{"id":505,"date":"2009-05-28T08:33:36","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T08:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/the-mary-heresy-papal-support.html"},"modified":"2009-05-28T08:33:36","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T08:33:36","slug":"the-mary-heresy-papal-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/the-mary-heresy-papal-support.html","title":{"rendered":"The Mary Heresy: Papal support for Co-Redemptrix?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"BVM<\/span>A lobby of hyper-Marianists sees signs that Benedict XVI is open to declaring the dogma that the BVM “corempetrix” of humanity with her Son–that’d be Jesus Christ. From the Vatican, RNS’ Francis X. Rocca reports<\/a> this week:<\/p>\n

\n

At least 7 million Catholics from more than 170 countries, including hundreds of bishops and cardinals, have reportedly signed petitions urging the pope to proclaim Mary “the Spiritual Mother of All Humanity, the coredemptrix with Jesus the redeemer, mediatrix of all graces with Jesus the one mediator, and advocate with Jesus Christ on behalf of the human race.” <\/p>\n

In other words, the Virgin Mary–though always subordinate to and dependent on the will of Christ–plays an active, unique and irreplaceable role in helping her son deliver mankind from sin and death. <\/p>\n

Proponents say that such a statement would represent the culmination of the church’s traditional teaching on Jesus’ mother, and bring the world untold spiritual and material benefits. <\/p>\n

But critics of the proposed dogma say it would exaggerate Mary’s true importance and undermine efforts toward unity with other Christian denominations. <\/p>\n

The idea of Mary as Christ’s collaborator in the redemption of humanity is deeply rooted in Catholic tradition, said Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins, an American priest working at the Vatican who has written extensively on the subject. <\/p>\n

“The church has been meditating on this role for two millennia,” Calkins said in an interview, “and so the Holy Spirit continues to draw forth what is there already in seed.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rocca also cites Steubenville theologian Mark Miravalle, a longtime proponent of the coredemptrix dogma, who says “the new dogma would mean the “climax of the `Age of Mary’,” a period that began in 1830 with apparitions of the Virgin in France, and witnessed papal proclamations of her Immaculate Conception (1854) and bodily Assumption into heaven (1950).”<\/p>\n

Me, I don’t see it in Benedict’s writings; indeed, if John Paul II, who actually used the “co-redemptrix” phrase, didn’t do it, why would Benedict, who is not nearly as “Marian”? Besides, in 2000, Cardinal Ratzinger flat-out nixed the idea, adding that the “formula `Co-redemptrix’ departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the (church) Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings.” <\/p>\n

Then again, this so-called dogma (seemes like straightforward heresy to me) has been hanging around for a while. It was bubbling up again a year ago, as Cardinal Luis Aponte Mart\u00ednez of Puerto Rico told ZENIT in March 2008<\/a> why the dogma should be proclaimed. In May 2008, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo of India<\/a> said the dogma would aid ecumenical dialogue.<\/p>\n

Color me skeptical. Then again, if Benedict did this it would solidify his legacy as the greatest innovator since…I don’t know who. <\/p>\n

PS:<\/strong> While I might disagree with the proposed dogma, it does allow me to post an image of one of my favorite paintings of all time, Titian’s Assumption in Santa Maria dei Frari<\/a> in Venice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lobby of hyper-Marianists sees signs that Benedict XVI is open to declaring the dogma that the BVM “corempetrix” of humanity with her Son–that’d be Jesus Christ. From the Vatican, RNS’ Francis X. Rocca reports this week: At least 7 million Catholics from more than 170 countries, including hundreds of bishops and cardinals, have reportedly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Mary Heresy: Papal support for Co-Redemptrix? - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/the-mary-heresy-papal-support.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Mary Heresy: Papal support for Co-Redemptrix? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A lobby of hyper-Marianists sees signs that Benedict XVI is open to declaring the dogma that the BVM “corempetrix” of humanity with her Son–that’d be Jesus Christ. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}