Mary

Another Redeemer?

James R. White

© 1998 by James White

Published by Bethany House Publishers

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www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Ebook edition created 2012

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ISBN 978-1-4412-1399-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Scripture quotations labeled NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

To Dr. Rick Walston

A friend and mentor who has shown great dedication to godly education for the benefit of the body of Christ. Thank you for being patient with the most unusual student you will probably ever have!

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1. Mary—Another Redeemer?

2. Mariam of Nazareth: A Biblical Mariology

3. The First Step: Perpetual Virginity

4. Immaculate Conception

5. Mother of God

6. Bodily Assumption

7. The Veneration and Worship of Mary

8. Vatican II and the Blessed Virgin

9. John Paul II and Mary

10. Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate

11. A Biblical Response

Notes

About the Author

Back Cover

Mary—Another Redeemer?

A small booklet tucked in the fold of a chair in the corner caught my eye. It was sticking out just enough, or I may not have seen it. Intrigued, I pulled it out. The blue-and-white cover bore the title Devotions in Honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. I scanned through a few of the prayers. In one of them I spotted the words “my eternal salvation,” so I backed up and started from the beginning:

O Mother of Perpetual Help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners, and for this reason he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, that thou mayest help us in our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come then, to my help, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation and to thee do I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my Judge himself, because by one prayer from thee he will be appeased. But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect to call on thee and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, then, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee, O Mother of Perpetual Help.

At first I could not believe what I had just read. So I ran back through the last few lines. Was this prayer really saying that the petitioner did not fear his or her sins, the devils, nor Jesus? That’s what it said. I shook my head in disbelief.

A few years later I found myself in a radio studio in Boston, Massachusetts, doing a radio discussion with a former Protestant turned Roman Catholic named Gerry Matatics. The topic was Mary and the saints. Mr. Matatics and I were scheduled to do two public debates at Boston College over the course of the next week.[1]

But that day we were live on the air taking calls on the subject of prayers to Mary and the saints. As I packed for the trip, I found the little blue-and-white booklet and decided to bring it along. Now I reached into my bag and brought it out. Surely quoting this prayer would bring a strong reaction from Mr. Matatics. Surely he’d deny that such a prayer is proper, and that the people who had written it were simply going overboard in their piety. The talk-show host gasped involuntarily as I read the final lines, and as I put down the booklet, I looked across to my opponent, waiting for the expected reaction. The host, likewise, turned to Mr. Matatics. He was quiet for a moment, and then he spoke.

“Mr. White,” he began, “I can only hope that someday you, too, will pray that prayer.”

And so it was pressed home to me once again how deeply entrenched is devotion to Mary in Roman Catholic belief and practice. I also realized afresh how utterly unlike my own Christian experience such devotion to anyone other than Christ really is. The prayer offended me, and yes, years later, after reading dozens more books on Marian doctrine and piety, it still offends. But now I know why the prayer exists as it does, as well as the foundation upon which such devotion is placed.

A Little Book in the Mail

My trek as a non-Catholic into the world of Marian devotion and doctrine has often been impacted by little books. One such book arrived in the mail one day from a correspondent in Washington State. It was titled Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate by Mark I. Miravalle, S.T.D., and was associated with a group called Vox Populi Mariae Mediatrici, which means “Voice of the People for Mary Mediatrix.” Tucked inside the front and back covers I discovered small tear-out postcards addressed to “His Holiness Pope John Paul II” in Rome, Italy. The text on the card caught my attention:

With filial love, we the faithful wish to humbly petition you, the Vicar of Christ, to solemnly define as Christian dogma the Church’s constant teaching on Mary’s coredemptive role with Christ the Redeemer of humanity. It is our belief that such a definition will bring to light the whole truth about Mary, Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, Spouse of the Spirit, and Mother of the Church. Therefore, it is our prayer that the Holy Spirit will guide you, Holy Father, to define and proclaim the Blessed Virgin Mary as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces and Advocate for the people of God.

Again I found myself taken aback. “Spouse of the Spirit”? “Coredemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces and Advocate for the people of God”? The terminology is like speaking a foreign language to a Protestant, and phrases like “Spouse of the Spirit” are so strange that one hardly knows where to start in responding to them. At the time I was not aware of the depth and breadth of the movement seeking to have the Pope define these doctrines as infallible Christian teaching. However, according to recent claims by the group,[2] as of June 1997, 4.5 million petitions from 155 countries have been signed and turned in to the Pope. The drive has also garnered the endorsement of more than 500 bishops, including 42 Cardinals.

So great has been the movement that major news outlets have begun taking note. Cover articles and feature stories in major news magazines have introduced the movement to the wider public, though often with less-than-accurate information taking center stage. The August 25, 1997 edition of Newsweek carried a story by Kenneth Woodward reporting on Mark Miravalle and the movement based at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. The May 1997 issue of Inside the Vatican wrote,

Though not officially confirmed, evidence is accumulating that Pope John Paul II may exercise the charism of Papal Infallibility … to declare the Third Marian Dogma.

Websites began picking up the story, with predictable results. Believing and supportive Roman Catholics were excited, while Fundamentalists began speaking of the elevation of Mary to “godhood,” resulting in changing the Trinity to the “Quadernity.” Only one thing is certain about the coverage the controversy has experienced: Very, very few have the foggiest idea what the real issues are, and that includes most Roman Catholics. The controversy is very important, but not for the reasons that most believe. The great amount of misunderstanding on both sides of the fence comes from the fact that what Rome teaches about Mary in general is often misinterpreted by Protestants and miscommunicated by Roman Catholics. Indeed, many believing Roman Catholics harbor misconceptions about the dogmas of Rome, which only adds to the confusion.

Popular Marian Belief

A few years ago it was all the talk of Phoenix. A woman had been walking down Sixteenth Street, when all of a sudden she saw it: the Virgin Mary in a branch of a yucca plant alongside the road. Soon people were flocking to the place to see Mary-in-the-yucca. Vigils began. Crowds hung around, staring at the yucca tree. Then late one night someone came by and chopped off the “divine branch.” No more Mary-in-the-yucca.

We’ve all heard stories of people seeing Mary everywhere—in tortillas, rocks, walls, sand formations, you name it. News shows examine how entire groups of people can look up at the sun and swear it is dancing about, and that this is a sign Mary is near. Others snap Polaroid pictures they insist show Mary, but experts say all that shows is the inside printing of the film cover. Everyone has heard of the crowds at Lourdes, Fatima, or Medjugorje, but not as many are familiar with the thousands who have flocked to Conyers, Georgia, hoping for either a glimpse of Mary (who, it is said, has been giving revelations there) or at least the smell of roses, another sure sign that Mary has appeared.

The same publisher that is so involved in the current movement to promote the definition of Mary as Coredemptrix—Queenship Publishing Company of Santa Barbara—also publishes a series of books entitled I Am Your Jesus of Mercy. These books are the collected sayings of Mary as dictated to Gianna Talone-Sullivan, normally during the Thursday night rosary in Saint Maria Goretti parish church, Scottsdale, Arizona. Similar visionaries are producing a vast body of writing, all claiming them to be messages from Mary.

For most of us, stories like this strike us as representative of simple excesses of devotion or mass delusion or hysteria or something. But there are reasons why these kinds of things happen. Why would a woman, walking down a street, even be thinking about Mary in such a way as to see her in a yucca plant? Why would a parishioner at a church in Scottsdale think she is hearing from Mary? There is a reason why Mary has taken such a prominent role in the everyday life of Roman Catholics.

An Important Issue

Marian devotion and teaching is so far removed from most Protestants that they observe the entire issue as mere Roman Catholic superstition, one of the clearest indications of how the “Catholics believe all sorts of things not found in the Bible.” Even converts to Roman Catholicism admit that the teachings concerning Mary are the final stumbling blocks to be overcome—hurdles that must be cleared before one embraces the ultimate authority of the Infallible Church. Karl Keating, President of Catholic Answers, a Roman Catholic apologetics organization, writes concerning the idea that Mary cooperates not only in Christ’s atoning death but in the distribution of the graces that flow from it:

As a practical matter, this kind of doctrine is one of the last accepted by someone approaching the Church, particularly someone coming to the Church from fundamentalism, and it is accepted, ultimately, on the authority of the Church rather than on the authority of clear scriptural references. Fundamentalists, always looking for a biblical citation, can see no reason to accept a belief in Mary as Mediatrix of all graces, but they can, if they take the effort, come to see that there is, at least, nothing in the doctrine that contradicts Christ’s role as the one Mediator. His role as Mediator is not lessened because she has been allowed to assist him.[3]

It is vitally important to note Keating’s assertion that the doctrine that Mary is Mediatrix (the feminine form of Mediator) does not, in and of itself, compromise the uniqueness of Jesus’ role as the one Mediator. Roman Catholicism claims, repeatedly, that nothing she teaches about Mary in any way, shape, or form, detracts from, contradicts, or in any way does damage to the unique work or position of Christ. No discussion of the current controversy, or any of the doctrines taught by Rome concerning Mary, can be honest and forthright without admitting, from the start, that Rome says that she is in no way compromising the uniqueness of Christ or His proper worship. This claim is repeated over and over and over again in every Roman Catholic document, official and unofficial, presenting their views on Mary. The issue, then, when considering any of the many teachings Rome has promulgated about Mary is not whether Rome claims to be diminishing the rightful worship of Christ (such would be utterly untrue) but whether these teachings do compromise the uniqueness of Christ despite Rome’s claims to the contrary. That is, when Rome says, “This doctrine in no way impinges upon the unique privileges and worship of Christ,” is that statement, in and of itself, true? Whether Christ’s uniqueness is being denied and compromised should be a very important issue to all Christians.

The current movement to have Mary defined as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate of the people of God is but the capstone of a theology that has evolved and grown for nearly 1,800 years. It simply is not possible to accurately understand the current debate without knowing how we came to be considering such ideas. This means we must begin by looking at what Rome has taught in the past and how all of this forms the basis of the current controversy.

Why should we take the time to accurately understand this topic? As a Protestant, you may wonder why you should invest the time and effort to understand a proposed Christian dogma that will not, in any meaningful way, impact you, since you don’t accept the authority of the Roman Church. For those of you with family members in the Roman communion, the relevance becomes much more apparent.

Again, for any person concerned about truth, why is this topic so important?

Today there are many strong voices in the Church calling for “ecumenical dialogue” and cooperation. The current Pontiff, himself a strong advocate of Marian devotion and teaching, is at the same time a tremendously popular public figure, garnering very positive emotions even from Protestant congregations. And in our modern climate—in which truth is not an absolute but is defined by each person as he or she sees fit—the idea that what Rome teaches as dogma (i.e., something that is definitional and must be believed) is overly important might seem just a bit old-fashioned.

But for the person who believes the Bible and seeks to live in such a way as to honor God, issues of dogma cannot be so easily dismissed. Roman Catholicism says that these doctrines are not only probably true, they are true, beyond all question. What is more, these teachings, and the currently hoped-for definition of Mary as Coredemptrix, are said to be part and parcel of God’s revelation. That is, Rome claims that these teachings are a part of the Christian faith, and if you don’t embrace these doctrines, you don’t have the fullness of the Christian faith. Any person who desires to follow Christ with a whole heart, and to live in the light of the truth, has reason enough to examine and see if, in fact, these doctrines are true.

Finally, for the person who wishes to examine the claims of Rome regarding the insufficiency of the Bible and the necessity of having an infallible Magisterium (teaching authority), the Marian doctrines are the test-case par excellence. That is, these are the doctrines that Rome has pronounced true on the basis of her “Sacred Tradition.” Yet when we examine these teachings we invariably find that they were not believed by the most primitive Christians, and they are likewise absent from the text of Scripture. Hence, we discover that while Rome might claim she is acting upon an ancient tradition, the reality is that she is her own final authority, even when it comes to determining, with alleged infallibility, the very limits of Christian truth.[4]

It is our intention to allow Rome to define her own beliefs. That is, Church documents and Roman Catholic writers will provide the main positive presentation of the doctrines concerning Mary. I firmly believe that allowing Rome to speak for herself, especially on the Marian doctrines, is important. Some of the beliefs are so foreign to Protestants that if I were to simply report these beliefs, some would think I was misrepresenting the Roman system. So, I have chosen to quote extensively from Roman Catholic sources and to allow the words to speak for themselves.

We must begin by defining the doctrines concerning the Virgin Mary that have laid the foundation for the current controversy. First, let us take a moment to look to the Scriptures for the truth about who Mary was and is, before going into the history of the church and how these beliefs developed.

Mariam of Nazareth: A Biblical Mariology

There is much truth in the statement that Protestants fear Mary. But the reason is not too difficult to find. I believe the reason many Protestants do not talk about Mary, and are uncomfortable doing so, is in direct response and reaction to the overemphasis upon Mary in Roman Catholicism. To speak of “the Virgin Mary” strikes many a Protestant ear as “Catholic,” when in reality, it isn’t. We’ve allowed an error on one side of the issue to result in a corresponding error on the other—an unbiblical deemphasis of Mary as a great example of faith and obedience. Truly, all generations should never fear to call her blessed—but she would dare not ask us to call her anything more than the Scriptures grant her.

One could, in reality, read everything the Bible says about Mary in a matter of minutes. And since much of even that is made up of passing references, the actual amount of direct information found about Mary in the Bible is very small.[1]

Yet we can still put together a “biblical Mariology” (i.e., a doctrine of Mary) that is consistent with the teaching of Scripture but does not go beyond it.

An overall survey tells us the following:

1. Mary is mentioned by name only in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts. Mark only mentions her name once in passing (describing Jesus as the son of Mary in Mark 6:3), and John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude never mention her name at all. Matthew prefers to refer to her as “His mother” or “the Child’s mother.”

2. Outside of the Gospels, Mary appears only twice, once in the Upper Room at Pentecost (Acts 1:14), and once in an oblique reference by Paul to the Lord being “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4).

3. Within the Gospels, information on Mary is very sparse. Luke’s birth narrative comprises by far the majority of the references to the Virgin Mary. Outside of the birth narratives, the only references to Mary in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are found in the mid-ministry incident where Mary and her other sons are seeking to talk to Jesus, prompting His explanation that His mother and His brothers are those who do the will of God (Matt. 12:46–50; Mark 3:31–35; Luke 8:19–21), and in the one reference in Luke to the blessedness of the mother who bore Him and of those who hear the word of God and observe it (Luke 11:27–28).

4. The appearances of Mary in John’s gospel are limited to the incident in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1–12) and at the Cross (19:25–27).

5. Outside of the dialogue with the angel and the “Magnificat” (Luke 1:46–55), Mary utters a grand total of twenty-two words as recorded in Scripture.

Even a quick run-through of the relevant passages shows that Mary’s role was primarily that of the woman through whom the Messiah was to be born. She had only one recorded encounter with the Lord during His ministry (in the Synoptic Gospels), is present at the Crucifixion and in the Upper Room, and then vanishes from the pages of Scripture.

A Closer Look at the Key Passages

When the passages that simply mention Mary’s name in reference to Jesus are removed from consideration, we can look closely at the remaining passages and use them to construct a biblically consistent view of Mariam of Nazareth.

First and foremost, we see that Mary was a chaste, godly woman. She is plainly said to have been a virgin at the time of the angel’s visitation. Both Matthew and Luke attest to this:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 1:18)

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. (Luke 1:26–27)

Twice Luke repeats the term “virgin.” As a physician, he could not possibly have misunderstood this technical term. Mary herself would confess this truth later in her interview with the angel: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (v. 34).[2] Mary had kept herself pure in accord with God’s law. The Child that was born of her had a supernatural parentage and was fully divine, as He himself claimed.[3]

The emphasis on the Virgin Birth, then, is not upon the virgin, but upon the one born of the virgin.

Next, Mary was clearly an Israelite woman steeped in the Scriptures. This comes out in the “Magnificat,” her hymn of praise to God for His dealings with her (Luke 1:46–55). The term magnificat comes from the first word Mary speaks in verse 46 in the Latin translation: “My soul exalts the Lord.” She draws from 1 Samuel, many of the Psalms, and even Job. But we can safely say that the blessing pronounced in Psalm 1:1–2 upon the one who meditates in the law of the Lord would apply to Mary as well.

We also discover that Mary was a woman who saw herself in the same category as the great women of faith of her time—as one in need of salvation and a Savior, a humble handmaid (female servant) of God. Her words are very clear:

And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave; For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name. And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him. (Luke 1:47–50)

Mary, like all believers of all ages, rejoiced in her Savior God. Just as every other woman of faith in her day and before, she recognized her need of God as her Savior and Redeemer.[4]

Her own words communicate a proper view of herself: Claiming nothing for herself, she rejoices in God her Savior. She views herself in a “humble state,” and she calls herself a “bondslave” (other translations say “handmaid” or “servant”). This term and its Hebrew equivalent is often used in the Old Testament. Note especially the close parallel in Ruth 2:13, where Ruth speaks of “finding favor” in the exact same terms used by the angel in Luke 1:30.[5]

Next, we see that Mary was a faithful, trusting, and obedient woman. This is seen plainly in the fact that while she surely had to have some idea of what kind of ridicule and scorn would be her lot upon the exposure of her divine pregnancy, she still responds in faith and obedience:

And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:38)

This is often referred to in Roman Catholic writings as Mary’s “fiat” from the Latin phrase fiat mihi, “let it be done to me.” Often this carries the idea of a command, but in this passage it has no such implication. Rather, Mary’s response is one of passive acceptance of the will of God, again couched in the idea of her being the servant of the Lord, an obedient handmaid who does the will of her Master. Despite the hardship, Mary embraced the will of God for her life. This example of obedience is profoundly biblical, and should be preached often in any church that is Bible-based.

Along with obedience comes blessing. Mary said it well: “For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed” (Luke 1:48). Why is Mary “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42)? Is it because of something inherent in her or because of some exalted position into which she has been placed? No. The reason for the blessing is clear: She is blessed because she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Messiah, something every Jewish girl desired! The blessing is found in the grace of God that sought her out, not in anything within her, or anything done to her. In the same way, God’s people are said to be “blessed” (Matthew 25:34), using the same term that Elizabeth uses of Mary in Luke 1:42. In both places the blessing comes from God and refers to some gracious action on His part toward the one who is blessed. All generations who hear the Gospel will call Mary blessed because she was given a privilege unlike any other given to anyone. Since the Incarnation was a unique, one-time event, how could it be otherwise? Whoever the Lord chose in His sovereignty would surely be called “blessed” because of His action.

This is seen as well in one of the most important passages in all the Bible regarding Mary, at least as far as it is used by Roman Catholics:

And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28).

Here the angel greets Mary and addresses her as the “favored one.” This is a very accurate translation of the Greek term used by Luke. Yet, the Latin Vulgate (a translation that has had the most impact upon the wording of Roman Catholic theology and biblical interpretation) gives the sense of “Hail, full of grace!” Entire theologies, as we will see, have been based upon this simple greeting. Almost every single Marian teaching of Rome is based, at least in some way, upon this simple greeting. In reality, the words “favored one” are a translation of a single Greek term, kecharitomene.[6] This is nothing more than a greeting that refers to the fact that Mary has “found favor” in God’s eyes (Luke 1:30), and that she will be blessed to bear a Child who will be called “Son of the Most High” (v. 32). The fact that such a simple greeting, so easily understood in its context, has to be forced into service as the foundation for entire dogmas illustrates how little real biblical evidence there is for any of the Roman Catholic doctrines concerning Mary.[7]

The interaction of Mary with the shepherds and with Simeon and Anna, as recorded in Luke 2, reveals Mary to be a thoughtful woman who “pondered these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19). While not fully understanding what God was doing in her life, she considered these things and eventually came to understand the grand work of God in her. She likewise accepted the prophecy of Simeon that “a sword will pierce even your own soul” (Luke 2:35). We are not told exactly what Simeon’s prophecy means. Surely throughout the Lord’s ministry there were difficulties Mary had to endure. One can only imagine the pain of having her other children disbelieve Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah. But the Crucifixion seems the most likely fulfillment of this prophecy, where Mary would see her Son die an agonizing death on the Cross.

Likewise, we see that Mary was not gifted with supernatural insight into everything God was doing in the life of Jesus. The Lord’s response to His mother when she and Joseph find Him in the temple in Luke 2:48–50 shows this to be true, as does His response to her in John 2:4.

One of the most useful examples we can derive from Mary is based upon an idea considered heretical by Roman Catholicism. It is plain to see in Scripture that Mary was the mother of other children. The natural meaning of the terms “brothers” and “sisters” makes this plain.

While He was still speaking to the crowds, behold, His mother and brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak to Him. (Matt. 12:46)

After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples; and there they stayed for a few days. (John 2:12)

For not even His brothers were believing in Him. (John 7:5)

There is nothing strange whatsoever in recognizing that after the birth of Christ, Mary and Joseph lived together as husband and wife, with all the natural, right, and good things that this involves. Only later tradition would deny this to be the case. The Bible in no way presents the idea that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life, and in no way suggests that there was no real marriage between Joseph and Mary.[8]

In fact, Matthew makes it plain that a normal married relationship was in sight:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 1:18)

If the betrothal of Mary to Joseph was anything other than a normal wedding engagement, why say, “before they came together”? It is obvious that a normal marriage relationship is assumed by Matthew.[9]

Joseph disappears after the incident in the temple when Jesus was twelve (though the crowds in Capernaum show a familiarity with him, John 6:42), and most feel that he died while Jesus was still young. Thus Mary took on the responsibility of raising her other children, undoubtedly with the help of her eldest Son.

The years of reproach and rumor, and the longing in her heart for the world to know the true nature of her Son (and hence to experience some level of personal vindication), may be seen in Mary’s comments to the Lord at the marriage celebration in Cana of Galilee:

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Whatever he says to you, do it” (John 2:3–5).

The fact that Mary approaches the Lord to meet the need of the people gathered at the feast shows that she is desirous that He in some way manifest His true nature and mission. Jesus rebukes her understandable impatience, reminding her that they are both bound by the Father’s divine timetable, and they cannot alter what He has determined.

Finally, what may be most touching is the faithfulness of Mary right to the end (John 19:26–27). We can only imagine in a small fashion the pain she experienced in seeing her Son on the cross. We should not forget the considerable personal danger in which she placed herself to follow Him there. The Lord’s tender care of her, committing her into the hands of His beloved disciple,[10] shows how deep was His love for her. And like all the other disciples of Christ, she must have experienced the true piercing of her soul in those dark days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Yet we find her among those gathered in the Upper Room awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit, indicating that she remained faithful and embraced the newly birthed faith that was focused on her firstborn Son.

What the Bible Never Does

The virgin maiden of Nazareth, Mary, was blessed by God as the chosen vessel through whom the very Son of God became flesh. But despite this great honor, one thing should be very clear from the preceding survey of the Bible’s testimony to her faithfulness and obedience: Mary is never exalted, never venerated, never in any way, shape, or form placed in a position where she could possibly obscure our single-minded devotion to her Son. This overall truth is clearly seen in the following passage:

Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, “Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You.”

Answering them, He said, “Who are My mother and My brothers?”

Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers!

“For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:31–35).

I am not suggesting for a moment that the Lord did not cherish the close relationship He had with Mary. But, more importantly, He cherishes the relationship He has with those who do the will of God, His sheep, for whom He laid down His life. Mary’s most intimate relationship with Christ in eternity will not be that of mother/Son, but of Savior/redeemed!

Dogmas Upon Dogmas

Over the centuries, the position of Mary has grown and grown, until today entire dogmas sit precariously upon the verses we have examined. The humble handmaid of the Lord has been exalted to the Queen of Heaven, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, and Mediatrix of All Graces. She who humbly said, “Let it be done to me according to your word” is the object of veneration (a technical term that, biblically speaking, means nothing more nor less than worship, as we shall see later on) and prayer. She who spoke of God her Savior is asked to save others. How did this happen? What has been the process? To this we now turn.[11]

The First Step: Perpetual Virginity

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin.”[1]

So reads the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a modern document that John Paul II described in the following words in his Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, when he ordered its publication “by virtue of my Apostolic Authority”:

[It] is a statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition, and the Church’s Magisterium. I declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion…. This catechism is given to them that it may be a sure and authentic reference text for teaching catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms…. [It] is offered to every individual … who wants to know what the Catholic Church believes.

We can take what the Catechism says at face value, and use it as a “sure and authentic reference text” for knowing what the Catholic Church teaches. And the first doctrine we need to understand on the road to grappling with the concept of Mary as Coredemptrix is that of her “perpetual virginity.”

The basic outline of the doctrine is easy to summarize: Not only was Mary a virgin before and after the conception of Christ but she remained a virgin through the birth process and for the rest of her life. That is, Mary did not enter into a normal marital relationship with Joseph. She remained a virgin the rest of her life, having no children but Jesus.

We have seen that the New Testament does not suggest this idea at all. Matthew speaks of the engagement of Joseph and Mary as the period “before they came together” (Matt. 1:18), a phrase that would be meaningless outside of the idea that when two people get married, they will have normal marital relations. This thought continues a few verses later when Matthew writes that Joseph “had no union with her until she gave birth to a son” (1:25).[2]

How does Roman Catholicism deal with the biblical witness to the fact that Mary and Joseph were really married? The Catholic Catechism says this:

Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact, James and Joseph, “brothers of Jesus,” are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls “the other Mary.” They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.[3]

Some suggest that these “brothers and sisters” of Jesus, mentioned in the Bible, were cousins, or were children of Joseph by a previous marriage.[4] The Bible says nothing about such a previous relationship. Note that well into the period of the writing of the New Testament the phrase “the brothers of the Lord” was being used (1 Cor. 9:5), and Paul specifically describes James as the “Lord’s brother” (Gal. 1:19). These phrases would be highly misleading and ambiguous if, in fact, all that is being referred to are cousins or kinsmen.[5]

A Vow of Virginity?

One of the arguments presented regarding the perpetual virginity of Mary focuses upon the idea that Mary had made a lifelong commitment to virginity. Former Protestant turned Roman Catholic Gerry Matatics puts it this way:

“This is my vocation. That’s what I’m called to be.” She had taken a vow of virginity. Tradition tells us, although the Bible doesn’t show it clearly enough, she had taken a vow of virginity in her youth to dedicate herself to God. She was giving something up, you see. She loved God so much she was happy just being His spouse…. And so what she’s saying to the angel is, “How can I be the mother of the Messiah, when I am under vow not to be the mother of anyone? I am a virgin, that is my consecrated state in life.” The question makes no sense in any other way.[6]

Likewise, Karl Keating of Catholic Answers puts it this way:

At the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, she asked, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). From the earliest interpretations of the Bible we see that this was taken to mean that she had made a vow of lifelong virginity, even in marriage. If she had taken no such vow, the question would make no sense at all.[7]

In response to these assertions we briefly note that (1) Nothing about a vow is mentioned in Scripture. Mary’s response to the angel was based upon the fact that it was obvious that the angel was speaking about an immediate conception, and since Mary was at that time only engaged to Joseph, but not married, at that time she could not possibly conceive in a natural manner, since she did not “know a man”; (2) There is nothing in the words “I do not know a man” that suggests a vow. The verb is present tense, “I do not know a man.” The passage does not say “I have pledged never to know a man” or “I will never know a man”; and (3) Even Roman Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott recognizes that the idea of a vow of virginity, made popular by Augustine (four centuries after the time of Christ), cannot be made to fit the context. “However, the subsequent espousals can hardly be reconciled with this” is his comment.[8]

Ott is correct: the idea of a “married virgin” as Keating puts it is an oxymoron. Matthew speaks of the time “before they came together,” which is what would really make no sense if there was no intention of entering into a real marital relationship. The idea of a married virgin is simply out of harmony with the Bible’s teaching concerning the nature of marriage (let alone Jewish custom of the day). As Paul taught (1 Cor. 7), there is a marital debt involved (v. 3)[9] that would preclude the idea of a married virgin: the man’s body is not his own, but is his wife’s, and vice-versa. Sexual relations are completely natural in the married state, and, in fact, are assumed if a true marriage exists. If a person wishes to be a virgin, she should remain unmarried.[10]

The idea of a virgin entering into an engagement with a man, even though she intends to remain celibate, is simply an attempt to make the biblical evidence support a doctrine created long after the apostles had finished writing Scripture.

Jesus on the Cross

Let me quickly address one other argument that is often brought forward. In John 19, at the Cross, the Lord Jesus entrusts Mary, His mother, to the beloved disciple, John. Some have asserted that Jesus would actually be breaking the Mosaic law to do this if He had brothers. Of course, this ignores a few rather glaring problems. His brothers were unbelievers. In fact, they had mocked Him in John 7, and would not come to faith in Him until after His resurrection. But more obviously, they were not at the Cross. John was. John, the beloved disciple, and a believing follower of Jesus, would be far closer to Mary as a fellow believer than her natural children ever could be unless they, like her, came to believe in the Messiah. Hence, Jesus’ entrusting of His mother to John is perfectly in line with the New Testament evidence.

The Evolution of the Doctrine

Where did this doctrine come from? Did it originate in the believing community? The historical answer is no. Noted church historian J. N. D. Kelly indicates that the earliest affirmation we have of the perpetual virginity of Mary comes from the apocryphal, and, I dare point out, heretical, Ascension of Isaiah (11:8–14), with the words, “Her womb was found as it was before she became pregnant.”[11]

Likewise, the Odes of Solomon, tinged with gnosticism,[12] denies any physical pain in the birth of Jesus. But most importantly we have the Protevangelium of James, a mishmash of mythology and storytelling, a work of second-rate fiction at best. Yet the ideas it presented, drawn from a century after the events, ended up forming the basis of the position presented by Roman Catholicism regarding the perpetual virginity of Mary and many other elements of the Marian doctrines.

The earliest leaders in the church said nothing about the issue. Tertullian, a writer who lived at the end of the second century, spoke of Mary having a normal married life, and of her having children.[13]

Origen, a little later, propounded the idea of perpetual virginity. In the next century, Ambrose began the process of trying to find biblical basis for an unbiblical belief by appealing to Ezekiel’s vision of the temple (Ezek. 44:1–3). Here we are told of a gate that is shut, and Ambrose saw in this a picture of Mary’s perpetual virginity! The danger of building a case upon the basis of the opinions of the early Fathers of the church is illustrated by Hilary, who wrote in the middle of the fourth century, violently denouncing those who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary. Yet Hilary himself denied the next dogma we will examine, the Immaculate Conception![14]

Immaculate Conception

There are few doctrines less well understood by folks on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide than that of the Immaculate Conception. Many, many Catholics do not accurately understand their own doctrine, so it is hardly surprising that only a small minority of Protestants have any idea what the doctrine actually states or why Catholics today think it is so important.

The Immaculate Conception is a clear case of a doctrine that has been elevated to a dogma on the basis of “tradition.” A distinction is often made between a doctrine as a teaching that exists below the level of infallible definition, and a dogma that is a doctrine that has been defined as part of the very faith itself. That definition can take place in two ways. In the example of the perpetual virginity of Mary, for example, this teaching is a dogma because it has been taught, Rome claims, by the “ordinary and general teaching power of the Church.” This is the “ordinary” means. An “extraordinary” definition is when the Pope or a general council makes a definition directly, and that is the case we have with the Immaculate Conception.

The Definition

On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX promulgated an “Apostolic Constitution” titled Ineffabilis Deus.

Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

The last lines comprise the “extraordinary” but infallible definition of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Some of the key issues should be understood. The Roman Church is not saying that Mary did not need a Savior or that she did not need grace. The definition specifically speaks of a “singular grace” given to Mary, and that grace is based on the “merits of Jesus Christ.” It could be understood this way: the teaching is that God preemptively saved Mary, while everyone else is saved after the fact of needing the salvation given. Some Roman Catholic apologists put it this way: If you keep someone from falling into a mudhole, you can be said to have “saved” that person. In the same way, if they fall in, and you pull them out and clean them off, you also can be said to have “saved” them. In the one case you saved them preemptively from getting dirty, and in the other, you saved them after they became dirty. Hence, the argument is that God saved Mary from contracting the stain of original sin (and thus, in life, all personal sin) through the preemptive application of the merits of Christ to her.[1]

Upon making this definition, the Pope overflowed with praise for Mary:

Our soul overflows with joy and our tongue with exultation. We give, and we shall continue to give, the humblest and deepest thanks to Jesus Christ, our Lord, because through his singular grace he has granted to us, unworthy though we be, to decree and offer this honor and glory and praise to his most holy Mother. All our hope do we repose in the most Blessed Virgin—in the all fair and immaculate one who has crushed the poisonous head of the most cruel serpent and brought salvation to the world: in her who is the glory of the prophets and apostles, the honor of the martyrs, the crown and joy of all the saints; in her who is the safest refuge and the most trustworthy helper of all who are in danger; in her who, with her only-begotten Son, is the most powerful Mediatrix and Conciliatrix in the whole world; in her who is the most excellent glory, ornament, and impregnable stronghold of the holy Church; in her who has destroyed all heresies and snatched the faithful people and nations from all kinds of direst calamities; in her do we hope who has delivered us from so many threatening dangers.

But just how serious this dogma is can be seen from what came immediately after the definition:

Hence, if anyone shall dare—which God forbid!—to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he think in his heart.

Here, with infallible and binding authority, the Pope forbids anyone from even thinking otherwise than he has defined concerning the Immaculate Conception. If you are led to a different conclusion by the study of the Bible, or the study of history, you are to submit your mind and your heart to the ultimate authority of the Papacy, and reject even those conclusions derived from the Word itself.[2]

But why did it take more than 1,800 years to define this teaching as dogma, if, in fact, it is true? Is there anything in Scripture that even remotely suggests this concept? Let’s take a look.

The Bible and the Immaculate Conception

Roman Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott faces reality when addressing this topic: “The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is not explicitly revealed in Scripture.”[3]

Instead, Ott says that it is found “implicitly” in Genesis 3:15:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.

He notes that the Pope cites this passage when defining the doctrine. However, he recognizes that the literal meaning of the passage refers to Eve and her posterity and the enmity that will exist between the two. However, he adds this curious assertion:

The Bull “Ineffabilis” approves of this messianic-marianic interpretation…. The Bull does not give any authentic explanation of the passage. It must also be observed that the infallibility of the Papal doctrinal decision extends only to the dogma as such and not to the reasons given as leading up to the dogma.[4]

In other words, the reasons (including biblical interpretations) that lead up to a dogmatic definition can be simply wrong, but the resultant definition is still infallible. So the Pope could be wrong about Genesis 3:15, but the doctrine is still infallible, simply because the Pope pronounced it. The results of such a way of thinking are rather frightening.

Ott likewise cites the main passage used in defense of nearly every Marian doctrine: Luke 1:28. All Roman Catholic theologians and apologists must press this verse into service at this point. But as we have seen, the passage does not even begin to bear the massive weight placed upon it by Roman dogma. The greeting of an angel that emphasizes the blessedness of God’s gracious choice of Mary as the mother of the Messiah is hardly sufficient basis for everything Rome wishes to pile upon it. And one thing is for certain: the early Fathers likewise failed to see the significance in the passage assigned by later centuries.[5]

The last passage brought forward by Ott and other writers is Luke 1:42:

And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”

Generally, in reading Roman Catholic literature on this passage, the thought is brought out that the blessing is somehow connected with sinlessness. That is, this statement means Elizabeth was saying Mary was the holiest of all women. Yet how Elizabeth would know this is not explained. What is more, there is nothing in the word “blessed” that suggests the person of whom it speaks is sinlessly perfect. If the term is supposed to mean this, does it mean that all Christians are sinlessly perfect because they are called blessed in Matthew 25:34? This is another good example of eisegesis—reading into a text something that is not there.

These three passages are all that can be adduced to provide the basis for saying the belief is “implicitly” found in Scripture. In reality, of course, one could find anything in Scripture by using this kind of standard.

The Immaculate Conception and History

Leo I, the great bishop of Rome from a.d. 440 to 461, rejected the idea that anyone but Christ was sinless. He taught, “Alone therefore among the sons of men the Lord Jesus was born innocent, because alone conceived without pollution of carnal concupiscence.”[6]

In fact, as Philip Schaff points out, seven different Popes taught doctrine that was contrary to what was defined as “Christian dogma” in the nineteenth century.[7] Ironically, one of the seven, Gelasius I, toward the end of the fifth century likewise condemned as heretical the literature that contains the first reference to the Bodily Assumption of Mary (see chapter 10).

How is it that even Roman bishops could teach contrary to an infallible dogma? Simply because the doctrine did not exist and was not a part of anyone’s thinking for the majority of Church history! Oh yes, as Marian devotion developed, more and more people spoke of her in terms that would lead one to think of her as being without personal sin, but even this does not go so far as to say that she was conceived without original sin itself. Augustine had taught very clearly that only Christ was so conceived, and his influence banished all other thoughts for a thousand years.

But even before Augustine, the case is clear: The early Fathers taught that Mary had sinned. Even Roman Catholic historians and theologians admit this. Ott writes that “individual Greek Fathers (e.g., Origen, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria) taught that Mary suffered from venial personal faults, such as ambition and vanity….”[8]

He also admits, “Neither the Greek nor the Latin Fathers explicitly teach the Immaculate Conception of Mary.”[9]

In the same way, Protestant historian J. N. D. Kelly notes others who likewise admitted Mary’s imperfections: he includes Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hilary as well.[10]

But we can go well beyond this period and still find many writers who deny what Rome now says has been true all along. S. Lewis Johnson summarized it well:

Anselm held that Mary was born with original sin. Bernard of Clairvaux contended that she was conceived with original sin, but purified before birth. Thomas Aquinas and the Dominicans held this view, but Duns Scotus popularized the view that Mary was conceived without original sin, and his view eventually prevailed, although Pope Sixtus VI in 1485 and the Council of Trent in 1546 left the issue unresolved.[11]

Eamon Carroll has written regarding the period of Augustine,

Many more centuries of thought and prayer were required before the Church would realize that the Immaculate Conception was among the gifts God provided for his Mother.[12]

Elliot Miller has written,

The doctrine of Mary’s sinlessness emerged gradually. Several Greek church fathers (e.g., Origen, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and Basil) held that Mary, although outstandingly holy in character, had nonetheless been guilty of such sins as doubt, vanity, and ambition.[13]

So where did the idea first come into play? Ott explains:

At the beginning of the twelfth century, the British monk Eadmer, a pupil of St. Anselm of Canterbury, and Osbert of Clare, advocated the Immaculate (passive) Conception of Mary, that is, her conception free from original sin. Eadmer wrote the first monograph on this subject. On the other hand, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on the occasion of the institution of the Feast in Lyons (about 1140), warned the faithful that this was an unfounded innovation, and taught that Mary was sanctified after conception only, that is, when she was already in the womb (Ep. 174). Under the influence of St. Bernard, the leading theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Petrus Lombardus, St. Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas; cf. S. th. III 27, 2), rejected the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.[14]

Bernard was a little more vocal than Ott will admit. As Schaff puts it, he opposed the feast …

… as a false honor to the royal Virgin, which she does not need, and as an unauthorized innovation, which was the mother of temerity, the sister of superstition, and the daughter of levity. He urged against it that it was not sanctioned by the Roman Church. He rejected the opinion of the Immaculate Conception of Mary as contrary to tradition and derogatory to the dignity of Christ, the only sinless being, and asked the Canons of Lyons the pertinent question, “Whence they discovered such a hidden fact? On the same ground they might appoint festivals for the conception of the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents of Mary, and so on without end.” It does not diminish, but rather increases the weight of his protest, that he was himself an enthusiastic eulogist of Mary, and a believer in her sinless birth. He put her in this respect on a par with Jeremiah and John the Baptist.[15]

The facts are plain: Here we have a doctrine that has been elevated to the level of Christian dogma itself. It has been made a part of the very core of the faith. Yet not only does it not have a shred of biblical support but it is also contrary to the statements of many of the early Fathers regarding Mary’s imperfections. As a positive teaching, it was opposed by the vast majority of writers into the twelfth century and beyond! As Dr. Johnson comments,

The dogma is based neither on the Word of God nor on tradition but simply, it seems, on the consensus of contemporary church opinion and theological “suitability.”[16]

The fact that Rome can define such a doctrine as a necessary and vital part of the very faith itself, and forbid someone to even think contrary to it, shows us with glaring clarity what happens when you deny the truth of sola scriptura, that is, the sufficiency of the Scriptures as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church. Surely we can see here the wisdom of the scriptural exhortation not to “go beyond what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6).

Mother of God

It’s the single most misused theological term around. Mary is the “mother of God.” The logic seems inescapable: Jesus is God, come in human flesh. Mary is Jesus’ mother. Hence, Mary is the mother of God. What could be simpler?

If everyone would use the term to communicate just that—that Jesus Christ was truly and completely God—there would be no reason to include a brief chapter on the topic of “the mother of God.” Yet, obviously, that would be a bit simplistic. Most of the time when the phrase is used, the persons using it are not in any way commenting on the fact that Jesus Christ was God and Man on the earth. They are not speaking about Christ at all, but about Mary, and they are using the title to give her a position of honor and power.

Should we call Mary “Mother of God”? What did the term mean in the ancient church? How is it being misused today?

The Origin of the Term

Anyone who reads the writings of the ancient church knows that the word translated “Mother of God” is the Greek term theotokos. Literally, the word means “God-bearer.” It became a title for Mary, so that you often find her simply being called Theotokos in devotional and theological writings. But where did the term come from?

Around the beginning of the fourth century, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, first used this term when speaking of Mary.[1]

It is no coincidence that it was the teaching of Alexander that prompted the most famous “heretic” of all time—Arius, the great denier of the deity of Christ—to begin propagating his heresy. Evidently, at that time, even in its earliest uses, the term was meant to say something about Jesus, not Mary. That is, the term was Christological in force. It was focused on Christ, and was meant to safeguard the truth about His absolute deity.

The term really entered into the “orthodox” vocabulary through its usage at the Councils of Ephesus (a.d. 431) and, more importantly, Chalcedon (a.d. 451). We can learn the most about how this term was originally understood by taking a moment to understand why it appears in the creed produced at Chalcedon.

The debate over the complete deity of Christ had lasted for many decades, continuing on well after the Council of Nicea had finished its work (a.d. 325), not coming to completion until the Council of Constantinople in a.d. 381. But once this great truth was properly safeguarded, other questions began to arise. One of those questions went like this: Granted that Jesus Christ is truly God in human flesh, how, then, are we to understand the relationship between the divine and the human in Christ? Was He really a man at all? Did His deity swallow up his humanity? Was there some mixture of the two? Or was Jesus two people: one divine and one human, merely sharing one body?

Sadly, the debate was undertaken in anything but a calm and respectful climate. More time was spent on political maneuvering than upon meaningful exegesis. But despite the rancor of the debate, the resulting understanding was very important, especially for our understanding of the term theotokos.

One of the principle participants in the debate over the nature of Christ was a man named Nestorius. But since he was eventually condemned as a heretic, we have some doubt as to whether we have a completely accurate (or fair) view of his beliefs, as they have come down to us primarily through the writings of his enemies. Basically, Nestorius objected to the use of the word theotokos. He quite rightly expressed concern that the word could be easily misunderstood. But most importantly, his denial of the propriety of theotokos led him to insist that Mary was the mother only of the human “element” of Christ, which resulted in a functional separation of the divine from the human in Christ. The basic danger of Nestorius’ position, then, was that it led to a Jesus who was two “persons,” with no real connection between the divine and the human.

Those who defended the use of theotokos did so by insisting that the Messiah was fully human and fully divine from the moment of conception, hence, the child who was born was not only a human child with deity dwelling in him but was the God-Man, the Incarnate One. Chalcedon insisted that Jesus was one Person with two distinct natures, the divine and the human. The divine did not “swallow up” the human, nor was it “mixed” with the human to create something that was neither fully God nor fully man. Nor was Jesus schizophrenic—a human person, Jesus, and a divine Person, separate from him. He was one person with two natures.[2]

What is vitally important is that the term God-bearer as it was used in the creed and as it was applied to Mary in these controversies said something about the nature of Christ, not the nature of Mary. “Mother of God” is a phrase that has proper theological meaning only in reference to Christ. Hence, any use of the term that is not simply saying, “Jesus is fully God, one divine Person with two natures,” is using the term anachronistically, and cannot claim the authority of the early church for such a usage.

The Misuse of the Term Today

Outside of seminary classes and theological debates about the Trinity, I have never heard the term “Mother of God” used in a historically proper and theologically accurate way. That is, every time I have heard the title used outside those contexts it was being used to say something about Mary rather than something about Christ. Obviously, Nestorius was right about one thing: the term is liable to serious misuse and misunderstanding.

Mary is not the mother of God in the sense that she gave rise to the being of God. We normally use the word “mother” to refer to the one who gave rise to us as individuals, and from whom we derived our human nature. Yet the divine Person who became Jesus, the eternal Son of God (Col. 1:13–17), the Logos (John 1:1–14), has existed eternally and is the Creator of Mary. She was used to bring the Incarnate One into the world, but she did not add to or give rise to the Eternal Son who came into the world through her. Her child was fully divine (hence she is theotokos) but she herself did not give rise to the divinity of her Son. For this reason, there can be nothing about the term theotokos that in any way exalts Mary, but only Christ.

Of course, if this is true, then the vast majority of the use of the phrase “Mother of God” in our world today is simply in error. Prayers addressed to “Mother of God” that seek her intercession and ascribe to her power and glory and honor are using the title in a way completely foreign to the biblical truths that gave rise to it in the first place. And the fact that, in general, the term is avoided as improper outside the narrow spectrum in which it speaks to the important truth of the unipersonality of Christ, as well as His full deity, is a testimony to the spiritual sensitivity of believing Christians. We cannot help but conclude that the use of “Mother of God” as a title for Mary that leads to her being seen in quasi-divine categories is nothing but a gross misunderstanding of the true relationship between the blessed virgin of Nazareth and the eternal God who sent the eternal Son to be born of her.

Bodily Assumption

Just as Mary slipped quietly from the pages of the New Testament after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so, too, she slipped quietly from this earth, at her death, into the presence of God her Savior. Giovanni Miegge wrote,

She [Mary] departed life humbly and modestly as she had lived it, and none remembered the place of her burial, even if a tradition toward the mid-fifth century gave her a sepulchre near Jerusalem in the garden of Gethsemane.[1]

And so it was that Epiphanius, writing in the fourth century, said, “For her end no one knows.”[2]

Since he lived in the general geographic area in which she had lived, surely if there was some tradition associated with her death and her burial, he would have known about it.

Despite this, Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, promulgated[3] an Apostolic Constitution titled Munificentissimus Deus, in which we read:

Since, then, the universal Church, in which the Spirit of Truth flourishes, who infallibly directs it to achieve a knowledge of revealed truths, has through the course of the ages repeatedly manifested its own faith; and since the bishops of the whole world with almost unanimous consent request that the truth of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven be defined as a dogma of the divine and Catholic faith—a truth which is founded on the Sacred Scriptures, has been fixed deeply in the minds of the faithful in Christ, has been approved by ecclesiastical worship even from the earliest times, is quite in harmony with other revealed truths, and has been splendidly explained and declared by the zeal, knowledge, and wisdom of the theologians—We think that the moment appointed in the plan of a provident God has now come to proclaim solemnly such an extraordinary privilege of the Virgin Mary….

Accordingly … by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, and by Our own authority We pronounce, declare and define that the dogma was revealed by God, that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, after completing her course of life upon earth, was assumed to the glory of heaven both in body and soul.

Therefore, if anyone, which may God forbid, should dare either to deny this, or voluntarily call into doubt what has been defined by Us, he should realize that he has cut himself off entirely from the divine and Catholic faith.

Note that the issue of whether Mary died a natural death is left unanswered: some say she did, some say she didn’t. But in any case, she was bodily assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life.

Normally we would divide the discussion up between biblical and historical information. However, there is nothing in the Bible that even remotely suggests the idea that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven.[4]

Even Ott honestly admits, “Direct and express scriptural proofs are not to be had.”[5]

And in a striking illustration of what happens when sola scriptura is denied, Catholic apologist Karl Keating writes regarding the doctrine of the Bodily Assumption,

Still, fundamentalists ask, where is the proof from Scripture? Strictly, there is none. It was the Catholic Church that was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as something definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.[6]

But if there is no scriptural support, what about tradition drawn from history? Here, likewise, we find modern dogma crashing upon the rocks of historical reality. The first centuries of the Christian era pass without so much as a whisper about the idea. According to Roman Catholic historian and Mariologist Juniper Carol, “The first express witness in the West to a genuine assumption comes to us in an apocryphal Gospel, the Transitus beatae Mariae of Pseudo-Melito.”[7]

Ott, likewise, says, “The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus-narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they were written despite their legendary clothing.”[8]

It is very important that we understand the significance of what these authors are saying. The first appearance of a dogma that was eventually defined as a part of the very Christian faith was found in certain “transitus literature.” What does that mean? Protestant writer and authority William Webster explains what Ott seems a bit unwilling to explain:

In his decree, Decretum de Libris Cononicis Ecclesiasticis et Apocrypha, which was later affirmed by Pope Hormisdas, Gelasius lists the Transitus teaching by the following title: Liber qui apellatur Transitus, id est Assumptio Sanctae Mariae under the following condemnation: “These and writings similar to these, which … all the heresiarchs and their disciples, or the schismatics have taught or written … we confess have not only been rejected but also banished from the whole Roman and Apostolic Church and with their authors and followers of their authors have been condemned forever under the indissoluble bond of anathema.”[9]

What is the significance of this? Basically, the first appearance of the idea of the Bodily Assumption of Mary is found in a source that was condemned as heretical by the then-bishop of Rome, Gelasius I! The irony is striking: what was defined by the bishop of Rome as heresy at the end of the fifth century becomes dogma itself in the middle of the twentieth![10]

But such is what happens when the Scriptures are not allowed to provide the hedge—the border—in which proper theological reflection and growth is to occur. Rome denies sola scriptura, hence, “all bets are off” as far as what she can, and in fact does, teach.

Space would fail us to even begin to list the Christian leaders and writers through the centuries who lived and died without once confessing or embracing this doctrine. The entirety of the early church stands as one in asserting that this doctrine was not a part of the faith that was delivered to the saints (Jude 3). It is simply not a part of “tradition” or “Scripture,” the two pillars upon which Rome claims to define her doctrines; yet this fact has not stopped her from making a part of the very fabric of the faith a doctrine that has no basis in either.

The Foundation Is Laid

We have covered the dogmatic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church that prevailed at the time of the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, better known as Vatican II. All of these doctrines together form the foundation upon which the current controversy thrives. But two more important elements are lacking in our study before we can truly and honestly understand the issues that concern us about Mary as “Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate.”

First, what is the result of believing what has come before? That is, if these doctrines are allowed into the context of the Christian faith, what is the result? We can find this out by looking closely at one of the leading examples of “Marian piety” that has come out of the acceptance of these doctrines. It is the work of a “doctor of the Church,” a man canonized (made a saint), whose work has gone through literally hundreds of editions. His name is Alphonsus Ligouri.

Second, what did Vatican II, and Pope John Paul II, teach concerning Mary? Do they use such terms as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate for the people of God? To these issues we now turn.

The Veneration and Worship of Mary

“We do not worship Mary!” The informed Roman Catholic says this over and over again when speaking to Protestants about the Marian devotions of the Roman Church. “You just don’t understand what we believe; therefore, your objections are meaningless! What’s more, if you don’t know what we believe, how can you criticize us with honesty and integrity?”

At the very least, the claim made by Rome—in many contexts and in many ways—must be taken seriously. Rome tries to safeguard the worship of God, at least on a definitional level. And in fact, she has gone to great lengths in the area of the saints and Mary to insist that she is not promoting the worship of the saints, nor of Mary. How has she done so?

The most basic defense developed by Roman Catholic theology has to do with the words we use to describe religious worship. In Roman theology[1] the worship due to God alone is called latria. This kind of worship, we are told, is never to be given to the saints, or even to the Virgin Mary. But there is another kind of religious attitude, veneration, which is described by the word dulia. This, we are told, is not worship, as is due to God alone, but is a lesser form of honor, and can be given to saints and to Mary. In fact, Mary can receive what is called hyper-dulia, the highest form of veneration short of latria. By making this distinction, Rome claims to be safeguarding the dignity of God and His sole right to human worship. But does the attempt succeed? Or is this a distinction without a difference?

From the Roman viewpoint, as long as the Church says the distinction is real, it is, since the Church has the final say in such things anyway. But the Christian who wishes to follow the apostolic example and “test all things” by God’s revealed truth in Scripture (Acts 17:11; 1 Thess. 5:21; Rev. 2:2) will not settle for such a response. The claim must be examined in the light of God’s Word, and when it is, it fails the test.

The Latin words latria and dulia can both be traced back to the Scriptures and the Greek words from which they are taken. And when we examine these words, we discover that they are closely related. In fact, they are used synonymously when speaking of one’s worship or service of God. And when we trace their use back into the Old Testament, we discover that, in fact, they both are used to translate a single Hebrew term, the very term used in the commandment found in Exodus 20:5:

You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.

The word used in the Greek version of the Old Testament for the phrase “serve them” is the word from which the word latria is derived, showing that “worship” and “service” are intimately related and not two separate ideas in the Bible.

What does all of this mean? Simply that when the distinction introduced by Rome is tested by the Bible, the distinction disappears. Consequently, the giving of dulia to saints, angels, and Mary is as serious a violation of God’s revealed will as the giving of latria; there is no meaningful difference between the two words!

Today it is very unpopular to say that someone’s “sincere religious worship” is, in fact, in violation of God’s truth. We risk being labeled narrow-minded, unloving, even harsh. But if we love God’s truth and follow it, we cannot help but speak as He speaks. The Word makes plain God’s concern with purity in worship. In the case of Roman Catholicism, when a distinction has been made between two terms that results in the worship of saints, angels, and the Virgin Mary, and this distinction does not truly exist in the revealing light of Scripture, we have only one choice: We must share this discovery with those who have been deceived by Rome’s false interpretation, for what God says about the subject is far more important than what Rome says about it. Giving “veneration” to a saint, to an angel, or to Mary is idolatry, and if we are truly concerned about the glory of God and His truth, we will not hesitate to speak out.

The Results of Roman Teaching

Roman documents are filled with statements that are designed to safeguard the unique position of Christ. Yet, as we have seen with reference to worship, these safeguards do not accomplish their stated goals. The Roman doctrines of Mary do result in a diminishing of the sole glory of Christ. This truth is nowhere more clearly seen than in the popular Marian literature that is found throughout the Roman Catholic Church.

One could easily fill many volumes with glaring examples of the elevation of Mary to a position utterly beyond any kind of biblical defense or reasoning. And rarely are any of the authors of these books being censored or disciplined, let alone excommunicated. Rome’s unwillingness to speak clearly to these sources, and her willingness to allow her people to read and believe the claims in these books, is an implicit endorsement of what they teach. If there was truly something contrary to Roman doctrine written in these books, Rome would surely have the responsibility to say so and to direct her people away from these sources. Instead, as we will note more extensively later, the official view of the Church has been influenced by the popularity of these writings.

The single best example of what happens when Roman dogmas are allowed to be taken to their logical conclusion is found in a book by St. Alphonsus Ligouri, titled The Glories of Mary.[2] Ligouri is a canonized saint. The Roman Catholic Church has decided that he entered directly into the presence of God without having to go through purgatory. Not only this, but he has been designated a “doctor of the Church,” a title given to those who have provided a special type of guidance to the Church, and who have shown special insight into God’s truth. His book has gone through 800 editions in many languages! Obviously, if this book contains heretical teachings, the Church would have an obligation not only to avoid canonizing him as a saint and calling him a doctor of the Church but to warn the faithful about the dangers lurking within his writings. Obviously, no such warning will be found. In fact, it becomes clear as we read the following material that this kind of piety is in reality the source of later dogmatic definitions.

These quotes are taken primarily from the first few chapters of Ligouri’s book, in which he presents his main arguments. The excerpts are organized in order by chapter title because he intended to present an argument, building one point upon another. To the Protestant reader much of this material will be offensive. I say this as a warning to the Protestant as well as an explanation to the Roman Catholic reader. I would quote only a section or two, but the extended repetition of the same themes in a number of ways serves to communicate the depth of the devotion to Mary and the extent of the belief in her power and ability to save and rescue.

The idea of Mary’s centrality as Mediatrix of all graces is firmly rooted in the piety exemplified by Ligouri. In fact, as we read through these citations, it becomes clear that it is the “unofficial piety” that is behind the eventual official definitions. First, these beliefs show up in literature such as this. Then they become popular though “unofficial” beliefs. And eventually they end up under consideration for definition as official doctrine and dogma. For example:

… it is the will of God that all graces should come to us by the hands of Mary … meaning that the plenitude of grace was in Christ, as the Head from which it flows, as from its source; and in Mary, as in the neck through which it flows … for in all dangers thou canst obtain salvation of this glorious Virgin. (25–27)

… all graces are dispensed by Mary, and all who are saved are saved only by the means of this divine Mother; it is upon preaching Mary, and exciting all to confidence in her intercession. (32)

The words used of Mary in this type of literature strike the ear as being appropriate only of the Lord Jesus.

… the praise of Mary is an inexhaustible fount: the more it is enlarged the fuller it gets, and the more you fill it so much the more is it enlarged … that if all the tongues of men were put together, and even if each of their members was changed into a tongue, they would not suffice to praise her as much as she deserves … and never lose an opportunity, either in public or in private, of enkindling in the hearts of others those blessed flames of love with which they themselves burn towards their beloved Queen … that to honor this Queen of Angels is to gain eternal life … that this most gracious Lady will honor in the next world those who honor her in this. (29–30)

“… rejoice, my soul, and be glad in her; for many good things are prepared for those who praise her”; and he says that the whole of the sacred Scriptures speak in praise of Mary…. The devout Thomas à Kempis represents to us Mary recommending a soul who had honored her to her Son, and saying, “My most loving Son, have mercy on the soul of this servant of Thine, who loved and extolled me.” … that as the most sacred womb of Mary was the means of salvation for sinners, the hearing of her praises must necessarily convert them, and thus also be a means of their salvation. (31)

Surely we can recognize how the unique lordship of Jesus is compromised in such words as these:

O, blessed are they who bind themselves with love and confidence to these two anchors of salvation, Jesus and Mary. Certainly, they will not be lost…. Let us love Jesus and Mary, and become saints; we can neither expect nor hope anything better. (33)

The quotes thus far are only from the Introduction to Ligouri’s work! He bases his book on the following prayer, Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae:

Hail, O Queen, O Mother of mercy! hail our life, our comfort, and our hope. We, the banished children of Eve, cry out unto thee. To thee we send up our sighs, groaning, and weeping in this vale of tears. Come, then, our advocate, and look upon us with those thy pitying eyes. And after this our banishment, show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb; O merciful, O compassionate, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Again, based on this prayer, chapters reflect these topics:

Mary, Our Queen, Our Mother

Mary, Our Life, Our Sweetness

Mary, Our Hope

Mary, Our Mediatress

Mary, Our Advocate

Mary, Our Guardian

Mary, Our Salvation

After the main presentation, Ligouri discusses Marian feasts and like subjects.

Mary, Our Queen, Our Mother

“No sooner had Mary,” says St. Bernardine of Sienna, “consented to be Mother of the Eternal Word, than she merited by this consent to be made Queen of the world and of all creatures” (35).

Hence St. Bernardine of Sienna concludes that “as many creatures as there are who serve Mary: for as angels and men, and all things that are under heaven and on earth are subject to the empire of God, so are they also under the dominion of Mary!” (36)

The “Queenship of Mary” is vital to the entire doctrine of Mary currently being debated in Roman Catholic circles. To truly understand what motivates people to believe in these doctrines and to so zealously practice their beliefs and promote them, one must understand the concept of Mary as Queen of Mercy versus Jesus as King of Justice. The idea that Jesus is a stern judge is deeply entrenched in the kind of piety that seeks to find in someone else (Mary) a means of softening the rigor of His judgment and rule. Therefore, when we read of Mary portrayed as “Queen of Mercy,” we discover that this concept is, in reality, meant to allow a false view of Jesus, one that introduces the need for yet another mediator. Note these words:

… that when the Blessed Virgin conceived the Eternal Word in her womb, and brought him forth, she obtained half the kingdom of God; so that she is Queen of Mercy, as Jesus Christ is King of Justice … that the Eternal Father gave the office of judge and avenger to the Son, and that of showing mercy and relieving the necessitous to the Mother. (37)

This thought is brought out over and over again in later quotations, but this one makes the point with striking clarity:

“On this account it was,” says St. Bernard, “that the Eternal Father, wishing to show all the mercy possible, besides giving us Jesus Christ, our principal advocate, was pleased also to give us Mary, as our advocate with Jesus Christ. There is no doubt,” the saint adds, “that Jesus Christ is the only mediator of justice between men and God; that, by virtue of his own merits and promises, he will and can obtain us pardon and the divine favors; but because men acknowledge and fear the divine Majesty, which is in him as God, for this reason it was necessary to assign us another advocate, to whom we might have recourse with less fear and more confidence, and this advocate is Mary, than whom we cannot find one more powerful with his divine majesty, or one more merciful towards ourselves.” The saint says, “Christ is a faithful and powerful Mediator between God and men, but in him men fear the majesty of God. A mediator, then, was needed with the mediator himself; nor could a more fitting one be found than Mary” (195–196).

The idea that in Mary we find mercy but in Jesus we find judgment explains a great deal of the force behind the ever-growing devotion to Mary. It also provides the single strongest objection to the exaltation of Mary beyond biblical grounds: it is based upon a gross misunderstanding of who Christ is and how He himself is the fount of all mercy for His people.

… it is because we believe that she opens the abyss of the mercy of God to whomsoever she wills, when she wills, and as she wills; so that there is no sinner, however great, who is lost if Mary protects him. (40)

… although Mary is under an infinite obligation to the Son for having chosen her to be his Mother, yet it cannot be denied that the Son is under great obligation to her for giving him his humanity; and therefore Jesus, to pay as it were what he owes to Mary, and glorying in her glory, honors her in a special manner by listening to and granting all her petitions. (42)

Visions of Mary to saints and sinners alike form a large portion of the basis of Marian theology. This quote allegedly came from Mary, and was addressed to St. Bridget:

“I am the Queen of heaven and the Mother of Mercy; I am the joy of the just, and the door through which sinners are brought to God. There is no sinner on earth so accursed as to be deprived of my mercy; for all, if they receive nothing else through my intercession, receive the grace of being less tempted by the devils than they would otherwise have been. No one,” she adds, “unless the irrevocable sentence has been pronounced” (that is, the one pronounced on the damned), “is so cast off by God that he will not return to him, and enjoy his mercy, if he invokes my aid … and therefore miserable will he be, and miserable will he be to all eternity, who, in this life, having it in his power to invoke me, who am so compassionate to all, and so desirous to assist sinners, is miserable enough not to invoke me, and so is damned” (43).

One dare not miss the theological elements of such alleged statements by Mary. Indeed, one need only contrast the Mary of Scripture with the Mary of apparitions and visions to see the vast difference that exists.

… if we are alarmed and disheartened at the sight of our sins, let us remember that it is in order to save the greatest and most abandoned sinners, who recommend themselves to her, that Mary is made the Queen of Mercy. (43–44)

At the end of each section, Ligouri includes a prayer to Mary.

O, Mother of my God, and my Lady Mary; as a beggar, all wounded and sore, presents himself before a great queen, so do I present myself before thee, who art the Queen of heaven and earth. From the lofty throne on which thou sittest, disdain not, I implore thee, to cast thine eyes on me, a poor sinner. God has made thee so rich that thou mightest assist the poor, and has constituted thee Queen of Mercy in order that thou mightest relieve the miserable. Behold me then, and pity me: behold me and abandon me not, until thou seest me changed from a sinner into a saint. I know well that I merit nothing; nay more, that I deserve, on account of my ingratitude, to be deprived of the graces that, through thy means, I have already received from God. But thou, who art the Queen of Mercy, seekest not merits, but miseries, in order to help the needy. But who is more needy than I? O, exalted Virgin, well do I know that thou, who art Queen of the universe, art already my queen; yet am I determined to dedicate myself more especially to thy service, in order that thou mayest dispose of me as thou pleasest. Therefore, do I address thee in the words of St. Bonaventure: “Do thou govern me, O my Queen, and leave me not to myself.” Command me; employ me as thou wilt, and chastise me when I do not obey; for the chastisements that come from thy hands will be to me pledges of salvation. I would rather be thy servant than the ruler of the earth. I am Thine; save me. Accept me, O Mary, for thine own, and as thine, take charge of my salvation. I will no longer be mine; to thee do I give myself. If, during the time past I have served thee ill, and lost so many occasions of honoring thee, for the future I will be one of thy most loving and faithful servants. I am determined that from this day forward no one shall surpass me in honoring and loving thee, my most amiable Queen. This I promise; and this, with thy help, I hope to execute. Amen. (45–46)

Such words defy any attempt to hide the real meaning of the author. The words addressed to Mary in such prayers are reserved solely for God the Savior. All the discussions about latria/dulia cannot hide the problems with such a prayer.

God explained it to her, saying that Jesus was Mary’s first-born according to the flesh, but that all mankind were her second-born according to the Spirit. (46)

“And who,” says Cardinal Bellarmine, “would ever dare to snatch these children from the bosom of Mary, when they have taken refuge there? What power of hell, or what temptation, can overcome them, if they place their confidence in the patronage of this great Mother, the Mother of God, and of them? … We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God: we fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God.” Oh, how many victories have not the faithful gained over hell, by having recourse to Mary with this short but most powerful prayer! (52–53)

One is reminded of the scriptural truth (Titus 2:13; 1 Cor. 1:30; etc.) that the hope and refuge of the Christian is Christ, never Mary.

… we are those children for whom Mary, in order to obtain for us the life of grace, was obliged to endure the bitter agony of herself offering her beloved Jesus to die an ignominious death, and had also to see him expire before her own eyes in the midst of the most cruel and unheard-of torments. It was then by this great offering of Mary that we were born to the life of grace; we are therefore her very dear children, since we cost her so great suffering. (59)

Such words, again, are plainly indicative of the work of Christ, not of Mary. It is Christ’s offering of himself that redeems, Christ’s sufferings that atone.

“Because all men have been redeemed by Jesus, therefore Mary loves and protects them all” (61).

“Ah, most sweet Mary!” exclaimed the Venerable John Berchmans, of the Society of Jesus, “Blessed is he who loves thee! If I love Mary, I am certain of perseverance, and shall obtain whatever I wish from God.” Therefore the devout youth was never tired of renewing his resolution, and of repeating often to himself: “I will love Mary; I will love Mary” (63–64).

Needless to say, there is nothing in the New Testament about loving Mary, but much about loving Christ.

Let us love as much as St. Francis Solano did, who, maddened as it were (but with a holy madness) with love for Mary, would sing before her picture, and accompany himself on a musical instrument, saying that, like worldly lovers, he serenaded his most sweet Queen. (65)

Thou art so pure, and I defiled with many sins; thou so humble, and I so proud; thou so holy, and I so wicked. This, then, is what thou hast to do, O Mary; since thou lovest me, make me like thee. Thou hast all power to change hearts; take, then mine and change it. Show the world what thou canst do for those who love thee. Make me a saint; make me thy worthy child. This is my hope. (70)

The Scriptures say that we are being conformed to the image of Christ, not to the image of Mary.

Therefore, St. Bernard exhorts all sinners to have recourse to Mary, invoking her with great confidence; for though the sinner does not himself merit the graces which he asks, yet he receives them, because this Blessed Virgin asks and obtains them from God, on account of her own merits. (73)

Jesus Christ is the Mediator for the redeemed, and grace, mercy, and peace come directly from Him to the redeemed on the basis of His sacrificial death.

Mary, Our Life, Our Sweetness

St. Andrew of Crete calls Mary the pledge of divine mercy; meaning that, when sinners have recourse to Mary, that they may be reconciled with God; he assures them of pardon and gives them a pledge of it; and this pledge is Mary, whom he has bestowed upon us for our advocate, and by whose intercession (by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ) God forgives all who have recourse to her. St. Bridget heard an angel say that the holy Prophets rejoiced in knowing that God, by the humility and purity of Mary, was to be reconciled with sinners, and to receive those who had offended him to favor. “They exulted, foreknowing that our Lord himself would be appeased by thy humility, and the purity of thy life, O Mary, thou superefulgent star, and that he would be reconciled with those who had provoked his wrath” (85).

The implications of the following quote should be considered seriously:

When a soul loses devotion to Mary, it is immediately enveloped in darkness, and in that darkness of which the Holy Ghost speaks in the Psalms: Thou hast appointed darkness, and it is night; in it shall all the beasts of the woods go about. When the light of heaven ceases to shine in a soul, all is darkness, and it becomes the haunt of devils and of every sin. St. Anselm says that “if any one is disregarded and condemned by Mary, he is necessarily lost,” and therefore we may with reason exclaim, “Woe to those who are in opposition to this sun! Woe to those who despise its light! that is to say, all who despise devotion to Mary” (90).

One is reminded of the use of the “anathema” against those who would deny or denigrate those dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church about Mary that have no basis whatsoever in the Holy Scriptures.

“O man, whoever thou art, understand that in this world thou art tossed about on a stormy and tempestuous sea, rather than walking on solid ground; remember that if thou wouldst avoid being drowned, thou must never turn thine eyes from the brightness of this star, but keep them fixed on it, and call on Mary. In dangers, in straits, in doubts, remember Mary, invoke Mary” (95).

Mary not only assists her beloved servants at death and encourages them, but she herself accompanies them to the tribunal-seat of God. (103)

The one who stands before the presence of the Father pleading for God’s people is Christ, not Mary.

Such also will be your death, beloved reader, if you are faithful to Mary. Though you may have hitherto offended God, she will procure you a sweet and happy death. (105)

Mary, Our Hope

This section of quotations under the title of “Mary, Our Hope” runs directly counter to these words from Scripture:

Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. (Titus 2:13)

The blessed hope of the Christian is wrapped up in Christ—our righteousness, sanctification, and life—not in Mary. Yet if you voice such a statement, you are, from Ligouri’s point of view, a “modern heretic”:

Modern heretics cannot endure that we should salute and call Mary our hope: “Hail, our Hope!” They say that God alone is our hope; and that he curses those who put their trust in creatures in these words of the prophet Jeremias: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man. Mary, they exclaim, is a creature; and how can a creature be our hope? This is what the heretics say; but in spite of this, the holy Church obliges all ecclesiastics and religious each day to raise their voices, and in name of all the faithful invoke and call Mary by the sweet name of “our Hope,”—the hope of all. (109)

Ligouri believes that anyone who allows the Bible to define what is proper worship and what is not, and who is our hope and who is not, engages in heresy.

Meaning, that we more easily find salvation by having recourse to the Mother than by going to the Son—not as if Mary was more powerful than her Son to save us, for we know that Jesus Christ is our only Saviour, and that he alone by his merits has obtained and obtains salvation for us; but it is for this reason: that when we have recourse to Jesus, we consider him at the same time as our judge, to whom it belongs also to chastise ungrateful souls, and therefore the confidence necessary to be heard may fail us; but when we go to Mary, who has no other office than to compassionate us as Mother of mercy, and to defend us as our advocate, our confidence is more easily established, and is often greater. We often obtain more promptly what we ask by calling on the name of Mary than by invoking that of Jesus. Her Son is lord and judge of all, and discerns the merits of each one; and therefore if he does not immediately grant the prayers of all, he is just. When, however, the Mother’s name is invoked, though the merits of the suppliant are not such as to deserve that his prayer should be granted, those of the Mother supply that he may receive. (137)

It should be noted that in Roman Catholicism the biblical doctrine of justification, which involves the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer, is denied.[3] Hence, the idea that “the merits of the suppliant are not such as to deserve that his prayer should be granted” is understandable in that the suppliant does not have, as his present possession, the imputed righteousness of Christ. But for the person who follows the biblical pattern, such a situation is completely impossible.[4]

Mary, Our Mediatress

Even though the current controversy is over whether this doctrine can be defined as a dogma, it is obvious that in the literature and piety of those dedicated to Mary, the issue is already settled. Note again how this quotation differentiates between Jesus as mediator of “justice” and Mary as mediatress of grace (directly contrary to everything the Bible says about Jesus and grace):

No one denies that Jesus Christ is our only mediator of justice, and that he by his merits has obtained our reconciliation with God. But, on the other hand, it is impious to assert that God is not pleased to grant graces at the intercession of his saints, and more especially of Mary his Mother, whom Jesus desires so much to see loved and honored by all…. There can be no doubt that by the merits of Jesus, Mary was made the mediatress of our salvation; not indeed a mediatress of justice, but of grace and intercession; as St. Bonaventure expressly calls her “Mary, the most faithful mediatress of our salvation.” And St. Laurence Justinian asks, “How can she be otherwise than full of grace, who has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatress between God and man?” (153)

These writers are quick to make sure we know that God didn’t have to allow all graces to come through Mary, but has only chosen to do so:

That it is most useful and holy to have recourse to the intercession of Mary can only be doubted by those who have not faith. But that which we intend to prove here is that the intercession of Mary is even necessary to salvation; we say necessary—not absolutely, but morally. This necessity proceeds from the will itself of God, that all graces that he dispenses should pass through the hands of Mary, according to the opinion of St. Bernard, and which we may now with safety call the general opinion of theologians and learned men. (154)

Yet immediately thereafter we read:

… for, explaining the words addressed by our Lord on the cross to St. John: Behold thy Mother, he remarks, “It is the same thing as if he had said: ‘As no one can be saved except through the merits of my sufferings and death, so no one will be a partaker of the blood then shed otherwise than through the prayer of my Mother. He alone is a son of my sorrows who has Mary for his Mother. My wounds are ever-flowing fountains of grace, but their streams will reach no one but by the channel of Mary. In vain will he invoke me as a Father who has not venerated Mary as a Mother’” (155).

One can see rather quickly that all the attempts to safeguard Christ as only Savior end up having little impact functionally upon the inevitable denigration of the uniqueness of Christ’s role as Savior. John said that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17), yet note how Jesus’ role is limited to justice, and Mary is exalted to mediatress of grace:

We most readily admit that Jesus Christ is the only Mediator of justice, according to the distinction just made, and that by his merits he obtains us all graces and salvation; but we say that Mary is the mediatress of grace; and that receiving all she obtains through Jesus Christ, and because she prays and asks for it in the name of Jesus Christ, yet all the same whatever graces we receive, they come to us through her intercession. (156–157)

… when an opinion tends in any way to the honor of the most Blessed Virgin, when it has some foundation, and is not repugnant to the faith, nor to the decrees of the Church, nor to truth, the refusal to hold it, or to oppose it because the reverse may be true, shows little devotion to the Mother of God. Of the number of such as these I do not choose to be, nor do I wish my reader to be so, but rather of the number of those who fully and firmly believe all that can without error be believed of the greatness of Mary…. (158)

Just how central Mary becomes to the “distribution” of God’s grace can be seen in comments such as these:

On this the saint makes the following significant remark: “Before the birth of the Blessed Virgin, a constant flow of graces was wanting, because this aqueduct did not exist.” But now that Mary has been given to the world, heavenly graces constantly flow through her on all. (159)

St. Bonaventure says that Mary is called “the gate of heaven, because no one can enter that blessed kingdom without passing through her” (160).

… that as God was pleased to dwell in the womb of this holy Virgin, she acquired, so to speak, a kind of jurisdiction over all graces; for when Jesus Christ issued forth from her most sacred womb, all the streams of divine gifts flowed from her as from a celestial ocean. (161)

“Address yourselves to the Blessed Virgin,” he says; “for by her, and in her, and with her, and from her, the world receives, and is to receive, every good.”

It must now be evident to all that when these saints and authors tell us in such terms that all graces come to us through Mary, they do not simply mean to say that we “received Jesus Christ, the source of every good, through Mary,” as the before-named writer pretends; but that they assure us that God, who gave us Jesus Christ, wills that all graces that have been, that are, and will be dispensed to men to the end of the world through the merits of Christ, should be dispensed by the hands and through the intercession of Mary.

And thus Father Suarez concludes, that it is the sentiment of the universal Church, “that the intercession and prayers of Mary are, above those of all others, not only useful, but necessary.” Necessary, in accordance with what we have already said, not with an absolute necessity; for the mediation of Jesus Christ alone is absolutely necessary; but with a moral necessity; for the Church believes with St. Bernard, that God has determined that no grace shall be granted otherwise than by the hands of Mary. “God wills,” says the saint, “that we should have nothing that has not passed through the hands of Mary” (162–163).

The last line of the preceding quotation is vital. Here in the midst of a tremendous amount of exaltation of Mary, which is plainly unbiblical, we have a statement that is central in the current controversy and, in fact, distills it down to its most basic element. One cannot separate the unbiblical practices and piety that have given rise to this concept from the idea of the “dogma” of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces. In fact, not only is the idea of Mary as Coredemptrix or Mediatrix completely absent from the Bible and from the early Church, it does not have its origin in history but in this kind of piety or religious devotion that is focused upon Mary. In the following passage we can see how Mary intrudes even upon the inner workings of the Trinity in the saving of God’s people!

For this reason our Lord has justly decreed, that as Mary cooperated in the salvation of man with so much love, and at the same time gave such glory to God, so all men through her intercession are to obtain their salvation…. St. Bernard affirms, “that all men, past, present, and to come, should look upon Mary as the means and negotiator of the salvation of all ages.”

Jesus Christ says that no one can find him unless the Eternal Father first draws him by the means of divine grace: No one comes to me unless my Father draws Him. Thus also does Jesus address his Mother, says Richard of St. Laurence: “No one comes to me unless my Mother first of all draws him by her prayers” (166–167).

The holy Church approves of the invocation by also calling her the “salvation of the weak.” And shall we scruple to ask her to save us, when “the way of salvation is open to none otherwise than through Mary?” as a certain author remarks. And before him St. Germanus had said the same thing, speaking of Mary: “No one is saved but through thee.” … “And thus,” says Richard of St. Laurence, “our salvation is in the hands of Mary; so that we Christians may with much greater reason say of her than the Egyptians of Joseph, Our salvation is in thy hands” (169).

It is difficult to read these kinds of statements when they so obviously detract from the singular glory of Christ. Yet the depth of this kind of devotion must be understood, for it is the ground from which has sprung the most recent Roman dogmas, and which gives rise to the current controversy.

And that “as a child cannot live without a nurse to suckle it, so no one can be saved without the protection of Mary.” … “And whoever,” exclaims St. Germanus, “could know God, were it not for thee, O most holy Mary? who could be saved? who would be preserved from dangers? who would receive any grace, were it not for thee, O Mother of God, O full of grace?” (170)

The following are the beautiful words in which he expresses himself: “There is no one, O most holy Mary, who can know God but through thee; no one who can be saved or redeemed but through thee, O Mother of God; no one who can be delivered from dangers but through thee, O Virgin Mother; no one who obtains mercy but through thee, O filled with all grace…. And as we have access to the Eternal Father,” says St. Bernard, “only through Jesus Christ, so have we access to Jesus Christ only through Mary: By thee we have access to the Son, O blessed finder of grace, bearer of life, and mother of salvation, that we may receive him by thee, who through thee was given to us” (171).

The confusion (or intrusion) of the means by which God brought the Messiah into the world (Mary) with the idea that Mary then became an intermediary between the world and Christ, or worse, between believers and Christ, is one of the most damaging results of centuries of evolution within Roman Catholic theology—a process that is not, quite obviously, guided nor bounded by Scripture.

In confirmation of this, St. Anselm addresses our Blessed Lady and says, “O Lady, whatever all the saints, united with thee, can obtain, thou canst obtain alone. And why is this?” asks the saint; “why is it that thou alone hast such great power? Ah, it is because thou alone art the Mother of our common Redeemer; thou art the spouse of God; thou art the universal Queen of heaven and earth” (173).

O Queen and Mother of mercy, who dispensest graces to all who have recourse to thee with so much liberality, because thou art a Queen, and with so much love, because thou art our most loving Mother; to thee do I, who am so devoid of merit and virtue, and so loaded with debts to the divine justice, recommend myself this day. O Mary, thou holdest the keys of all the divine mercies; forget not my miseries, and leave me not in my poverty. Thou who art so liberal with all, and givest more than thou art asked; O, be thus liberal with me. O Lady, protect me; this is all that I ask of thee. If thou protectest me, I fear nothing. I fear not the evil spirits; for thou art more powerful than all of them. I fear not my sins; for thou by one word canst obtain their full pardon from God. And if I have thy favor, I do not even fear an angry God; for a single prayer of thine will appease him. In fact, if thou protectest me, I hope all; for thou art all-powerful. O Mother of mercy, I know that thou takest pleasure and dost glory in helping the most miserable, and, provided they are not obstinate, that thou canst help them. I am a sinner, but am not obstinate; I desire to change my life. Thou canst, then, help me; O, help me and save me. I now place myself entirely in thy hands. Tell me what I must do in order to please God, and I am ready for all, and hope to do all with thy help, O Mary—Mary my Mother, my light, my consolation, my refuge, my hope. Amen, amen, amen. (178)

Mary, Our Advocate

The role of Mary in heaven today is the main subject of the following citations, which build up, and even go beyond (if that is possible) what has come before.

And then he adds that “when the Mother goes to seek a favor for us from Jesus Christ” (whom the saint calls the golden altar of mercy, at which sinners obtain pardon), “her Son esteems her prayers so greatly, and is so desirous to satisfy her, that when she prays it seems as if she rather commanded than prayed, and was rather a queen than a handmaid” (180).

“At the command of Mary, all obey, even God.” St. Bernardine fears not to utter this sentence; meaning, indeed, to say that God grants the prayers of Mary as if they were commands…. “Yes, Mary is omnipotent,” repeats Richard of St. Laurence; “for the queen by every law enjoys the same privileges as the king. And as,” he adds, “the power of the son and that of the mother is the same, a mother is made omnipotent by an omnipotent son.”

“And thus,” says St. Antoninus, “God has placed the whole Church, not only under the patronage, but even under the dominion of Mary” (181).

Interestingly enough, the power of Mary to save is often seen in categories that most Roman Catholics (and many Protestants) would not allow even for God himself! Listen to these claims:

With good reason, then, O great advocate, does St. Bernard say, “Thou willest, and all things are done.” And St. Anselm: “Whatever thou, O Virgin, willest can never be otherwise than accomplished. Thou willest, and all is done. If thou art pleased to raise a sinner from the lowest abyss of misery to the highest degree of sanctity, thou canst do it.” Blessed Albert the Great, on this subject, makes Mary say: “I have to be asked that I may will; for if I will a thing, it is necessarily done” (182).

Father Justin Micoviensis says that “a single sigh of the most Blessed Mary can do more than the united suffrages of all the saints.” And this was acknowledged by the devil himself to St. Dominic, who, as it is related by Father Paciucchelli, obliged him to speak by the mouth of a possessed person; and he said that “a single sigh from Mary was worth more before God than the united suffrages of all the saints” (186).

And so it was that St. Bridget heard the Saints in heaven addressing our Blessed Lady: “O most blessed Queen, what is there that thou canst not do? Thou hast only to will, and it is accomplished.” And this corresponds with that celebrated saying, “That which God can do by his power, that canst thou do by prayer, O sacred Virgin” (187).

One might note, even in the midst of reading these difficult statements, that the more highly exalted the terms used of Mary the less frequently one finds reference to Christ Jesus.

“O truly immense and admirable goodness of our God, which has been pleased to grant thee, O sovereign Mother, to us miserable sinners for our advocate, in order that thou, by thy powerful intercession, mayest obtain all that thou pleasest for us. O wonderful mercy of our God,” continues the same saint, “who in order that we might not flee on account of the sentence that might be pronounced against us, has given us his own Mother and the patroness of graces to be our advocate” (189).

We need only sit down with the book of Hebrews, chapters 9 and 10, and then read the following to see how Christ has been removed and Mary put in His place:

So many are the reasons that we have for loving this our most loving Queen, that if Mary was praised throughout the world; if in every sermon Mary alone was spoken of; if all men gave their lives for Mary; still all would be little in comparison with the homage and gratitude that we owe her in return for the tender love she bears to men, and even to the most miserable sinners who preserve the slightest spark of devotion for her…. And he adds, “that her benignity and mercy are so great, that no one, however enormous his sins may be, should fear to cast himself at her feet: for she never can reject any one who has recourse to her. Mary, as our most loving advocate, herself offers the prayers of her servants to God, and especially those who are placed in her hands; for as the Son intercedes for us with the Father, so does she intercede with the Son, and does not cease to make interest with both for the great affair of our salvation, and to obtain for us the graces we ask” (191).

Compare the statement of Romans 5:1, which says, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” with this statement:

O Mary, thy office is to be the peacemaker between God and men; let thy tender compassion, which far exceeds all my sins, move thee to succor me. (197)

The idea that Mary is a more compassionate recipient of sinners is found over and over again:

“But if by chance,” adds the saint, “thou fearest to have recourse to Jesus Christ because the majesty of God in him overawes thee—for though he became man, he did not cease to be God—and thou desirest another advocate with this divine mediator, go to Mary, for she will intercede for thee with the Son, who will most certainly hear her; and then he will intercede with the Father, who can deny nothing to such a son” (201).

No passage of Scripture is safe from being used—without regard to its context—so as to “find” Mary in it:

Mary was prefigured by the dove which returned to Noah in the Ark with an olive branch in its beak, as a pledge of the peace which God granted to men. And on this idea St. Bonaventure thus addresses our Blessed Lady: “Thou art that most faithful dove; thou wast a sure mediatress between God and the world, lost in a spiritual deluge; thou, by presenting thyself before God, hast obtained for a lost world peace and salvation. Mary, then, was the heavenly dove which brought to a lost world the olive branch, the sign of mercy, since she in the first place gave us Jesus Christ, who is the source of mercy; and then, by his merits, obtained all graces for us” (202).

Again, the rainbow seen by St. John, which encircled the throne of God, was an express figure of Mary: And there was a rainbow round about the throne. It is thus explained by Cardinal Vitalis: “The rainbow round the throne is Mary, who softens the judgment and sentence of God against sinners”; meaning, that she is always before God’s tribunal, mitigating the chastisements due to sinners. (203)

The Son is not the only Divine Person whose unique prerogatives are given over to Mary. In Scripture, the Holy Spirit is said to be “given as a pledge [or down payment] of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:14).

St. Andrew of Crete calls Mary “a pledge, a security for our reconciliation with God.” That is, that God goes about seeking for reconciliation with sinners by pardoning them; and in order that they may not doubt of their forgiveness, he has given them Mary as a pledge of it, and therefore he exclaims, “Hail, O peace of God with men!” (207)

Mary, Our Guardian

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He cares for His sheep. He guards them and brings them safely into the fold. But as with everything else the Lord Jesus does, in Marian piety, Mary does it, too. So Ligouri has a short section that describes Mary as our “guardian.”

St. Bonaventure answers, “Mary is this throne, at which all—just and sinners—find the consolations of mercy.” He then adds: “For as we have a most merciful Lord, so also we have a most merciful Lady. Our Lord is plenteous in mercy to all who call upon him, and our Lady is plenteous in mercy to all who call upon her” (216).

This our Lord revealed to St. Gertrude, allowing her to hear him make the promise to his Mother in the following words: “In my omnipotence, O revered Mother, I have granted thee the reconciliation of all sinners who devoutly invoke the aid of thy compassion, in whatever way it may please thee” (217).

Mary, Our Salvation

Every Christian well knows the truth of these words:

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:30–31).

Christ is our all-in-all, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, our hope. We jealously guard His supreme worship and honor. He is, to us, our salvation. But to Ligouri, there is another:

St. Anselm says, “that as it is impossible for one who is not devout to Mary, and consequently not protected by her, to be saved, so is it impossible for one who recommends himself to her, and consequently is beloved by her, to be lost.” St. Antoninus repeats the same thing and almost in the same words: “As it is impossible for those from whom Mary turns her eyes of mercy to be saved, so also are those towards whom she turns these eyes, and for whom she prays, necessarily saved and glorified.” Consequently the clients of Mary will necessarily be saved…. Many others declare the same thing; such as Blessed Albert, who says, that “all those who are not thy servants, O Mary, will perish.” And St. Bonaventure: “He who neglects the service of the blessed Virgin will die in his sins.” Again, “He who does not invoke thee, O Lady, will never get to heaven.” And, on the 99th Psalm the saint even says, “that not only those from whom Mary turns her face will not be saved, but that there will be no hope of their salvation” (221–222).

The same do I hope for myself; O my own most holy Queen; and therefore I will always repeat the words of St. Bonaventure: “In thee, O Lady, have I placed all my hopes; and thus I confidently trust that I shall never be lost, but praise and love thee forever in heaven” (228–229).

O, how many blessed souls are now in heaven who would never have been there had not Mary, by her powerful intercession, led them thither: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth. Cardinal Hugo, in his commentary on the above text of Ecclesiasticus, says, in the name of Mary, “I have caused as many lights to shine eternally in heaven as I have clients”; and then he adds, “There are many saints in heaven through her intercession, who would never have been there but through her” (238).

St. Antoninus tells us “that this divine Mother has already, by her assistance and prayers, obtained heaven for us, provided we put no obstacle in the way” (240).

These are not the words of someone who trusts solely in Christ. For this reason the Reformers insisted not only upon sola scriptura (the Scriptures as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church) and sola fide (we are justified by faith alone, not by any other work or merit) but upon another phrase as well: solus Christus, Christ alone. This, along with the phrase soli Deo gloria (to God alone be the glory), spoke to the fact that in Roman Catholic piety, one’s pure and singular devotion to Christ is distracted by the intrusion of numerous intermediaries—Mary, saints, and angels. Nothing has changed since the Reformation, at least as far as this issue is concerned. What was important then is still important today.

Vatican II and the Blessed Virgin

On October 11, 1962, a revolution began. It was called the Second Vatican Council. That is not to say Vatican II “changed” the theology of the Roman Catholic Church—it didn’t. But what it did do was expand the expressions of that faith. That is, Vatican II, more by its means of expression and ambiguity, allowed for a widening of the spectrum of “orthodox opinion.” Those who gathered in Rome for the Council could not foresee the ramifications of their actions, but they were many.

One of the major documents to come out of the Council was titled Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, promulgated November 21, 1964. The significance of this document to our study is found in the fact that the Council chose to address the issue of Mary within the context of the Church. Hence, the teaching of the Council that has drawn the most interest regarding the movement to have Mary’s role as Coredemptrix defined as an infallible dogma is found within a narrow range of chapters in Lumen Gentium. Since it is our intention to allow Rome to “speak for herself,” in essence, and define her own teachings, we will quote extensive portions of this particular document, realizing that most Protestants have never read this material, and would not likely have ready access to it.[1]

Our Lady

The fifty-second through the sixty-ninth sections of Lumen Gentium are on the topic of Mary. As the new Catholic Catechism draws heavily from this section in its comments on Mary as well, we can fairly assert that when we understand what Lumen Gentium says about Mary, we understand what Rome currently teaches on the subject. The numbers preceding each quotation indicate the paragraph numbers in Lumen Gentium.

53. The Virgin Mary, who at the message of the angel received the Word of God in her heart and in her body and gave Life to the world, is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and of the Redeemer. Redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son and united to him by a close and indissoluble tie, she is endowed with the high office and dignity of the Mother of the Son of God, and therefore she is also the beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Because of this gift of sublime grace she far surpasses all creatures, both in heaven and on earth. But, being of the race of Adam, she is at the same time also united to all those who are to be saved; indeed, “she is clearly the mother of the members of Christ … since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head.” Wherefore, she is hailed as preeminent and as a wholly unique member of the Church, and as its type and outstanding model in faith and charity…. The Catholic Church, taught by the Holy Spirit, honors her with filial affection and devotion as a most beloved mother.

The careful reader will hear echoes of the preceding chapters, both with reference to the official dogmatic teachings as well as the piety of Alphonsus Ligouri and others. Mary is here described as the “temple of the Holy Spirit” and is said to have joined in “bringing about the birth of believers in the Church.”

54. Wherefore, this sacred synod, while expounding the doctrine on the Church, in which the divine Redeemer brings about our salvation, intends to set forth painstakingly both the role of the Blessed Virgin in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and the Mystical Body, and the duties of the redeemed towards the Mother of God, who is mother of Christ and mother of men, and most of all those who believe. It does not, however, intend to give a complete doctrine on Mary, nor does it wish to decide those questions which the work of theologians has not yet fully clarified. Those opinions therefore may be lawfully retained which are propounded in Catholic schools concerning her, who occupies a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and also closest to us.

Here we have a “bone of contention.” The Council says it is going to “painstakingly” set forth the truth about Mary, but, at the same time, it says that it does not intend to give a “complete doctrine on Mary” and it leaves undecided “those questions which the work of theologians has not yet fully clarified.” What are these questions? Is the issue of Mary as Coredemptrix such an issue? What kind of time is needed to “fully clarify” these issues? And which theologians are to be entrusted with this work? Those who support the definition of Mary as Coredemptrix point out that Popes and other theologians have taught that Mary is Coredemptrix; hence, the last line in the above section would support their position.

Next, the Council sets forth the “Function of the Blessed Virgin in the Plan of Salvation.” We are informed that “The sacred writings of the Old and New Testaments, as well as venerable tradition, show the role of the Mother of the Savior in the plan of salvation in an ever clearer light and call our attention to it,” and that we can find Mary even in Old Testament allusions if we but read them “in the light of a further and full revelation.” That is, the documents need to be read in light of “tradition,” and here, “tradition” is the teaching of the Church, not the historical traditions of the early Christians, for, as we’ve seen, the early Church did not hold to the beliefs Rome has since made a part of the Christian faith regarding Mary.

56. The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in bringing about death, so also a woman should contribute to life. This is preeminently true of the Mother of Jesus, who gave to the world the Life that renews all things, and who was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role. It is no wonder then that it was customary for the Fathers to refer to the Mother of God as all holy and free from every stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.[2] Enriched from the first instant of her conception with the splendor of an entirely unique holiness, the virgin of Nazareth is hailed by the heralding angel, by divine command, as “full of grace” (cf. Luke 1:28), and to the heavenly messenger she replies: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Thus the daughter of Adam, Mary, consenting to the word of God, became the Mother of Jesus. Committing herself wholeheartedly and impeded by no sin to God’s saving will, she devoted herself totally, as a handmaid of the Lord, to the person and work of her Son, under and with him, serving the mystery of redemption, by the grace of Almighty God.

The way in which the various Marian dogmas build upon each other is clearly seen. The idea of her Immaculate Conception lays the foundation for even more speculation, so that eventually Mary is “devoted totally” to the “person and work of her Son, under and with him, serving the mystery of redemption.”

Rightly, therefore, the Fathers see Mary not merely as passively engaged by God, but as freely cooperating in the work of man’s salvation through faith and obedience. For, as St. Irenaeus says, she “being obedient, became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.”[3]

The idea of Mary’s intercessory function is said to be a part of her presence and actions at the wedding in Cana of Galilee:

58. In the public life of Jesus Mary appears prominently; at the very beginning, when at the marriage feast of Cana, moved with pity, she brought about by her intercession the beginning of miracles of Jesus the Messiah (cf. John 2:1–11).

Even when addressing the passages that specifically downplay any idea of Mary’s relationship being the focus of special attention, Rome manages to find something else in those words:

In the course of her Son’s preaching she received the words whereby, in extolling a kingdom beyond the concerns and ties of flesh and blood, he declared blessed those who heard and kept the word of God (cf. Mark 3:35; par. Luke 11:27–28) as she was faithfully doing (cf. Luke 2:19, 51).

Then we come to one of the most often quoted sections of Vatican II, especially by those who promote the coredemptive role of Mary. The following section is pressed into service to support all aspects of the coredemptive viewpoint:

Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross, where she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of his suffering, associated herself with his sacrifice in her mother’s heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim which was born of her. Finally, she was given by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross as a mother to his disciple, with these words: “Woman, behold thy son” (John 19:26–27).[4]

There are three vitally important points to remember. First, the Council speaks of Mary faithfully persevering in her union with her Son to the cross. Second, it is said that there at the cross Mary “endured” the suffering of Christ.[5] She is said to have lovingly consented “to the immolation” of Christ. This phrase becomes key, as it provides a necessary basis for asserting that Mary is Coredemptrix with Christ. And finally, Mary is made Mother of the Church by the Lord’s utterance from the cross in John 19:26–27. The Council moves on to reaffirm the Bodily Assumption of Mary, and to speak of her as “Queen over all things”:

59. … Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords, (cf. Apocalypse 19:16) and conqueror of sin and death.

The Blessed Virgin and the Church

We have frequently acknowledged the fact that Rome claims with regularity that her teachings on Mary do not in any way compromise the singular glory and honor of Christ. This theme is repeated again by the Vatican Council:

60. In the words of the apostle there is but one mediator: “for there is but one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all” (1 Tim. 2:5–6). But Mary’s function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. But the Blessed Virgin’s salutary influence on men originates not in any inner necessity but in the disposition of God. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. It does not hinder in any way the immediate union of the faithful with Christ but on the contrary fosters it.

Here is the “official” defense of the exaltation of Mary as the immaculately conceived, sinless, bodily assumed Queen of heaven. Specifically, Rome defends her teaching on Mary by saying that (1) there is only one mediator, Jesus Christ, in line with 1 Timothy 2:5–6; (2) that Mary’s mediation is a part of Jesus’ mediation, and is in fact based upon the work and ministry of Christ; (3) it is not that God has to have Mary function in the way she does, but that He chooses to do so; hence (4) the unique position of Christ is not degraded but is, in fact, enhanced.

Below we will note other such assertions and deal with them from a biblical perspective. The strongest assertion of this claim comes right on the heels of the Council calling Mary Coredemptrix, hence, addressing this claim in that context will help to place it in the proper light.

61. … She conceived, brought forth, and nourished Christ; she presented him to the Father in the temple, shared her Son’s sufferings as he died on the cross. Thus, in a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Savior in restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace.

Pay close attention to the phrase “shared her Son’s sufferings as he died on the cross.” This is a vital assertion in attempting to prove that Mary is Coredemptrix, and hence Comediatrix and Advocate, for the second two titles flow, logically, from the first.

The Main Passage

The single most often used section of Lumen Gentium, at least as far as promoting the concept of Mary as Coredemptrix is concerned, is section 62. It begins with an assertion of the “motherhood” of Mary in the plan of redemption.

62. This motherhood of Mary, in the order of grace, continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation.

Each of these words has been pressed into duty in support of the Coredemptrix cause. Mary’s motherhood takes on universal proportions due to its power and perseverance. She sustained it “without wavering beneath the cross,” a passage used to support the title of Coredemptrix (her suffering being a part of the redemptive act itself). She is said to continue in her “motherhood” even “until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect.” This is explained in the next sentence, which again provides a large portion of the basis upon which the current controversy is built. We are told that even after her bodily assumption into heaven, Mary does not cease to function in her “saving office.” She began her work in this “saving office” during her lifetime, continued it through the cross, and through the rest of her life. So now, in heaven, she continues to cooperate in the salvation of “all the elect” through her intercessory work, functioning as the channel through which all of God’s graces and gifts flow, bringing eternal salvation through her mediation.

This kind of language would seem to indicate to anyone that the Vatican II Council has already “decided” the issue. But many in Roman Catholicism see Vatican II as more of a “pastoral” council than a dogmatic one, and though words such as these, and those that follow, prove that the concepts of Mary as Coredemptrix and Mediatrix are taught as doctrine in the Roman Church, those who make a sharp distinction between doctrine and dogma insist the doctrine is not yet a fundamental part of the Christian faith. Paragraph 62 continues:

By her maternal charity, she cares for the brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix. This, however, is so understood that it neither takes away anything from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator.

Again, the outsider might say that here the Second Vatican Council specifically uses the terms “Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix” of Mary, so how can there be an argument? And, of course, that is how the supporters of the coredemptive movement would like us to see it. Surely this is by far the most “fertile field” that can be tilled for support of their cause. The Second Vatican Council may not be viewed as an overly dogmatic or doctrinally oriented council, but the very willingness to use such terms demonstrates how deeply the ideas have become seated in the minds of the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

A caveat is added as soon as these terms are used: they are to be understood in such a way as to not take away or add anything to the “dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator.” This theme continues in the next section of paragraph 62:

No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer; but just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source.

The Church does not hesitate to profess this subordinate role of Mary, which it constantly experiences and recommends to the heartfelt attention of the faithful, so that, encouraged by this maternal help, they may the more closely adhere to the Mediator and Redeemer.

Here the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church (an authority that is self-professedly infallible when addressing issues of faith and morals) provides the primary defense of using such exalted titles of Mary. The defense sounds quite plausible: Mary’s role as Coredemptrix does not mean she is equal with Christ as Redeemer. Instead, she participates in Christ’s redemptive work in a unique way. But as we will see when we compare these teachings to the Scriptures, the plausibility disappears when the meaning is made clear.

Roman Catholics often insist that nothing is asserted of Mary that is not likewise asserted of the Church itself. One can see this in the sixty-fourth section of Lumen Gentium:

64. The Church indeed contemplating her hidden sanctity, imitating her charity and faithfully fulfilling the Father’s will, by receiving the word of God in faith, becomes herself a mother. By preaching and baptism she brings forth sons, who are conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of God to a new and immortal life. She herself is a virgin, who keeps in its entirety and purity the faith she pledged to her spouse. Imitating the mother of her Lord, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, she keeps intact faith, firm hope and sincere charity.

The Cult of the Blessed Virgin

The final section of Lumen Gentium addresses “The Cult of the Blessed Virgin in the Church” (the word “cult” being used in its broad sense of “a group of people dedicated to a common religious concept”). The great difference between the “theological distinctions” presented above and the inevitable results of the elevation of Mary to the lofty heights of Roman Catholic teaching can be seen when this passage moves to the consideration of the veneration of Mary in the Church.

66. Mary has by grace been exalted above all angels and men to a place second only to her Son, as the most holy mother of God who was involved in the mysteries of Christ: she is rightly honored by a special cult in the Church…. This cult, as it has always existed in the Church, for all its uniqueness, differs essentially from the cult of adoration, which is offered equally to the Incarnate Word and to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and it is most favorable to it. The various forms of piety towards the Mother of God, which the Church has approved within the limits of sound and orthodox doctrine, according to the dispositions and understanding of the faithful, ensure that while the mother is honored, the Son through whom all things have their being (cf. Col. 1:15–16) and in whom it has pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell (cf. Col. 1:19) is rightly known, loved and glorified and his commandments are observed.

Since there is no biblical difference between “veneration” and “worship,” it is surely untrue that the commandment of God against giving that which belongs solely to Him (worship and service) to any creature is upheld by the “cult of Mary.” Roman leaders seem quite aware that their teaching leads to serious imbalances and problems:

67. The sacred synod teaches this Catholic doctrine advisedly and at the same time admonishes all the sons of the Church that the cult, especially the liturgical cult, of the Blessed Virgin, be generously fostered, and that the practices and exercises of devotion towards her, recommended by the teaching authority of the Church in the course of the centuries be highly esteemed, and that those decrees, which were given in the early days regarding the cult images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, be religiously observed. But it strongly urges theologians and preachers of the word of God to be careful to refrain as much from all false exaggeration as from too summary an attitude in considering the special dignity of the Mother of God.

The reader is left wondering exactly what “false exaggeration” could be in mind, especially in light of the statements of such notable Roman theologians as Alphonsus Ligouri or de Montfort. One can find the most incredibly extreme statements in mainline materials—so what would be “exaggeration” is difficult to see.

Following the study of Sacred Scripture, the Fathers, the doctors and liturgy of the Church, and under the guidance of the Church’s magisterium, let them rightly illustrate the duties and privileges of the Blessed Virgin which always refer to Christ, the source of all truth, sanctity, and devotion. Let them carefully refrain from whatever might by word or deed lead the separated brethren or any others whatsoever into error about the true doctrine of the Church. Let the faithful remember moreover that true devotion consists neither in sterile nor transitory affection, nor in a certain vain credulity, but proceeds from true faith, by which we are led to recognize the excellence of the Mother of God, and we are moved to a filial love towards our mother and to the imitation of her virtues.

Yet when one does study the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers, one does not come to the conclusions presented in Lumen Gentium. The key phrase is “under the guidance of the Church’s magisterium.” That is, in harmony with what Rome says the Scriptures teach and what Rome says the early Fathers taught.

We have now examined a great deal of Roman Catholic teaching. There is one last piece to the puzzle: What does the current Pope, to whom the petitions seeking the definition of Mary as Coredemptrix and Comediatrix have been addressed, believe about Mary? What terms has he used in his teachings? Since the issue is in his hands, let us briefly look at what he believes.

John Paul II and Mary

Karol Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, Poland, May 18, 1920. His long pontificate has done much to raise the world’s view of the Roman Catholic Church and of the papacy in general. His strong stand on moral issues and his unwillingness to give in on such issues as women and the priesthood have served to make him well liked by conservatives but feared by liberals—who are, nonetheless, forced to admire him on a personal level.

It is general knowledge that Pope John Paul II is highly devoted to the Virgin Mary. He credits Mary with saving him from an assassin’s bullet early on in his pontificate. His personal motto, inscribed on his blue-and-white coat of arms, Totus Tuus sum Maria, means “Mary, I am totally yours.” He has visited almost every Marian shrine in the world, and has done much to revive and foster Marian devotion in the Roman Church.

But Popes do not live forever. John Paul, as of this writing, is in a weakened physical condition. Many feel that before he ends his reign, he will want to do something that will mark his pontificate for history. Given his dedication to Mary, then, one can understand why many in the Coredemptrix movement see this as their best chance for a papal definition.

What does John Paul II say about Mary? His greatest single contribution to the Roman Catholic doctrine on Mary came in his encyclical titled Redemptoris Mater. We will provide the key passages from this encyclical, and then include other important statements made in other contexts, so that the reader can understand the depth of the Pontiff’s devotion to the Marian cause.

Redemptoris Mater

On March 25, 1987, Pope John Paul II promulgated an encyclical that focused directly upon the Virgin Mary and the Marian dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope drew heavily from the document we previously examined, Lumen Gentium, but added important comments beyond this. What is interesting about this document is that the Pope attempts to present these doctrines in the light of Scripture. The result of attempting to present such doctrines in a biblical context is often confusing to anyone who seeks to find in the Bible a consistent message that is derived directly from the text itself. Here is an excellent example of what might be called “Marian exegesis” from Redemptoris Mater, section 6:

The Council emphasizes that the Mother of God is already the eschatological fulfillment of the Church: “In the most holy Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle” (cf. Eph. 5:27); and at the same time the Council says that “the followers of Christ still strive to increase in holiness by conquering sin, and so they raise their eyes to Mary who shines forth to the whole community of the elect as a model of the virtues.” The pilgrimage of faith no longer belongs to the Mother of the Son of God: glorified at the side of her Son in heaven, Mary has already crossed the threshold between faith and that vision which is “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). At the same time, however, in this eschatological fulfillment, Mary does not cease to be the “Star of the Sea” (Maris Stella) for all those who are still on the journey of faith. If they lift their eyes to her from their earthly existence, they do so because “the Son whom she brought forth is he whom God placed as the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29), and also because “in the birth and development” of these brothers and sisters “she cooperates with a maternal love.”

The mixture of biblical passages that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic, along with citations of conciliar statements, woven together in the pale light of Roman tradition, is about the best that can be done in presenting such concepts. One simply must believe in these dogmas first, and then read them back into the Scriptures to come up with such a presentation.

For the Christian who strives to accurately and fairly interpret God’s Word in Scripture, paying careful attention to the original languages and contexts, some of the assertions made in this document are painful to read. Likewise, the person who is humbled and broken by such incredible passages as the “Carmen Christi” (Phil. 2:5–11), the great passage concerning the humility of Christ in the Incarnation, cannot but wince when the Pope uses the passage to insert Mary into the equation:

19. And now, standing at the foot of the Cross, Mary is the witness, humanly speaking, of the complete negation of these words. On that wood of the Cross her Son hangs in agony as one condemned. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows … he was despised, and we esteemed him not”: as one destroyed (cf. Isa. 53:3–5). How great, how heroic then is the obedience of faith shown by Mary in the face of God’s “unsearchable judgments”! How completely she “abandons herself to God” without reserve, “offering the full assent of the intellect and the will” to him whose “ways are inscrutable” (cf. Rom. 11:33)! And how powerful too is the action of grace in her soul, how all-pervading is the influence of the Holy Spirit and of his light and power! Through this faith Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self-emptying. For “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men”: precisely on Golgotha “humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (cf. Phil. 2:5–8). At the foot of the Cross, Mary shares through faith in the shocking mystery of this self-emptying. This is perhaps the deepest “kenosis” of faith in human history. Through faith the Mother shares in the death of her Son, in his redeeming death; but in contrast with the faith of the disciples who fled, hers was far more enlightened. On Golgotha, Jesus through the Cross definitively confirmed that he was the “sign of contradiction” foretold by Simeon. At the same time, there were also fulfilled on Golgotha the words which Simeon had addressed to Mary: “and a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” Yes, truly “blessed is she who believed”!

In the Pope’s encyclical, what was hinted at in Lumen Gentium is stated with more clarity and force. The idea that Mary is Mediatrix is brought out plainly in the incident at Cana of Galilee:

21. At Cana in Galilee there is shown only one concrete aspect of human need, apparently a small one and of little importance (“They have no wine”). But it has a symbolic value: this coming to the aid of human needs means, at the same time, bringing those needs within the radius of Christ’s messianic mission and salvific power. Thus there is a mediation: Mary places herself between her Son and mankind in the reality of their wants, needs and sufferings. She puts herself “in the middle,” that is to say she acts as a mediatrix not as an outsider, but in her position as mother. She knows that as such she can point out to her son the needs of mankind, and in fact, she “has the right” to do so. Her mediation is thus in the nature of intercession: Mary “intercedes” for mankind. And that is not all. As a mother she also wishes the messianic power of her Son to be manifested, that salvific power of his which is meant to help man in his misfortunes, to free him from the evil which in various forms and degrees weighs heavily upon his life.

Certainly one searches in vain in the Scriptures or the early church for such an understanding of the text. Her role as Christ’s mother, and hence the Mother of the Church, is likewise emphasized:

24. The words uttered by Jesus from the Cross signify that the motherhood of her who bore Christ finds a “new” continuation in the Church and through the Church, symbolized and represented by John. In this way, she who as the one “full of grace” was brought into the mystery of Christ in order to be his Mother and thus the Holy Mother of God, through the Church remains in that mystery as “the woman” spoken of by the Book of Genesis (3:15) at the beginning and by the Apocalypse (12:1) at the end of the history of salvation. In accordance with the eternal plan of Providence, Mary’s divine motherhood is to be poured out upon the Church, as indicated by statements of Tradition, according to which Mary’s “motherhood” of the Church is the reflection and extension of the motherhood of the Son of God.

We realize, having looked at the history of these doctrines, that here “Tradition” means “what Rome has created out of whole cloth, without any meaningful basis in Scripture or history.” Yet, remember, “Tradition” is the basis of so many other Roman Catholic teachings, including, of course, the idea of papal infallibility!

One of the phrases that appears in Marian literature, and especially in the writings of those who are promoting the definition of Mary as Coredemptrix, is that of Mary as “Spouse of the Spirit.” We saw this in the text of the petition currently being circulated and submitted to the Vatican leadership. The petitioners have every right to think the Pope would be amenable to such terminology, since he uses it himself:

26. In a sense her journey of faith is longer. The Holy Spirit had already come down upon her and she became his faithful spouse at the Annunciation, welcoming the Word of the true God, offering “the full submission of intellect and will … and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him,” indeed abandoning herself totally to God through “the obedience of faith,” whereby she replied to the angel: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” The journey of faith made by Mary, whom we see praying in the Upper Room, is thus longer than that of the others gathered there. Mary “goes before them, leads the way” for them. The moment of Pentecost in Jerusalem had been prepared for by the moment of the Annunciation in Nazareth, as well as by the Cross. In the Upper Room Mary’s journey meets the Church’s journey of faith.

Pope John Paul is very concerned about ecumenical work, especially with the Orthodox Churches of the East. But when speaking of the grounds of that unity, he makes it plain that the Marian dogmas are not “on the table,” so to speak, that is, they are not issues that can be ignored or compromised:

30. Christians know that their unity will be truly rediscovered only if it is based on the unity of their faith. They must resolve considerable discrepancies of doctrine concerning the mystery and ministry of the Church and sometimes also concerning the role of Mary in the work of salvation. The dialogues begun by the Catholic Church with the Churches and Ecclesial Communities of the West are steadily converging upon these two inseparable aspects of the same mystery of salvation. If the mystery of the Word made flesh enables us to glimpse the mystery of the divine motherhood and if, in turn, contemplation of the Mother of God brings us to a more profound understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation, then the same must be said of the mystery of the Church and Mary’s role in the work of salvation. By a more profound study of both Mary and the Church, clarifying each by the light of the other, Christians who are eager to do what Jesus tells them—as their Mother recommends (cf. John 2:5)—will be able to go forward together on this “pilgrimage of faith.” Mary, who is still the model of this pilgrimage, is to lead them to the unity which is willed by their one Lord and so much desired by those who are attentively listening to what the “Spirit is saying to the Churches” today (Rev. 2:7, 11, 17).

If, the Pope says, we wish to “go forward together on this pilgrimage of faith,” we must do what? We must study Mary and the Church, and follow after Mary as “the model of this pilgrimage.” Who will lead to the unity envisioned by Rome? Mary.

Mary Mediatrix

In his attempt to present a biblical basis for the Marian dogmas, the Pope is forced to deal with the passage, also cited by Lumen Gentium, in which Jesus is said to be the one Mediator between God and men. So plainly contradictory is the thrust and content of the passage that any discussion of Mary as Mediatrix has to present the same defense and explanation. John Paul cites the passage and the assertion from Lumen Gentium that the maternal role of Mary “in no way obscures or diminishes the unique mediation of Christ.” In the next section, read very carefully as the Pope speaks of the “saving influences” of Mary while he likewise attempts to safeguard the unique position of Christ:

The Church knows and teaches that “all the saving influences of the Blessed Virgin on mankind originate … from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rest on his mediation, depend entirely on it and draw all their power from it. In no way do they impede the immediate union of the faithful with Christ. Rather, they foster this union.” This saving influence is sustained by the Holy Spirit, who just as he overshadowed the Virgin Mary when he began in her the divine motherhood, in a similar way constantly sustains her solicitude for the brothers and sisters of her Son.

Seemingly, the entire defense is based upon the idea that as long as God has somehow set it up this way, making Mary a Mediatrix who is dependent upon Christ for her ability to mediate, it is somehow a sufficient protection of the unique glory and majesty of Christ. We will test this theory in our concluding examination. The Pope continues:

In effect, Mary’s mediation is intimately linked with her motherhood. It possesses a specifically maternal character, which distinguishes it from the mediation of the other creatures who in various and always subordinate ways share in the one mediation of Christ, although her own mediation is also a shared mediation. In fact, while it is true that “no creature could ever be classed with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer,” at the same time “the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise among creatures to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this unique source.” And thus “the one goodness of God is in reality communicated diversely to his creatures.”

Here the Pope insists that Mary’s mediation does not compromise Christ’s uniqueness since it is but a “sharing,” not a usurpation. Yet, one is forced to wonder if such a defense would have worked with someone who wished to give a lesser form of worship to Baal in the Old Testament. Would the argument have held? “Oh, Baal’s existence and ministry is but a sharing in, and a cooperation with, that of Yahweh. I’m in no way compromising the unique worship of the Lord by giving a lesser form of worship to Baal, nor in seeking his good will, since he exists only as he is allowed to by God.” All the flowery language and redefinition of terms cannot change the fact that what belongs to God alone is being given to someone other than God.

We noted in our study of the biblical passages on Mary that outside of the Gospels we find explicit notice of her only in the Upper Room, and after this she disappears from the record. Yet such an obstacle does not stop Rome from reading into even this brief mention of Mary a tremendous amount of significance:

40. After the events of the Resurrection and Ascension, Mary entered the Upper Room together with the Apostles to await Pentecost, and was present there as the Mother of the glorified Lord. She was not only the one who “advanced in her pilgrimage of faith” and loyally persevered in her union with her Son “unto the Cross,” but she was also the “handmaid of the Lord,” left by her Son as Mother in the midst of the infant Church: “Behold your mother.” Thus there began to develop a special bond between this Mother and the Church. For the infant Church was the fruit of the Cross and Resurrection of her Son. Mary, who from the beginning had given herself without reserve to the person and work of her Son, could not but pour out upon the Church, from the very beginning, her maternal self-giving. After her Son’s departure, her motherhood remains in the Church as maternal mediation: interceding for all her children, the Mother cooperates in the saving work of her Son, the Redeemer of the world. In fact, the Council teaches that the “motherhood of Mary in the order of grace … will last without interruption until the fulfillment of all the elect.” With the redeeming death of her Son, the maternal mediation of the handmaid of the Lord took on a universal dimension, for the work of redemption embraces the whole of humanity. Thus there is manifested in a singular way the efficacy of the one and universal mediation of Christ “between God and men.” Mary’s cooperation shares, in its subordinate character, in the universality of the mediation of the Redeemer, the one Mediator.

The emphasis upon the mediation of Mary only continues to build and, in the process, to leave behind even the shallow shell of biblical terminology created above:

“For,” the text goes on, “taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving role, but by her manifold acts of intercession continues to win for us gifts of eternal salvation.” With this character of “intercession,” first manifested at Cana in Galilee, Mary’s mediation continues in the history of the Church and the world. We read that Mary “by her maternal charity, cares for the brethren of her Son who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led to their happy homeland.” In this way Mary’s motherhood continues unceasingly in the Church as the mediation which intercedes, and the Church expresses her faith in this truth by invoking Mary “under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix and Mediatrix.”

Once the Pope uses these titles, drawn from the Second Vatican Council, the concepts, seen so clearly and plainly in the statements we examined in Ligouri’s work, begin to come to the fore:

41. “Christ obeyed even at the cost of death and was therefore raised up by the Father (cf. Phil. 2:8–9). Thus he entered into the glory of his kingdom. To him all things are made subject until he subjects himself and all created things to the Father, that God may be all in all (cf. 1 Cor. 15:27–28).” Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, has a share in this Kingdom of the Son. The glory of serving does not cease to be her royal exaltation: assumed into heaven, she does not cease her saving service, which expresses her maternal mediation “until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect.” Thus, she who here on earth “loyally persevered in her union with her son unto the Cross,” continues to remain united with him, while now “all things are subjected to him, until he subjects to the Father himself and all things.” Thus in her Assumption into heaven, Mary is as it were clothed by the whole reality of the Communion of Saints, and her very union with the Son in glory is wholly oriented towards the definitive fullness of the Kingdom, when “God will be all in all.”

Ligouri speaks of Mary as Queen in heaven, reigning over the kingdom of mercy (in contrast to Jesus, King of justice). Here the Pope speaks of Mary’s “royal exaltation” and her Assumption into heaven. The language is less strident in the papal documents—but the content is the same.

A few years ago I was listening to Roman Catholic apologist Gerry Matatics presenting a seminar on the Marian dogmas in preparation for a debate against him. At one point he made reference to the evangelical penchant for asking, “Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” He then turned the question around and asked, “Well, have you accepted Mary as your Mother?” His point was that Mary is the Mother of all Christians, and that we are to embrace her as such. Of course, I was shocked at the question when I first heard it. As with all the other Marian doctrines, it presented a parallel to Christ that I found offensive. Yet Mr. Matatics was not going beyond what the Pope himself is willing to assert:

45. The Marian dimension of the life of a disciple of Christ is expressed in a special way precisely through this filial entrusting to the Mother of Christ, which began with the testament of the Redeemer on Golgotha. Entrusting himself to Mary in a filial manner, the Christian, like the Apostle John, “welcomes” the Mother of Christ “into his own home” and brings her into everything that makes up his inner life, that is to say, into his human and Christian “I”: he “took her to his own home.” Thus the Christian seeks to be taken into that “maternal charity” with which the Redeemer’s Mother “cares for the brethren of her Son, in whose birth and development she cooperates” in the measure of the gift proper to each one through the power of Christ’s Spirit. Thus also is exercised that motherhood in the Spirit which became Mary’s role at the foot of the Cross and in the Upper Room.

The deep, deep influence of the very same kind of piety from which the Coredemptrix movement springs is seen in this statement from John Paul:

48. In this regard, I would like to recall, among the many witnesses and teachers of this spirituality, the figure of Saint Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, who proposes consecration to Christ through the hands of Mary as an effective means for Christians to live faithfully their baptismal commitments. I am pleased to note that in our own time too, new manifestations of this spirituality and devotion are not lacking.

Anyone familiar with de Montfort knows what these words mean. But I will quote briefly from his book True Devotion of the Blessed Virgin:

In a word, God wishes that His holy Mother should be at present more known, more loved, more honoured, than she has ever been. This, no doubt, will take place, if the predestinate enter, with the grace and light of the Holy Ghost, into the interior and perfect practice which I will disclose to them shortly. Then they will see clearly, as far as faith allows, that beautiful Star of the Sea.[1] They will arrive happily in harbour, following its guidance, in spite of the tempests and the pirates. They will know the grandeurs of that Queen, and will consecrate themselves entirely to her service, as subjects and slaves of love. They will experience her sweetnesses and her maternal goodnesses, and they will love her tenderly like well-beloved children. They will know the mercies of which she is full, and the need they have of her succour; and they will have recourse to her in all things, as to their dear advocate and mediatrix with Jesus Christ. They will know what is the most sure, the most easy, the most short, and the most perfect means by which to go to Jesus Christ; and they will deliver themselves to Mary, body and soul, without reserve, that they may thus be all for Jesus Christ.[2]

Here the Pope recommends the writings of one who is surely representative of the deepest forms of Marian piety and devotion—the very same kind of devotion seen in the Marian prayer with which we began this study.

Public Statements

Great care and caution always goes into the preparation of encyclicals and any type of official declaration. Often this results in a watering-down of the fervor and piety that is felt in the heart. But public statements tend to be more expressive of what a person really thinks. Hence, the following quotations from John Paul II[3] reveal a much more passionate presentation of his belief in Mary and her role in salvation. They speak for themselves. Note especially the prayers, wherein the deepest feelings and emotions are exposed:

To Mary Immaculate, Mother of Our Advent:

Hail!

Blessed are you, full of grace.

Today with the greatest veneration, the Church recalls the fullness of this grace, with which God filled you from the first moment of your conception.

The Apostle’s words fill us with joy, “Despite the increase of sin, grace has surpassed it” (Rom. 5:20). We are glad at this particular abundance of divine grace in you, who bear the name of “Immaculate Conception,” Mother.

Accept us just as we are, here by you.

Accept us! Look into our hearts.

Accept our cares and our hopes!

Help us, you, full of grace, to live in grace, to persevere in grace and, if it should be necessary, to return to the grace of the living God, which is the greatest and supernatural good of man.

Prepare us for the advent of your Son!

Accept us with our daily problems, our weaknesses and deficiencies, our crises, and our personal, family, and social failings (Insegnamenti, December 8, 1979).

Is Mary the Mediatrix with the Mediator, as Ligouri said? Note these statements by John Paul II:

There is no better way to approach her Son than through her (Address, Nagasaki, February 26, 1981).

In the evangelizing history of the Church, the Virgin Mary has occupied and continues to occupy a singularly unique place. It has rightly been said: “to Christ through Mary” (Address, Mendoza, Argentina, October 12, 1980).

Is Mary’s work integral to the work of salvation itself? The Pope thinks so:

I likewise invite you to turn with me to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Jesus, in whom “is effected the reconciliation of God and humanity … is accomplished the work of reconciliation, because she has received from God the fullness of grace in virtue of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.” Truly, Mary has been associated with God, by virtue of her divine motherhood, in the work of reconciliation (Address, Fatima, May 13, 1982).

O Mother of men and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes, you maternally feel all their struggles between good and evil, between the light and the darkness which shake the world. Receive our cry, directed in the Holy Spirit straight to your heart and, with the love of the Mother and the handmaid of the Lord, embrace the individuals and peoples which most look for the embrace, together with the individuals and peoples to whose trust you attend in a particular way. Take the entire human family under your maternal protection. With outflows of affections, O Mother, we entrust it to you. May the time of peace and liberty approach for all, the time of truth, justice and hope (Insegnamenti, May 9, 1982).

Upright by the cross of her Son on Calvary, the most holy Virgin shared in his Passion and knows how to convince ever fresh souls to unite their suffering with Christ’s sacrifice, in a joint “offertory,” which surpasses time and space and embraces the whole of mankind and saves it (Insegnamenti, February 11, 1980).

Dear brothers and sisters! Receive Christ from the hands of Mary! May the mystery of the Redemption reach you through her soul! May all the salvific plans of consecrated hearts always be manifested before the heart of the Mother! United with her. With your glance focused on her. In her there is a special resemblance to Christ, the Spouse of your souls (Homily, Rome, February 2, 1984).

A word about Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church, to whose loving patronage God himself willed to entrust, through her obedient “yes,” the fate of the whole of mankind. The Son assigns to her the motherly task of imploring individual and collective salvation for us.[4]

Dear young people, the revival in the present time, of true Christian values such as brotherhood, justice, and peace, is entrusted once more to the intervention and motherly pedagogy of Mary. For today, too, she is Mother of divine grace; she is Queen of Victories (Audience, Rome, May 5, 1979).

Is Mary the Spouse of the Holy Spirit?

As a great sign that appeared in the heavens, in the fullness of time, the woman dominates all history as the Virgin Mother of the Son and as the spouse of the Holy Spirit, as the handmaid of humanity (Address, Washington, D.C., October 7, 1979).

Does the Pope take his motto, totus tuus, seriously?

At this hour, here at the shrine of Fatima, I wish to repeat now, before you all, totus tuus—all yours, O Mother! I ask you to offer me and all these brethren up to the “Father of Mercies,” in homage and gratitude, hiding and covering our poverty with your merits and those of your Divine Son. And may we be accepted, blessed, and strengthened in our good resolves, which we wish to bind up, like a bunch of flowers, with a ribbon “woven and gilded” for you, O Mother: “Do whatever he tells you.”

Give us your blessing, Lady, our most beloved Mother! (Insegnamenti, May 12, 1982).

Finally, the Pope directs young people to entrust their lives to Mary, and it is this man who has the power to define, for all those who follow Rome, the doctrine of Mary as Coredemptrix:

I wish in particular to bring the youth of the whole world and of the whole Church closer to her, to Mary, who is the Mother of fair love. She bears within her an indestructible sign of youth and beauty which never passes. I wish and pray that the young will approach her, have confidence in her, and entrust to her the life that is before them; that they will love her with a simple and warm love of the heart (Audience, Rome, May 2, 1979).

10

Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate

Some might describe it as a bit of a circuitous route, but we have arrived at the point where we can honestly and fairly examine the proposed dogmatic definition of Mary as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate of the people of God. But to avoid the tremendous amount of misrepresentation (and downright hysteria)[1] that has marked the public discussion of the topic, one must have the foundation we have laid in the previous chapters. Without it, the conclusions drawn might be based solely upon prejudice or emotion. This is a serious matter, and therefore requires the “homework” we have just completed.

Coredemptrix: Explanation

Dr. Mark Miravalle is one of the leading voices of the Coredemptrix movement in the United States. His work, in talks and books, has done much to provide the supporters of the dogmatic definition with their “ammunition.” Therefore, it seems fair and logical to follow the outline he himself provides in his apologetic for the definition of Mary as Coredemptrix. The first thing that Miravalle attempts to communicate in his book Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate,[2] is that Mary’s role cannot be separated from that of Christ. Throughout the first sections he italicizes the phrase with the Redeemer to emphasize this. Hence, we read:

It is in the light of Mary’s unique and intimate cooperation with the Redeemer, both at the Incarnation … and at the work of Redemption at Calvary … that the Church has invoked Mary under the title “Coredemptrix.”[3]

He is very, very insistent upon emphasizing that the phrase “Coredemptrix” does not mean “redeemer on an equal par.” Any fair representation of the doctrine must take this into account:

The prefix “co” does not mean equal, but comes from the Latin word cum, which means “with.” The title of Coredemptrix applied to the Mother of Jesus never places Mary on a level of equality with Jesus Christ, the divine Lord of all, in the saving process of humanity’s redemption. Rather, it denotes Mary’s singular and unique sharing with her Son in the saving work of redemption for the human family. The Mother of Jesus participates in the redemptive work of her Saviour Son, who alone could reconcile humanity with the Father in his glorious divinity and humanity. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, redeems the human family, as the God-man. Mary, who is completely subordinate and dependent to her redeeming Son even for her own human redemption, participates in the redemptive act of her Son as his exalted human mother.[4]

As we have noted before, this is the constant claim: since Mary is not the source but rather a channel, then all is well. As long as the assertion is made that she is subordinate and not equal, then seemingly every office, every title, every function of Jesus Christ can be paralleled in her without any problem. Whether this is true or not is something we will address in our conclusion.

Miravalle summarizes the entire situation in the following two paragraphs. The rest is explanation and support.

Mary’s other roles in the Church as Mediatrix and Advocate are in fact a flowing over of her role as Coredemptrix. Pope John Paul II tells us, “Mary’s role as Coredemptrix did not cease with the glorification of her Son.”

Miravalle’s assertion is very important. As we have seen, the Marian dogmas have built one upon another. Each time some new “insight” is discovered, it opens up whole new possibilities never considered before. So it is here. The idea of coredemption—that Mary in some special and unique way “participated” in the redemptive work of Christ—is the foundation stone of the other two assertions, that of mediation and advocacy. If there is no mysterious “participation,” the other doctrines have no basis. If she did not suffer with Christ, then the idea that she is the one through whom all grace is channeled makes no sense. One gives rise to the other.

It should be remembered that we are not here talking merely about enshrining a speculation as “official.” For the faithful Roman Catholic, we are talking about defining the very faith itself. Miravalle makes his case:

There remains one final doctrinal pillar of the Marian mystery revealed by God that seems to call for the proclamation of clarity and truth that only the Church can provide in its crucial task of “giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God.” It is the Christian revelation of Mary as Coredemptrix with the Redeemer, as well as the resulting roles of Mediatrix and Advocate for the People of God.[5]

Miravalle envisions a “Marian mystery” that is not merely speculation, but actually revelation from God. He sees the Church as able to give infallible definitions of truth since, as Vatican II said, it is her duty and her ability to give an “authentic interpretation of the Word of God.” Don’t let that last line cause confusion: For most Protestants, the “Word of God” is the Scripture. For the Roman Catholic, it is far beyond that, and certainly, if we can say anything, one is not giving a meaningful interpretation of the Bible when one speaks of doctrines such as these. Yet Miravalle speaks of this as “Christian revelation.” The relationship to the previous Marian dogmas can be seen in how the case for Mary as Coredemptrix is built:

Mary was eternally in complete and absolute opposition to Satan, for with and through her Son the Redeemer, the Woman was to intimately share in the complete redemptive triumph over Satan.[6]

“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The angel greets the Virgin of Nazareth under a new title, “full of grace”, in the place of her earthly name, “Miriam” or Mary. The Greek word for this new title, “kecharitomene” is the perfect participle of the verb, which tells us that this profound event of grace ascribed to Mary is an action that has been completed in the past, before the announcement of the Angel, and, thus, describes the present state, “full of grace.”[7]

Miravalle knows the writings of the current Pontiff well, and rightly sees the following citation of the Pope as supporting his cause and making the same connection between the previous Marian dogmas and the current movement:

We must above all note that Mary was created immaculate in order to be better able to act on our behalf. The fullness of grace allowed her to fulfill perfectly her mission of collaboration with the work of salvation: it gave the maximum value to her cooperation.[8]

While we will develop this thought a little later (with shocking results), the idea of Mary as the “Spouse” of the Holy Spirit is likewise seen as part of the grounds of her “coredemptive” role:

The sanctifying action Mary received at the first instant of her conception was enacted by the power of Holy Spirit, the Divine Sanctifier, for Mary is the “only one who has become the dwelling place of all the graces of the Holy Spirit.” Here too at the Annunciation, it will be by the power of the Holy Spirit that Mary will become the Mother of the Redeemer (cf. Luke 1:35). It is the Holy Spirit, the Divine Spouse of Mary, who prepares and sustains Mary at each stage of her coredemptive role…. At the Annunciation, Mary begins her role as the Coredemptrix with the Redeemer. Her fiat mihi to the angel is a free “let it be done to me” to an intimate sharing in God’s new plan of salvation revealed by the Angel (cf. Luke 1:31–33). It is a free “let it be done to me” to the giving of a human body to the Redeemer, who would fulfill the saving messianic role referred to in Mary’s own magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), which “rejoices in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:47). It is a free “let it be done to me” in cooperating with the Redeemer so intimately that Mary Coredemptrix gave to the Saviour the very instrument of redemption….[9]

We have already seen that part of the argument for Mary as Coredemptrix is the idea that she “suffered” along with Christ at the foot of the Cross, “participating” in some unique way in the redemptive act. One might point to others who likewise suffered, for Mary was not alone at the Cross, and wonder why they, too, are not singled out as Mary is. But it is claimed by the advocates of Mary Coredemptrix that only in her is there the unique combination of things that allows her to function in such an exalted place. Miravalle emphasizes this:

The Father elected Mary from among all women to be the Coredemptrix with the Redeemer. Mary’s physical and moral gift of humanity to the Redeemer constitutes an inner participation in the work of redemption that no other creature in heaven or on earth could ever reach. By giving flesh to the “Word made flesh” for our salvation, this act alone rightfully and exclusively merits for the Handmaid of the Lord the title and honor of Coredemptrix.[10]

Mary is said to be in a position that “no other creature in heaven or earth could ever reach.” Her being chosen as the instrument through which the Savior came into the world “exclusively merits” for her the title and honor of “Coredemptrix.” We should point out, however, that it follows inevitably that this title is impersonal. That is, any woman that God would have so foreordained would have been in the same position. The argument is that being the one through whom Christ came into the world requires that Mary be immaculately conceived, perpetually a virgin, bodily assumed, etc. Consequently, these arguments really only establish an office, and Mary happens to be the one chosen to inhabit that office. Yet Marian literature does not seem to follow this reasoning to its conclusion, for the true impetus for the exaltation of Mary is not found in the logical relationship of the doctrinal teachings concerning her, but in the emotional desire for a motherly/divine figure who is more easily approached than the “stern” King of justice presented in Roman Catholic piety.

The assertion that Mary’s role is always subordinate gives way to the assertion that she preceded her Son in suffering:

Just as Mary anticipated her Son’s stainless entry into the human family by her Immaculate Conception, so too did the Mother go before her Son in the order of suffering that would lead to the climax of Redemption on the Cross. The coredeeming Mother of the Saviour was eternally predestined to sacrifice and suffering in her election by the Heavenly Father. And from the time of her joyful and sorrowful announcements (cf. Luke 1:28; 2:35), Mary anticipated her Son’s redemptive suffering at Calvary in her motherly heart. “Where Mary is, Jesus will soon appear,” and for the Child destined to suffer, the Mother must also precede. The Mother always went before the Son in the order of suffering.[11]

It is easy to lose sight of the fundamental fact of the scriptural teachings concerning Mary when attempting to understand claims such as these that are so far removed from anything the text itself would suggest. No matter what the level of suffering present in Mary’s life, there is not a single bit of evidence that this suffering is related to redemption itself. Christ suffered as an innocent sacrifice: Mary suffered as a child of Eve, a fallen person, and hence could not even begin to enter into redemptive suffering on behalf of others. But, of course, Roman theology has “fixed” this problem by paralleling in Mary Christ’s sinlessness. The interrelation of the Marian dogmas is seen once again. This results in Mary having an “intimate sharing” in redemption itself:

As Mother of the Saviour and spiritual “Mother of the Living,” Mary rightly has, by maternal relation, an intimate sharing in the familial “ransoming back” of her human family with her Son, the Redeemer.[12]

Back to John 19

Even the small amount of information directly about Mary shrinks to two or three passages that can be in any way connected with the idea that Mary had, and continues to have, a special, unique sharing in the redemptive sufferings and work of Jesus Christ. And the key passage here must be John 19:26–27:

When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.

Miravalle quotes Lumen Gentium 58 and says:

These sublime words of the Council Fathers summarize the rich fruits of the Church’s prayerful pondering over nearly two millennia on the scriptural passage of John 19:26 and its inspired revelation of Mary’s intimate coredemptive role with the Redeemer.[13]

Here we are told that the interpretation of this passage that sees Mary as having an intimate “coredemptive role” with Christ—one Roman Catholic scholars themselves recognize was not a part of the view of the early Church itself—is an “inspired revelation.” And certainly, once one has accepted Rome’s claims to absolute and final authority in religious matters, such is not only a consistent position to take, but a necessary one as well. Miravalle continues:

The modern papal commentary on John 19:26 with regard to Mary’s intimate cooperation with the Redeemer at Calvary in the work of Redemption provides a treasure of authoritative and theological insight in grasping the fullest meaning of this inspired text of Sacred Scripture. The fruitful combination of authoritative consistency, as well as individual theological contribution in development, make this series of papal statements a wellspring of the “authentic interpretation of the Word of God” concerning Mary’s coredemptive role at the foot of the cross.

To the faithful follower of Rome’s teachings there is no choice but to embrace what has so far been “defined” as the “interpretation” of this passage, and, if the Coredemptrix movement is successful, that “interpretation” may well become infallible.[14]

The Popes on Mary as Coredemptrix

Many Protestants wonder how it is that a doctrine can be taught by successive Roman bishops in official teachings without that doctrine being infallible. It certainly leaves one wondering about the entire idea of infallibility when it is normally limited to only a few statements over 2,000 years of church history.

Central to the arguments of Miravalle and other proponents of the Coredemptrix movement is the establishment of a pattern of papal pronouncements in favor of the use of the term. Lists of statements by Popes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries using the term are found in many sources.[15] The seventy years prior to the Second Vatican Council provide the majority of the citations that can be gathered.

Pope Leo XIII reigned from 1878 to 1903. He wrote in his encyclical Jucunda Semper in 1894:

When Mary offered herself completely to God together with her Son in the temple, she was already sharing with Him the painful atonement on behalf of the human race … we see that there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother, who in a miracle of charity, so that she might receive us as her sons, willingly offered Him up to divine justice, dying with Him in her heart, pierced by the sword of sorrow.

Likewise, the next year, in Adjutricem populi, he wrote:

… she who has been the cooperatrix in the sacrament of man’s Redemption, would be likewise the cooperatrix in the dispensation of graces deriving from it.

This is important as it connects the participation of Mary in redemption with the subsequent idea of her mediating grace and bringing salvation to mankind. Likewise, Benedict XV in his 1918 Apostolic Letter Inter Sodalicia continued the emphasis upon John 19, but introduced a theme that becomes very important, that of Mary “immolating” (offering in sacrifice) Christ. That is, she is said to take part in offering Him as a sacrifice on the cross. This passage will be found in every discussion of the subject. It is beyond question that Benedict XV makes all the fine and subtle distinctions and safeguards meaningless with the last line of the following citation:

The fact that she was with her Son crucified and dying, was in accord with the divine plan. To such extent did she suffer and almost die with her suffering and dying Son; to such extent did she surrender her maternal rights over to her Son for man’s salvation, and immolated Him—insofar as she could—in order to appease the justice of God, that we may rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ.

One might actually say, “Finally, at least someone said it.” Making Mary Coredemptrix does lead to such assertions, no matter how many caveats, provisos, and explanations are added.[16] The idea of Mary’s “offering” Jesus is repeated in Pius XII’s encyclical, Mystici Corporis from 1943:

It was she who, always most intimately united with her Son, like a New Eve, offered Him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father, together with sacrifice of her maternal rights and love, on behalf of all the children of Adam, stained by the latter’s shameful fall.

Notice how the singular sacrifice of Christ is now joined with the “sacrifice of her maternal rights and love.” Truly, there is almost nothing in the person or work of Christ that is not, in at least some way, given to Mary as well. But the Pope was not finished:

For having been associated with the King of Martyrs in the ineffable work of human redemption, as Mother and cooperatrix, she remains forever associated with Him, with an almost unlimited power, in the distribution of graces which flow from the Redemption.[17]

Pope John Paul II speaks very much in line with Pius XII:

In her, the many and intense sufferings were amassed in such an interconnected way that they were not only a proof of her unshakable faith but also a contribution to the Redemption of all. In reality, from the time of her secret conversation with the angel, she began to see in her mission as a mother her “destiny” to share, in a singular and unrepeatable way, in the very mission of her Son. And she soon received a confirmation of this in the events that accompanied the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and in the solemn words of the aged Simeon, when he spoke of a sharp sword that would pierce her heart. Yet a further confirmation was in the anxieties and privations of the hurried flight into Egypt, caused by the cruel decision of Herod.

And again, after the events of her Son’s hidden and public life, events which she must have shared with acute sensitivity, it was on Calvary that Mary’s suffering, beside the suffering of Jesus, reached an intensity which can hardly be imagined from a human point of view but which was mysteriously and supernaturally fruitful for the Redemption of the world. Her ascent of Calvary and her standing at the foot of the cross together with the beloved disciple were a special sort of sharing in the redeeming death of her Son.[18]

Mediatrix of All Graces

Up to this point, we have been able to see the clear paralleling of Christ in Mary in each of the dogmas we have examined, and in the doctrine of Mary as Coredemptrix. As we move into the areas of Mary as Comediatrix and Advocate, these parallels become so glaring, and so obvious, that they defy, by their very statements, the caveats and conditions placed upon them by Rome. As these topics are discussed, those writers who are careful in other contexts to repeat the assertion that none of these teachings detract from the glory of Christ seem to forget these statements.

We have already seen this concept of Mary as Comediatrix repeated over and over again in the materials we examined from Alphonsus Ligouri. Likewise, Roman Catholic apologist Karl Keating writes:

Second, Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces because of her intercession for us in heaven. What this means is that no grace accrues to us without her intercession.[19]

Keating is in line with Popes of the past in his words:

Every grace granted to man has three degrees in order: for by God it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it descends to us.[20]

If there is little logical or biblical basis for the idea of coredemption, there is much less for comediation.

We see that Mary’s physical presence, the living Tabernacle of the preborn Saviour, is a mediating cause of special events of graces, both for the preborn Baptist who “leapt for joy” (Luke 1:44) in the womb of his mother, and for Elizabeth who was immediately “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41)…. For the Church sees in this scriptural reference to the joyful leap of the unborn John a more profound revelation of a sanctifying action through the presence of Mary, who physically mediates the presence of the unborn Christ.”[21]

Mary is Mediatrix because John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb? Even John 2 and 19 can be stretched to provide support:

It appears that the presence of Mary was itself a mediating factor for the presence of the Saviour at this wedding occasion for his first miracle…. In calling his Mother “Woman,” Jesus identifies Mary as the Woman who was prophecied as mediating to the world the seed of victory over Satan (cf. Gen. 3:15), as well as designates his Mother as the Mediatrix who will be the Woman at the foot of the Cross (cf. John 19:26). Mary will also experience the gift of Bodily Assumption, which will lead to her heavenly glory as the “Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1).[22]

As we move further and further into the subject, incredible claims become the norm. Miravalle even goes so far as to seemingly suggest that Mary knew she was some kind of “Mediatrix”:

All the actions of the Mediatrix are first and foremost Christological, for she knows that she can only fulfill her God-elected role as Maternal Mediatrix for humanity by mediating to her earthly family the saving power of Christ.

It is very difficult to respond to such claims from a biblical basis, since the assertions are so far removed from anything that could possibly have been in the mind of the original writer. This is what happens when doctrine is allowed to grow and evolve outside the parameters of Scripture. The result is a doctrine utterly unknown to the Scriptures:

These words of the dying Saviour to the Woman at the foot of the cross bring forth the establishment of Mary as the motherly mediatrix of graces for the human family…. When Jesus gives John to Mary, and Mary to John, the Mother of Jesus is now established as the new spiritual and universal mediatrix in the order of grace…. She who was once known as Mary is now publicly established by the dying Savior as the Woman, the Mother, and the Mediatrix of the graces of redemption.[23]

Papal Statements on Mediation of Grace

Rather than investing much time in a lengthy recitation of papal statements in which Mary is viewed as mediating grace to the people of God, we will allow only a few representative samples to suffice:

Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus: “… the most powerful Mediatrix and Reconciler of the world….”

Leo XIII in Supremi apostolatus: “… treasurer of our peace with God and dispensatrix of heavenly graces.” And from Superiore anno: “… through whom He has chosen to be the dispenser of all heavenly graces.” And from Octobri mense: “It is right to say that nothing at all of the immense treasury of every grace which the Lord accumulated … nothing is imparted except through Mary…. Mary is our glorious intermediary; she is the powerful Mother of the Omnipotent God.”

Benedict XV in Inter Sodalicia: “For with her suffering and dying Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death…. For this reason, every kind of grace we receive from the treasury of the redemption is ministered as it were through the hands of the same sorrowful Virgin.”

Upon examining these and other papal statements, Miravalle concludes:

For it is the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, and Mary, the Mediatrix, who began the New Covenant work of salvation by bringing the world its redeemer at the Annunciation; and it will be the Spirit and the Mediatrix who will jointly accomplish the full aspect of the redemption of humanity in distributing the graces of eternal life to the People of God, a salvific task of mediating God’s grace and mercy that will end only at the final and glorious coming of the victorious Lord and “King of the nations” (Rev. 15:3).[24]

The Spirit and the Mediatrix will “jointly” accomplish the “redemption of humanity.” How does one respond to such an idea? Words fail, for such a claim can only be accepted on the basis of the authority of the Roman Church. Scripture will never lead one to such a conclusion.

A Horrific Teaching

The next section is difficult to address and, I warn the reader, difficult to read as well. The logical conclusions of the teachings that have come before—teachings that started with a tremendously small connection to Scripture to begin with, and are now so far removed that no connection is left—are brought out in the following statements. The idea of Mary as the “Spouse of the Spirit” enters into the idea of her mediation of “grace.” Just as Rome inserts Mary into every office and work of Christ, so she has now begun to do so with the Holy Spirit as well.

To Mary, His faithful Spouse, God the Holy Ghost has communicated His unspeakable gifts; and He has chosen her to be the dispenser of all He possesses, in such sort that she distributes to whom she wills, as much as she wills, and when she wills, all His gifts and graces. The Holy Ghost gives no heavenly gift to men which He does not have pass through her virginal hands. Such has been the Will of God, who has willed that we should have everything through Mary.[25]

Note well that the source of this citation—de Montfort—is recommended by the current Pope.[26] We are told that Mary gives grace “to whom she wills, as much as she wills, and when she wills.” Ironically, most Roman Catholics would not even let that be said of God himself, but here it is said of Mary! Such is a divine sovereignty, and Rome has no one to blame but herself if many think her speech concerning Mary results in her divinization. Rome could condemn de Montfort and Ligouri. She doesn’t, but instead recommends these works to the faithful. Miravalle, building upon citations such as the one above, concludes:

But the Holy Spirit has chosen to perform his divine act of sanctification, which flows from the cross of Christ, only through the mediation of his human but glorified spouse, Mary, through whom the Author of all graces was first mediated to the world by the power of the same Holy Spirit.[27]

At this point, Miravalle brings in the writings of two of the leading Marian theologians, M. J. Scheeben and Maximillian Kolbe. Before reading these statements, realize that Pope John Paul II has described Kolbe as “the Apostle of a New Marian Era” and has said that “he has appeared in our times as a prophet and an apostle of a new ‘Marian era.’”[28] Pope Paul VI described him as “among the great saints and clairvoyant minds that have understood, venerated, and sung the mystery of Mary.”[29]

We begin with Scheeben’s words concerning Mary. He states that “Mary is the organ of the Holy Spirit, who works in her in the same way that Christ’s humanity is the instrument of the Logos.”[30] The leading voice in support of Mary as Coredemptrix says of this understanding,

This understanding and model of Mary as the human instrument of the Holy Spirit in the distribution of graces, comparable to the humanity of Christ as human instrument of the Word, is a monumental breakthrough in understanding the mysterious distribution of graces by the Spirit and the Mediatrix.[31]

A monumental breakthrough? Paralleling the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that unique and defining truth of the entire Christian faith, with the idea of Mary as the mediatrix of graces through the Holy Spirit, is a “breakthrough”? It is, rather, a blasphemy of monumental proportions that should be—if all the caveats and safeguards Rome places upon the doctrines of Mary truly mean anything—condemned as heretical and those promoting it identified as corrupters of the faith. But just the opposite is the case. Here St. Maximillian Kolbe goes even beyond Scheeben:

Still, their union is so inexpressible, and so perfect that the Holy Spirit acts only by the Immaculata, his spouse…. The third Person of the Blessed Trinity never took flesh; still, our human word “spouse” is far too weak to express the reality of the relationship between the Immaculata and the Holy Spirit. We can affirm that she is, in a certain sense, the ‘incarnation’ of the Holy Spirit.[32]

We gladly see the phrase “in a certain sense.” We gladly recognize that this is a not a full-blown assertion that Mary is some sort of deity. However, none of these considerations can even begin to diminish the outrageousness of claiming that Mary is in any sense an “incarnation” of the Holy Spirit. We are not here dealing merely with the idea that the Spirit indwells all believers and, obviously, did a marvelous work in Mary in the conception of the Messiah. The terms “spouse” and “Immaculata” leave us no room to doubt what is being said here:

The union between the Immaculata and the Holy Spirit is so inexpressible, yet so perfect, that the Holy Spirit acts only by the Most Blessed Virgin, his Spouse. This is why she is the mediatrix of all graces given by the Holy Spirit. And since every grace is a gift of God the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, it follows that there is no grace which Mary cannot dispose of as her own, which is not given to her for this purpose.[33]

What is the functional difference between this statement and the one quoted above from de Montfort? Basically, one would be dismissed as “excessive, but not heretical, piety” by many Roman Catholics today, but what are we to do with Kolbe? The Holy Spirit acts “only by the Most Blessed Virgin, his Spouse”? How can such a statement not be said to be utterly contrary to God’s Word? Who can hold the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God and still believe this?

Advocate of the People of God

The idea of Mary as Advocate for the People of God is simply the culmination of the previous two ideas. We saw the concept clearly presented in Ligouri. It is all through de Montfort. And now it is making its claim to be made a part of the Christian faith itself. What found early expression in St. Bernard of Clairvaux[34] is now making its bid for dogmatic expression. Just as Jesus intercedes for His people, so Rome must parallel Christ in Mary, seeing in her an intermediary where she herself intercedes for Christians with her Son. We will allow three papal statements to suffice in explaining this.

Pius VII in his Apostolic Constitution Tanto studio wrote, “While the prayers of those in heaven have, it is true, some claim on God’s watchful eye, Mary’s prayers place their assurance in a mother’s right. For that reason, when she approaches her divine Son’s throne, as Advocate she begs, as Handmaid she prays, but as Mother she commands.” Pius XI in this century exhorted youth to “make devotion to Mary the predominant thought of their whole life. By persevering prayer let us make Mary our daily Mediatrix, our true Advocate. In this way we may hope that she herself, assumed into heavenly glory, will be our advocate before divine goodness and mercy at the hour of our passing.”[35] And finally, Pius XII in a radio message of May 1946 said, “Our Advocate, placed between God and the sinner, takes it upon herself to invoke clemency of the Judge so as to temper His justice, touch the heart of the sinner and overcome his obstinacy.”

It is this kind of statement that allows Miravalle to conclude:

The role of the Mother of Jesus, the Great Woman and Lady of the Lord of Lords (Rev. 19:16) spans the whole of the written Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, in her intimate union with Christ and the Church: “… Thus the Mother of God, through the Church, remains in that mystery [of Christ] as ‘the woman’ spoken of by the Book of Genesis (3:15) at the beginning, and by the Apocalypse (12:1) at the end of the history of salvation.”[36]

If you missed all of that when reading through the Bible, don’t worry. You are not alone.

11

A Biblical Response

The push to define Mary as Coredemptrix flows out of the piety seen so plainly in Alphonsus Ligouri and Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort. It does not come to us from Scripture, nor does it come from history. It follows the very same path that the other Marian dogmas have followed: When it is first seen, it is considered extreme, even heretical. But time brings about a growing acceptance, until, as recently as 1950, the Roman Church has been willing to exercise its “charism of infallibility” to incorporate into the very fabric of the Christian faith a dogma unknown to its Founder and His apostles.

It is not a simple task to respond to this movement biblically, simply because it is so far removed from the Bible as far as its content and context. The authors of the Bible simply had no concept of Mary as the Immaculately Conceived, Bodily Assumed Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate. For this reason, they said nothing about it. What they did teach about Mary has been twisted and distorted to the extent that one can barely see the relationship between the original and the modern version.

But there are two areas in which we can, and must, present a biblical response to those who would tell us that Mary is so much more than the Bible teaches. First, there is really only one serious “defense” offered by Popes and apologists for the obvious elevation of Mary to a position of paralleling, if even on a “subordinate” level, the Lord Jesus Christ. We will look at this first. Second, and most importantly, one main theme has been found throughout our study: the purposeful and almost exhaustive paralleling of the offices, person, and work of Jesus Christ in Mary. To conclude our study, we will look at these two issues.

The “Participation” Defense

The Second Vatican Council put it this way in section 62:

No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer; but just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source.

And what could be wrong with that? As the document says, if Christ’s priesthood can be shared, and God’s goodness can be shared, why not Christ’s mediatorial role?

From this statement have arisen further attempts to make the exaltation of Mary as Advocate and Mediatrix biblically defensible. Here is how Dr. Mark Miravalle puts it:

But the unique mediation of Jesus Christ, precisely in its divine and human perfection, allows for others to participate and share in this one source of mediation to the Father.[1]

At this point a footnote is attached:

The Greek word used for “one” in the Pauline text of 1 Tim. 2:5 is “heis,” which means “one”, “first”, or “primary.” There is another Greek word that St. Paul could have used if he wanted to refer to Christ’s mediation as completely exclusive, namely, “monos,” which means “sole”, “only”, or “exclusive one.” As O’Carroll, C.S.Sp notes, “The practice of addressing Mary as Mediatrix was not and need not be impeded by the Pauline text. The use of ‘one’ (heis not monos) emphasizes Christ’s transcendence as a mediator, through the unique value of his redemptive death,” cf. Theotokos, A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Dublin, 1982), 238.

The fundamental argument here is that the term used by Paul should not be thought to exclude any other mediators. But look closely at the passage:

For there is one (heis) God, and one (heis) mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus….

Are we to really think that Paul’s point is that there is only one main God (first, primary, etc.) but not one sole, only or exclusive God? Surely that is not what Paul is communicating. Instead, just as Paul is insisting that there is exclusively only one God (absolute monotheism), so too he is insisting that Jesus Christ alone is the unique and only mediator between that one unique God and man. He is so, Paul says, because He is the God-man, the “man Christ Jesus.”

In response to the claim that the term used here does not mean “alone,” the term does carry that meaning in many places, and major lexical sources indicate this.[2] In the context of 1 Timothy 2, the only possible meaning in the phrase “one God” is “one God to the exclusion of all other Gods.” Hence, in the very next phrase, why would anyone wish to suggest that the word switches meaning to “one Mediator, though that doesn’t exclude other mediators”? Instead, in light of the pagan religions that surrounded the early church, both phrases are to be understood absolutely: one God, to the exclusion of all others, and one mediator between that one God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. The Christian faith cannot add more mediators, more ways of salvation. It is Christ, or it is nothing.

So the passage does speak to the issue of Mary as a “mediator.” But what of the argument that the high dignity of Christ is not impinged by saying Mary is Mediatrix as long as we say that she is so only in a subordinate fashion? Aren’t we all, in some way, intercessors and mediators?

The problem here is that Rome is not saying that Mary is an intercessor as we are when we pray for each other or pray for others. Anyone who has read the hundreds of quotes in this work knows that what is claimed for Mary is a unique position as Queen of heaven and Mediatrix of all graces. She is a mediatrix as no one else is, and is intimately associated with Christ in redemption itself.

Beyond all this, however, there is the simple problem of the basis of mediation. Paul pointed this out in 2 Timothy 2:5–6, where in the second verse he speaks of why Christ is the only mediator, “who gave Himself as a ransom for all.” Mary did not give herself as a ransom for anyone. She couldn’t do so, since she herself had to be ransomed by another! The reason that Christ is the only Mediator is that He is the only one with a ground of mediation: His perfect and complete work of atonement upon the cross of Calvary. You see, we may ask God to be merciful to ourselves or to others, but when Christ says, “Father, be merciful,” He can then point to a perfect Atonement as the reason the Father can and will be merciful. Hence, He is the only Mediator, and none can join in His work.

The Uniqueness of Jesus

The single most devastating biblical criticism of the Roman Catholic teachings about Mary is simply this: they violate the Bible’s teachings on idolatry. What do I mean by this? Quite simply, Rome has attempted to create a mirror image of God Incarnate, Jesus Christ. Oh, yes, it’s an image that is supposed to be on a “smaller scale,” but it is as close to an exact replica as can be made. All through our study we have seen it over and over again: the parallel between Jesus and Mary. Look closely at the parallels we have documented thus far:

The Lord Jesus

Mary

Predestined to be Redeemer

Predestined to be Redemptrix

Virgin born

Immaculately conceived

Incarnate Deity: the Son in human flesh

Spouse of the Spirit, called by saints and theologians a kind of “incarnation of the Spirit”

Sinless

Kept from original sin and personal sin

Suffered and died on Calvary

Suffered and almost died at the foot of the cross

Ascended into glory

Bodily assumed into glory

King of heaven

Queen of heaven

Source of grace

Channel of grace

Our peace with God

Treasurer of our peace with God

Redeemer

Coredemptrix

Mediator

Mediatrix

Advocate

Advocate

What could be clearer? When the believer reads statements about Mary giving grace as she wishes, when she wishes, or “participating” in the redeeming work of Christ, there is a “feeling” that is hard to describe that says, “Something is wrong with this.” And now we see exactly where it comes from. You see, the person who has been redeemed knows, naturally, inherently, that there is only one Redeemer. Our hearts long for Him, not for anyone who would intrude between us and the One who saved us. Anyone else, quite simply, is a fraud. We can’t trust this person or persons, and we don’t desire to do so. Jesus said His sheep know Him, and follow Him, and hear His voice. But His sheep will not hear the voice of another (John 10:3–5). The Mary of Roman Catholicism is not the Mary of the Bible, first and foremost. And any Mary who is said to be Coredemptrix on any level speaks with a voice that the sheep of Christ simply will not hear.

A Lesson to Be Learned

When one considers how far from biblical truth Rome has strayed with her doctrine of Mary, the question presents itself, “Is there anything that couldn’t be taught about Mary, if Rome decided to do so?” Theoretically, no. Since Rome interprets her own teachings, she could always make room, if she wanted to, for whatever she wished to teach. Her teachings on Mary make it very plain that she is not bound by either Scripture or “Tradition,” since neither in any way support what she has come to define as “dogma” about Mary.

This shows us the vital importance of sola scriptura: the wonderful truth of the Bible (and the early church!) that the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith for the church. When the church remains under the guidance and limitation of God’s inspired Word, blatant violations of His truth, such as the Marian teachings of the Roman Church, cannot find a foothold among the saints. But when that hedge is removed, and Scripture itself is subjected to the authority of the Church, the results are, as we have seen, disastrous.

So, Will It Happen?

Will the Pope define Mary as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate? That is a difficult question. We have seen the case for the definition; let’s briefly consider the arguments some Catholics are using against it.

The single strongest objection to the definition is that it would be disastrous to “ecumenical dialogue.” All of the recently defined dogmas, from the concept of “papal infallibility” to the Bodily Assumption of Mary, have proven to be further stumbling blocks to the ecumenical work of Rome, whereby she seeks to bring into the “mother Church” all the “separated brethren.” Many argue that if Rome were to exercise her self-claimed ability to infallibly define this new dogma, many avenues of ecumenical movement would be closed, possibly permanently. The Pope has shown great interest in dialogue with the churches of the East, yet many of them, even though holding to a high—and in many cases wholly unbiblical—view of Mary, would find such a dogmatic definition most distasteful. This is the single most oft-repeated objection to the proposed definition.

Of course, there are also those Catholics who point out that the dogma is not a part of the tradition of the Church, and is absent from vast portions of Church history. Yet these folks must honestly admit that in previous situations where dogmatic formulations were defined that flew in the face of history (such as the First Vatican Council’s declaration of the infallibility of the Pope), those who clung to the weight of history found themselves on the losing side, and were forced to choose between fact and newly defined fiction.

There are powerful forces within the Vatican who oppose this movement, if for no other reason than that they don’t want to deal with the aftermath of such a proclamation. We have gone to the advocates of this movement and allowed them to speak for themselves in this book: but the vast majority of the media would not do so, hence, the risk of simple “misunderstanding” is also brought up as a serious objection. Yet, of course, people said the same things about papal infallibility and the Bodily Assumption, too, and that didn’t stop Rome from defining these as dogmas.

Those opposing the movement got a small boost from a committee of theologians in the Vatican. This group, made up of fifteen Catholic theologians and a mixture of some other non-Catholic scholars, examined the advisability of promulgating a definition of Mary as Coredemptrix with Christ. Their conclusion, released on June 4, 1997, is brief and to the point:

1. The titles, as proposed, are ambiguous, as they can be understood in very different ways. Furthermore, the theological direction taken by the Second Vatican Council, which did not wish to define any of these titles, should not be abandoned. The Second Vatican Council did not use the title “Coredemptrix” and uses “Mediatrix” and “Advocate” in a very moderate way (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 62). In fact, from the time of Pope Pius XII, the term “Coredemptrix” has not been used by the papal magisterium in its significant documents. There is evidence that Pope Pius XII himself intentionally avoided using it. With respect to the title “Mediatrix,” the history of the question should not be forgotten: in the first decades of this century the Holy See entrusted the study of the possibility of its definition to three different commissions, the result of which was that the Holy See decided to set the question aside.

2. Even if the titles were assigned a content which could be accepted as belonging to the deposit of faith, the definition of these titles, however, in the present situation would be lacking in theological clarity, as such titles require further study in a renewed Trinitarian, ecclesiological and anthropological perspective. Finally, the theologians, especially the non-Catholics, were sensitive to the ecumenical difficulties which would be involved in such a definition.[3]

As is normal, media outlets, not understanding the complexities of Vatican politics and procedures, took this as a final word, when it is anything but a final word. A mixed panel of theologians does not define the issue. That power lies with one man: the Pope. And a year and a half prior to this mixed-committee report, on December 13, 1995, Pope John Paul II himself addressed the issue of the teaching of Vatican II on Mary, and said:

Thus, the hesitation of some fathers regarding the title of Mediatrix did not prevent the council from using this title once, and from stating in other terms Mary’s mediating role from her consent to the Angel’s message to her motherhood in the order of grace. Furthermore, the council asserts her cooperation “in a wholly singular way” in the work of restoring supernatural life to souls. Lastly, even if it avoided using the title “Mother of the Church,” the text of Lumen Gentium clearly underscores the Church’s veneration for Mary as a most loving Mother.[4]

No one can guess what the Pope will do. He is deeply devoted to Mary, and any man whose motto is totus tuus, “Mary, I am totally yours,” is liable to follow his desires rather than the advice of others. Some have pointed out that it would be a defining moment in his papacy, and he has been known to go against the “flow” in the past as well.

I will not predict what the Pope will do. Personally, I see a third option that seems likely: making a strong statement in support of the concept, one that would fan the flames of Marian devotion, but would stop short of a formal definition. The Pope has pointed out that some teachings (such as the all-male priesthood) do not require papal definition to be infallible teachings. Possibly the Pope could leave the matter at that level, allowing both sides to claim some kind of victory. No one knows.

Some Protestants have commented that they actually hope the Pope makes the definition, if only to make the lines that much clearer. Perhaps so. But having read through the statements in this work (and there are many, many more that could have been presented), it seems that the lines are already more than clear enough, at least for those who are guided not by emotion or tradition, but by the everlasting Scriptures, the Word of God.

Notes

Chapter 1 Mary—Another Redeemer

1. These debates, on justification by faith and the canonicity of the Apocrypha, are available on tape and can be obtained from Alpha and Omega Ministries, P.O. Box 37106, Phoenix, AZ, 85069, or from the Internet at www.aomin.org.

2. Quoted from “Response to a Statement of an International Theological Commission of the Pontifical International Marian Academy” at http://www.ewtn.com/voxpopuli/RESPONSE.html.

3. Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 279.

4. For a discussion of the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture, the concept of “tradition,” see chapters 5–8 in James White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1996), as well as the relevant passages in Sola Scriptura: the Protestant Position on the Bible (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria Publishers, 1995).

Chapter 2 Mariam of Nazareth: A Biblical Mariology

1. The interested reader can cover the entire testimony of the Bible to Mary by reading Matthew 1:18–25; 2:11–15, 19–23; 12:46–50; Mark 3:31–35; 6:3; Luke 1:26–56; 2:4–7, 16–19, 22–51; 8:19–21; 11:27–28; John 2:1–12; 6:42; 19:25–27; Acts 1:14; Galatians 4:4.

2. The word used here is parthenos, a Greek term that refers specifically to sexual virginity, and is used as such many times. It is also seen in the Septuagint (the LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament, at Isaiah 7:14, a passage cited by Matthew (1:23) as being fulfilled in Christ. Matthew specifically presents the divine agent in the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, as the means by which the pregnancy was brought about, and despite the skepticism of modern men, the Holy Spirit can surely accomplish such a miracle if it is His intention to do so.

3. Jesus’ claims to deity are many, but a few would include His words at Mark 2:5–7; John 8:58; and His acceptance of worship in many situations such as John 9:38. Further, His acceptance of Thomas’ confession of Him as “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28–29) would be utter blasphemy if Jesus were not divine.

4. We note only in passing (as we will address this fully under the topic of the Immaculate Conception) that the Roman Catholic argument is that Mary did have a Savior, but that God applied the merits of Christ preemptively, so that while Mary could speak of God as her Savior, this claim referred to the fact that God kept her from sin, making Him a Savior to her in a sense utterly unlike that of anyone else. Of course, if this were true, Mary would have understood it when she uttered the words in Luke 1, and there is nothing in the context (or the few centuries of Christian teaching to which we have access) that would suggest that she had any such concept in mind.

5. In fact, the terms for “found” and “favor” are identical in Luke 1:30 and in Ruth 2:13.

6. For a fuller discussion of the term, and a refutation of common Roman Catholic attempts to make it mean far more than it does, see James White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1996), 198–203; Elliot Miller and Kenneth R. Samples, The Cult of the Virgin (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1992), 32–34; Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1995), 307; William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 75–77.

7. For the Roman Catholic reader who finds the witness of the early church to carry more weight than most Protestants, a study of the long process that brought this passage to such prominence and the fact that it was not seen to bear these meanings by the early Fathers should be helpful.

8. Important in this respect is the witness of Matthew 1:24–25, where we are told that Joseph obeyed the angelic message, and “took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.” The main emphasis of the passage is on the fact that normal marital relations did not begin until after the birth of Jesus. Joseph is not the natural father of Jesus (though the Bible refers to him in a familial sense). But as Eric Svendsen has shown in his excellent work Evangelical Answers: A Critique of Current Roman Catholic Apologetics (Atlanta, Ga.: New Testament Restoration Foundation, 1997), 186–194, the passage does indicate a change in that relationship after the birth of Christ. Roman Catholic apologists often assert that the bare word “until” does not, in and of itself, indicate that anything changed after the birth of Christ. But as Svendsen demonstrates, the construction found here consistently has a particular meaning when used in the New Testament (and in contemporaneous non-canonical sources) that does indicate a change at the time of the fulfillment of the initial condition.

9. As we will see when we look at the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, Roman Catholics assert that Mary had made a lifelong pledge of virginity, found in her words to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). Literally, the Greek says, “I do not know a man.” There is nothing in these words, however, that even begins to suggest such a thought. Mary did not say, “I will never know a man,” but “I do not know a man” (present tense). It is plain to Mary that the angel is speaking about an immediate conception, and Mary is not involved with a man, so how can she become pregnant? The Bible is plain: the interruption of a normal marital relationship was only for a season and only for a reason.

10. Some argue that Jesus would have to, by Jewish law, entrust Mary to her other sons, and since He did not do so, she must not have had other sons. This ignores the fact that Jesus’ brothers were, at this time, unbelievers, and hence Jesus would not entrust her to someone outside the faith.

11. The following presentations of the Roman Catholic teachings on Mary are not focused upon refuting these beliefs per se. Refutation will be limited primarily to endnotes. It is my intention to communicate these doctrines clearly and accurately so as to lay the foundation for examining the current controversy over Mary as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate.

Chapter 3 The First Step: Perpetual Virginity

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church (New Hope, Ky.: Urbi et Orbi Communications, 1994), section 499.

2. See note 8 in chapter 2 for more on this subject.

3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 500. As we will note, it is misleading at best to say the Church has “always” taken this view, since a number of early Fathers can be cited who did not. This is a view that became popular centuries into the history of the Church, and only as the concept of monastic life and asceticism became predominant. As to the argument concerning Mary, Matthew does not note the presence of the Virgin Mary by name at the Cross. Only John does, identifying her as “His mother.” Matthew (27:55–56) says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James (called “the Less” in Mark 15:40) and Joses, and Salome, who is the mother of Zebedee’s sons (Mark 15:40), were present. The “other Mary” to which Matthew refers (27:61) would be Mary the mother of James the Less and Joses, mentioned only a few verses before.

The argument presented hinges on the assumption that James the Less and Joses, sons of the “other Mary,” are the same James and Joses listed as the brothers of Jesus. Mark 6:3 lists the brothers as “James and Joses and Judas and Simon.” It is possible to make this connection, if one ignores all the other relevant testimony of Scripture to these brothers and sisters of Jesus. Why Mary, Jesus’ mother, would be traveling about with a group of unbelieving men who are not even her sons but were the sons of some “other Mary” is more than a bit difficult to understand. We also note that James the Less is differentiated from James, the brother of the Lord, who became an apostle after the Resurrection. Why differentiate him with the phrase “the Less” if there was not another James, the actual son of Mary, half-brother of the Lord, with whom he might be confused? Further, we note that Zebedee’s sons, likewise, included a James, indicating that the name was very, very common, and “Joses” is another form of “Joseph,” another very commonly used name. While it is quite a stretch to make the connection Rome does, there is no room for the faithful Catholic to question this identification. Once the Magisterium has spoken, exegesis (the interpretation of the text of Scripture) becomes unnecessary.

4. Church historian Philip Schaff noted concerning the New Testament evidence and the “cousin/kinsman” theory:

They were always called adelphoi (four in number, James, Joseph or Joses, Simon, and Jude) and adelphai (at least two), Matt. 12:46–47; 13:55–56; Mark 3:31–32; 6:3; John 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14, etc., but nowhere anepsioi, cousins, a term well known to the N.T. vocabulary (Col. 4:10), or sungeneis, kinsmen (Mark 6:4; Luke 1:36, 58; 2:44; John 18:26; Acts 10:24), or huioi tes adelphes, sister’s sons (Acts 23:26). This speaks strongly against the cousin-theory. (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985], III:416.)

5. For further information on this topic, see Eric Svendsen, Evangelical Answers: A Critique of Current Roman Catholic Apologetics (Atlanta, Ga.: New Testament Restoration Foundation, 1997), 186–194.

6. Marian seminar on tape from 1992, produced by Biblical Foundations, the organization directed by Mr. Matatics.

7. Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 283.

8. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Book Publishers, 1974), 207.

9. The term translated in the nasb, as “fulfill” is the Greek term opheilon, often translated “what is owed” or “a debt.”

10. Some have suggested that the marriage of Joseph and Mary was more of a “protectorate,” where the aged Joseph would provide for the young Mary’s financial needs. However, none of the terms used by the Gospel writers even begin to suggest such a thing, and given Joseph’s humble means, the whole idea completely lacks credibility.

11. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 492.

12. Gnosticism was the greatest enemy of the early church. It was a belief system based upon dualism, the idea that matter is evil but spirit is good. Gnosticism taught that salvation came through obtaining certain saving “knowledge” (Greek: gnosis), and this knowledge normally came through various ceremonies. The great emphasis was upon celibacy—which came into vogue in the monastic movement—and its resultant assertion that sexual union between husband and wife owes more to Gnosticism than it does to fair interpretation of the Scriptures. Likewise, perpetual virginity (especially the idea that there was no pain in the birth, no bleeding—i.e., that the birth process was somehow “supernatural” and not attended by the normal pain and difficulty of childbirth) is obviously impacted by a Gnostic view of life and the flesh.

13. Passages from Tertullian regarding Mary’s normal married life and children include: Against Marcion 4, 19; De Monog. 8; De Verg. Vel. 6.

14. See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 496.

Chapter 4 Immaculate Conception

1. I note, however, that this argument does not work with regard to the biblical evidence. Mary speaks of God as her Savior. Are we really to imagine that she said these words with an understanding of a dogma that would not be defined for another 1,800 or more years? She would have had to have had a personal understanding of her own experiential sinlessness and the preemptive application of the merits of Christ to her in order to say these words in the way Roman Catholic theologians would have us to understand them. Given that it is obvious that she did not fully understand the work of her Son at the Cross, how could she possibly view herself in such a light?

2. Philip Schaff provided an excellent review of the rise of this dogma in The Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1931, rev. ed. 1990), 1:108–128.

3. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford: Ill., Tan Book Publishers, 1974), 200.

4. Ibid.

5. A fact that demonstrates the emptiness of the claim often made of modern Roman dogmas, such as the Immaculate Conception, that they are based upon “ancient tradition.” As we will see, the early Church simply does not transmit to us such a “tradition” regarding Mary, nor an interpretation of the relevant texts that have been pressed into service to support the later development of these doctrines.

6. Walter Burghardt in Juniper B. Carol, ed., Mariology (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing Company, 1955), 1:146.

7. Schaff names the other six as Gregory I, Innocent III, Gelasius I, Innocent V, John XXII, Clement VI (d. 1352). Creeds of Christendom 1:123.

8. Ott, 203.

9. Ibid., 201.

10. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 493, 496.

11. S. Lewis Johnson, “Mary, the Saints, and Sacerdotalism” in John Armstrong, ed., Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), 121.

12. Juniper B. Carol, ed., “Mary in the Documents of the Magisterium” in Mariology, vol. 1 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing Company, 1955), 17.

13. Elliot Miller and Kenneth R. Samples, The Cult of the Virgin (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1992), 31.

14. Ott, 201.

15. Schaff, 1:121–122.

16. Johnson, 124.

Chapter 5 Mother of God

1. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 494.

2. For a discussion of Chalcedonian Christology, especially as it relates to Oneness Pentecostalism and the “Jesus Only” movement, see the article The Trinity, the Definition of Chalcedon, and Oneness Theology at http:/www.aomin.org/CHALC.html.

Chapter 6 Bodily Assumption

1. Giovanni Miegge, Waldo Smith, trans., The Virgin Mary: The Roman Catholic Marian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), 53, as cited by S. Lewis Johnson, “Mary, the Saints, and Sacerdotalism” in John Armstrong, ed., Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), 124.

2. Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 78.23.

3. A technical term referring to an official pronouncement and publication of a document.

4. The attempts on the part of some Roman Catholic apologists to come up with analogies from Old Testament saints such as Elisha or even Caleb are so farfetched that they are their own refutation. One need only allow them to be presented to see how they are completely without merit. Not only do they do violence to the texts upon which they are foisted but they are likewise inconsistent with the Roman position, for they are utterly unknown (just as the doctrine they pretend to defend) among the early Fathers.

5. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Book Publishers, 1974), 208.

6. Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 275.

7. Juniper B. Carol, Mariology, vol. 1 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing Company, 1955), 149.

8. Ott, 209–210.

9. William Webster, “Did I Really Leave the Holy Catholic Church?” in John Armstrong, ed., Roman Catholicism, 292. See also William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 82–83.

10. Someone might suggest that the Bodily Assumption was orthodox while the rest of the writings in which it was found were not. Yet, the fact remains that the first recorded instance of the concept is found in documents condemned as heretical, and there is no reference to Gelasius exempting that doctrine from the condemnation he pronounced upon the literature as a whole.

Chapter 7 The Veneration and Worship of Mary

1. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see James White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1996), 206–211.

2. St. Alphonsus Ligouri, The Glories of Mary (Brooklyn: The Redemptorist Fathers, 1931).

3. See the discussion on justification in White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, 125–140.

4. Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 125–160.

Chapter 8 Vatican II and the Blessed Virgin

1. For those with computer access to the Internet, the entire document can be obtained at: http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/vaticanii/lumen.gentium.

2. This is an excellent example of how Rome can “pick and choose” among the many differing views of the early Fathers, choosing the ones that support her later definitions while ignoring the others who contradict it. Often, she is left promoting the minority opinion among the early Church, or in the case of such things as the Bodily Assumption, an opinion utterly unknown.

3. This citation from Irenaeus is used over and over and over again to establish an idea that is simply not a part of the original thinking of Irenaeus. Here is what he said—in context:

But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet a virgin … having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. And on this account does the law term a woman betrothed to a man, the wife of him who had betrothed her, although she was as yet a virgin; thus indicating the back-reference from Mary to Eve, because what is joined together could not otherwise be put asunder than by inversion of the process by which these bonds of union had arisen; so that the former ties be canceled by the latter, that the latter may set the former again at liberty (Adversus Haereses III:22:4).

The entire section is about marriage relationships. The passage cited is actually a minor point of an argument about something else! Yet, like Luke 1:28, it is forced to become the bulwark of later doctrinal definitions.

4. Without going into the entire discussion of Mary as “Mother of the Church,” suffice it to say that the passage cited, John 19:26–27, in its original context, does not begin to suggest such a far-reaching concept. And, as Roman Catholic Mariologist Michael O’Carroll, in his work Mariology: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1982), 253, notes in reference to the citation of this passage in support of such an idea,

The Fathers of the Church and early Christian writers did not so interpret the words of the dying Christ. Development of the idea of Mary’s spiritual motherhood was slow and did not enter the consciousness of the Church until medieval times. During those early centuries, the sacred text did not immediately convey the notion.

5. While it cannot be denied that Mary would have suffered at the cross, so did John, the other women, and all those who loved the Lord. But their suffering was of a totally different nature than the Lord’s, who was suffering in order to bring about redemption, while their suffering was that of watching a loved one die.

Chapter 9 John Paul II and Mary

1. Note the use of this very same phrase by the Pope in Redemptoris Mater, cited above.

2. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, A Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin (London: Burns & Oates Ltd., 1904), 34–35.

3. All quotes are taken from Margaret Bunson, John Paul II’s Book of Mary (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1996).

4. One cannot help but note that this statement is directly contradictory to the Bible’s teaching that the Father entrusts all of salvation into the hands of the Son alone (John 6:39).

Chapter 10 Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate

1. This author recently heard a local television reporter plugging a story on the move to make Mary Coredemptrix. Part of the lead-in was “Now some people want to put Mary on the same level as Christ.” There is a grain of truth to the statement, but it is not, as it stands, a fair summary at all.

2. Mark Miravalle, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Queenship Publishing Company, 1993). Miravalle has since written longer works on the subject under the title Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, Theological Foundations I and II, also from Queenship Publishing.

3. Ibid., xv.

4. Ibid., xv–xvi.

5. Ibid., xvi.

6. Ibid., 2.

7. Ibid., 4. See our discussion of this claim in chapter 2.

8. Pope John Paul II, Mary Immaculate the First Marvel of Redemption, Papal Address at General Audience, 7 December 1983, L’Osservatore Romano, issue no. 50, 1983, 1, as found in Miravalle, 4.

9. Miravalle, 5.

10. Ibid., 8.

11. Ibid., 10.

12. Ibid., 11.

13. Ibid., 12.

14. Though, of course, as Ott noted concerning the use of Genesis 3:15 by the Pope in establishing the Immaculate Conception, the arguments used to arrive at a definition are not, themselves, infallible—in other words, Rome could be completely misunderstanding John 19:26–27, but, if the Pope defines the dogma anyway, the dogma is infallibly true by definition, even if the reasons that led him to the conclusion are completely erroneous.

15. An interesting example of this is found in Ligouri, The Glories of Mary (Brooklyn: The Redemptorist Fathers, 1931), 175.

The doctrine of Mary’s dignity as mediatrix of all graces is commonly accepted by theologians today, and recent pontiffs have occasionally alluded to it. We know that Benedict XIV has left these words on record: “Mary is like a celestial river by which the waters of all graces and gifts are conveyed to poor mortals.” Pius IX in speaking to the bishops of the whole world made use of the words of St. Bernard: “God wills that every grace should come to us through her.” In his encyclical on the devotion of the rosary, Sept. 22, 1391, Pope Leo XIII says: “In a true and natural sense may we say that from the great treasury of graces that the lord has merited for us, nothing came to us, by the will of God except through Mary.” Pius X declares: “She is the dispensatrix of the graces that Jesus Christ has merited for us by His blood and His death.” The following are the words of Benedict XV: “It has pleased God to grant us all graces through the Intercession of Mary.” Again: “All the graces which the Giver of all good deigns to grant to the descendants of Adam, are dispensed to us, in the disposition of a loving Providence, through the hands of the Blessed Virgin.” And finally: “The graces of all kinds that we receive from the treasury of the Redemption are dispensed by the hands of the Sorrowful Virgin.” It is worthy of note that the last four Popes have directed special attention to this teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary. They refer to it repeatedly, and thus place the seal of approval on the authority of those of former times who held the doctrine and particularly of St. Alphonsus. On the strength of these testimonies one can unhesitatingly subscribe to the judgment of the Apologist Bainvel, S.J.: “The twofold cooperation of Mary in the work of the redemption, first on earth by her life, prayer and suffering, and then in heaven by her prayer alone is sound Catholic doctrine, beyond all dispute and worthy of being defined (i.e., of being raised to the dignity of an article of faith).”

Father Jansen, C.SS.R. says that what the supreme teacher of the Church proclaims so loudly, deserves to be made known not merely to the students of theology in classrooms, but in pulpit and press to the faithful of the whole world.

16. Likewise, this concept is seen plainly in the prayer of Pius XI, uttered in 1935:

O Mother of love and mercy who, when thy sweetest Son was consummating the Redemption of the human race on the altar of the cross, did stand next to Him, suffering with Him as a Coredemptrix … preserve in us, we beseech thee, and increase day by day the precious fruit of His redemption and the compassion of His Mother.

17. As cited by Miravalle, 19.

18. Salvifici Dolores, 25.

19. Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 279.

20. Pope Leo XIII, Jucunda Semper (1894).

21. Miravalle, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, 31.

22. Ibid., 32.

23. Ibid., 34–35.

24. Ibid., 51.

25. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, A Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin (London: Burns & Oates Ltd., 1904), 12–13.

26. See Redemptoris Mater, 48.

27. Miravalle, Mary, 52.

28. Ibid., 55.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 53.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 54.

33. Ibid.

34. e.g., “You wish to have an advocate with him [Christ]…. Have recourse to Mary” and “Our Lady, our Mediatrix, our Advocate, reconcile us to your Son, commend us to your Son, represent us to your Son.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux, De Aqueductu 7, PL 183, 43C, cited in Miravalle, 63.

35. L’Osservatore Romano, 15 August 1933.

36. Miravalle, Mary, 59.

Chapter 11 A Biblical Response

1. Miravalle, Mary: Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, 26–27.

2. Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 246–247.

3. The Pope Speaks, 42:5 (September/October 1997): 312–313. Most articles on the commission included a response from Miravalle. His official reply can be seen online: http://www.ewtn.com/voxpopuli/RESPONSE.html.

4. The Pope Speaks, 41:4 (July/August 1996): 200.

JAMES WHITE, Th.D., is director of ministries for Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona, and an adjunct professor with Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary’s Arizona campus. He is also professor of apologetics with Columbia Evangelical Seminary, and a critical consultant for the Lockman Foundation on the New American Standard Bible update.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1. Mary—Another Redeemer?

2. Mariam of Nazareth: A Biblical Mariology

3. The First Step: Perpetual Virginity

4. Immaculate Conception

5. Mother of God

6. Bodily Assumption

7. The Veneration and Worship of Mary

8. Vatican II and the Blessed Virgin

9. John Paul II and Mary

10. Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate

11. A Biblical Response

Notes

About the Author

Back Cover