(LifeSiteNews) — The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) will publish on Tuesday a new doctrinal note on Marian titles related to Mary’s “Cooperation in the Work of Salvation.”
A presentation on the document “Mater Populi Fidelis: On Certain Marian Titles in Relation to Mary’s Cooperation in the Work of Salvation” will take place November 4, the Vatican’s doctrine office announced Thursday.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the DDF Prefect who has heretically promoted the admittance of the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion and is also known for authoring an erotic book on kissing, will be speaking at the presentation along with professor Maurizio Gronchi.
While Fernández has not elaborated on the content of the doctrinal note, it is anticipated that Mary’s role as “co-redeemer,” and perhaps her unofficial title “Co-Redemptrix,” will be discussed or alluded to.
Dr. Mark Miravalle, a Mariologist and professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, has pointed out that it is already doctrinal teaching that the Blessed Mother is the Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of All Graces, and Advocate.
“What does that mean specifically?” he told LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen last year. “A mother suffers for her children, a mother nourishes her children, and a mother pleads (for) and protects her children. Well, that’s what Our Lady does for each one of us,” the professor said.
The word Co-Redemptrix itself is composed of the two Latin words cum and redimere. Cum translates to “with” in English, denoting one person acting alongside another, but never means “equal” or “interchangeable” in the manner of “co-pilot,” for instance. Redimere is the verb meaning “to buy back, set free by payment.” When combined with the female ending of the verb, one gets the meaning “she who buys back with.”
Drawing heavily from Scripture, figures such as Saints Irenaeus, Ephraim, Jerome, and Augustine laid the foundations for the understanding of the term in the first centuries of the Church, before later theologians such as Saints Bernard, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Louis de Montfort and Alphonsus Liguori fully expounded the mysteries contained in the title.
The Holy Office has also referred to Mary as “Co-Redemptrix” and honored this title, including in 1908 and then five years later when it granted a partial indulgence to a prayer addressing Mary as “Co-Redemptrix of the human race.”
Pope Pius XI also used the term Co-Redemptrix as part of his public addresses in 1933, 1934 and 1935, building on the previous papal support for the teaching as expressed by Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.
Despite this constant teaching of the Church, Pope Francis rejected Mary’s title as Co-Redemptrix, declaring during a general audience in 2021, “The mother who covers everyone under her mantle as a mother, Jesus entrusted us to her as a mother, not as a goddess, not as a co-redemptrix, as a mother.”
Pope Francis went so far as to suggest that such a title, by which numerous saints and popes have addressed Mary, was born out of loving exaggeration but was not factually true. “It’s true, Christian piety likes to give beautiful titles to her, but above all she is a mother, what a wonderful title that is. But remember, all the wonderful titles that the Church gives to Mary, they don’t take anything away from the unique mediating role of Jesus,” he said. “Sometimes when we love someone it makes us exaggerate.”
So in depth and constant is the teaching of the Church on this topic that in 2017 the International Marian Association released a statement as part of a longer appeal to Pope Francis, saying, “Not only is the Co-redemptrix term theologically acceptable in articulating the intimacy and complementarity between the divine Redeemer and his immaculate human mother, but the title is actually necessary to properly denote and signify in a single term the providentially designed unity between Jesus and Mary, God-man and human woman, New Adam and New Eve, Redeemer and Co-redemptrix, in the historic work of Redemption.”
