7 million is nothing. This is not a poll, it is a petition. It only takes into account those who approve. Those who do not approve mean nothing to this petition. There could have been 30 million who refused to sign because they didn’t agree. 7 million is an inconsequential number.
It is the attitude that the west is developing that is problematic. It is a dogmatic attitude. You have to develop everything which you believe into a dogma. You have a list of things which you believe and you lose sight of what actually matters. How is a declaration of Mary as co-redemptrix or mediatrix of all graces or mother of God going to affect the Church? It does nothing to bring Catholics closer to God. The only thing it will do is alienate many Catholics. I realize that you don’t care if it does that as you guys have already mentioned. People are not going to simply abandon what they see to be the truth without being convinced that they are wrong. Many people are not convinced of the mediatrix of all graces idea. In fact many of them think it is blasphemous.
Woah there. First of all, Christ is the source of all grace, and Mary is the instrumental cause of the human nature of Christ. Hence, in a very real way, Mary mediates all grace to humanity. God chose to do it this way. This is hardly blasphemy. This is the teaching of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, St. Maximilian Kolbe, Bl. Mother Teresa, Servant of God Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (who was John Paul II’s doctoral thesis advisor), and the man Ratzinger called the greatest German theologian Fr. Mathias Joseph Scheeben, among many others. Nobody walking the earth in a mortal body has developed this theology. It has its basis in Scripture and Tradition. If so many Catholics do not know or understand Mary’s role in objective redemption and mediation of grace, it’s because so many teachers have been so afraid to teach it for years. The reason the dogma is needed is that because of ecumenical fears, the true teaching is in jeopardy.
Secondly, consider the deep theological rift preceding the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Had they looked into the future to a definitive papal ruling, I am sure that many would have said the same thing, that it would divide Catholics. They even had to be silenced for a while, the debate was so bitter. But ultimately the truth won out, and now the truth hardly polarizes the faithful, but they embrace the Immaculata. It will be the same with the Co-redemptrix when it is rightly understood and taught from the
cathedra. Many Catholics already do not accept the magisterial authority of the Church. Many will not change their dissenting hearts, they are already polarized; so in the sense of whether it will isolate these people who like to pick and choose what of the faith they wish to believe, a dogmatic definition will not have as strong of an effect on their relationship with the Church as one might think.
And “does nothing to bring Catholics closer to God”? Is not the Stations of the Cross a perfect picture of such a devotion to Mary Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate? I do believe that her secondary but powerful presence in the Stations has done much to bring Catholics closer to God throughout the years. The suffering mother brings us directly to the Cross, the source of all grace and redemption.
At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.
…
Can the human heart refrain
From partaking in her pain,
In that Mother’s pain untold?
See Garrigou-Lagrange’s commentary on the Stabat Mater in
Mother of the Savior and Our Interior Life, Tan, 1994.
