem tricks?

And the document begins by starting with the history. Where does this title come from in the first place? And it comes from the 15th century. Coem tricks first appears as a kind of corrective to the invocation Trix. So you would have Jesus as redeemer in Mary Astrix. So Coem tricks was trying to at least be like, well, let’s not do anything weird there. But redeem tricks itself wasn’t originally meant to say Mary’s equal to Christ. It originally came fr... Read more on Catholic.com