I was a Protestant, and I did find out what the Church means. Now I’m Catholic.
When I speak or write, my words mean what I intend them to mean. That someone misunderstands me (or misrepresents me) doesn’t change my intention. Someone who thinks the Church means the Blessed Virgin is a redeemer “equal to” Jesus is wrong. Period. It doesn’t matter how much they hop up and down, the Church means what she means, and not what the ill-informed (if not deliberately obtuse) objector thinks she means.
There is no real degree of confusion, but only varying degrees of laziness and/or intellectual dishonesty. Very nearly anyone interested in what the Church means with any Marian doctrine has ample resources available to find out.
– Mark L. Chance.
While this is true, it doesn’t really address the problem. Here a re a few words I wrote when this topic surfaced last.
"As a Catholic, I have taken it upon myself whenever possible to help Catholics understand their faith better. One example recently was helping a friend who was born and raised Catholic but fell away to the Protestant tradition. She and her husband, who was on the way to being a Protestant minister, kept telling me over and over again that they never understood the Catholic Church, and that folks like our family helped them understand Mary as the New Eve as well as the importance and meaning of reverence and Tradition. My friend did not learn this growing up in her Catholic schools, but learned it (in some part) from converts from the Protestant tradition like us. Thanks be to God, I’m happy to report that their family is in the process of returning to the Church now. It is especially happy in her case, as her cousin is a priest and the family is devoutly Catholic.
After a presentation my wife and I did for the Knights of Columbus a few years ago, one of the kind women in attendance remarked that she did not believe in spreading the Catholic faith, because faith is “a private matter”. So much for evangelization.
I’ve heard Catholics remark a number of time that they pray to Mary alone. Sadly, they don’t believe that they can pray to our Lord Himself.
For those of us doing what we can in the ol’ trenches, it’s more than anecdotal examples, though. Sadly, many Catholics don’t understand their faith, and I believe that, without that foundation, Marian titles of this nature do little to really help that understanding of these poorly-Catechized Catholics."
Perhaps, if we can improve our education across the board, this issue would matter less. As it stands now, however, I can’t see the benefit of the Co-Redemptrix title adoption when so many Catholics don’t understand the basics.
