Mary Co-Redemptrix ... Pope says No and I am confused

[Cathoholic]

Dolphin . . . .

Isn’t that saying she is equal to Jesus?

No.

“Co” here or “cum” means “along with”.

Not necessarily equal. In this case, the Church points out it is definitely NOT equal.

CCC 970 "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 . . . 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." 513 "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."514

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VATICAN II 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 honoured by a special cult in the Church. – Lumen Gentium 66

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CCC 618 excerpt — In fact Jesus desires to associate with his redeeming sacrifice those who were to be its first beneficiaries. 456
This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering .457

The Blessed Virgin Mary is allowed to participate in Redemption by GRACE.

Jesus get’s the job done, by His nature (or maybe by both His natures - Human and Divine).

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Co-Presidents are 50/50.

Yeah. I suppose they would be.
And co-pilots are NOT 50/50.

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You are saying Mary/Jesus are 50/50?

No.

God could have sent His son to earth without a human birth I would assume (since God is all powerful) but the human birth shows humility. So Mary wasn’t needed yes?

Everyone is “needed” in God’s plan.

 

[Dolphin]

Something just seems blasphemous calling her this title. Doesn’t it seem like we are deifying her? Idk maybe I don’t understand, seems to me like we are saying without Mary we wouldn’t be saved? That she saved us? But Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Mary isn’t those things?

 

[annad347]

Something just seems blasphemous calling her this title. Doesn’t it seem like we are deifying her? Idk maybe I don’t understand, seems to me like we are saying without Mary we wouldn’t be saved? That she saved us? But Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Mary isn’t those things?

That’s what I say… but most Catholic don’t think like that. They just feel its a sign of respect to Jesus.

It would be hard, if not impossible for a Catholics to see Mary the same.

They pray to her for different reason. Respect her differently. Honor her differently, and are devoted to her differently.

Some may seem to honor her above God, some think that would be the most sinful thing to do and dishonors God and Mary.

As a Catholic you have to find your own relationship with Mary. Treat her as you feel she should be treated. Weather you feel you should build a relationship with Mary, that’s up to you, if you don’t that’s also up to you and okay.

As long as you never forget, Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior and the Catholic church never forgets that, its all good. Anyway, that’s how I feel okay remaining a Catholic.

hope that helps…

 

[HarryStotle]

Because if nobody said yes then Jesus isn’t born and humanity isn’t saved. God wouldn’t create an impossible plan

So it wasn’t impossible because of Mary, but Mary’s uniqueness might explain why there were a couple thousand years of Jewish history and even more of human history prior to Mary – to say nothing of the Flood and Exodus, specifically. How do you know “someone else” was in the offing?

Do you have privileged access into human nature and how God makes choices regarding the fulfillment of roles?

I think this question speaks to the issue of the manner in which our cooperation with God is necessary to his plans.

Yes, I understand that God could raise children to Abraham from stones, but I also suspect that we ought not take that too literally regarding what the actual role of each person is vis a vis their own salvation.

 

[HarryStotle]

Something just seems blasphemous calling her this title. Doesn’t it seem like we are deifying her? Idk maybe I don’t understand, seems to me like we are saying without Mary we wouldn’t be saved? That she saved us? But Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Mary isn’t those things?

Perhaps the reason it seems “blasphemous” is that there is a conception of God, a false one, in play here.

If we view God as “a being” – granted the Supreme Being – but still a being among other beings, then we set up a kind of competitiveness between God and other beings in our minds. It may, however, be that conception of God that is the cause of that sense of “blasphemy” when some other being is compared to or jeopardizes our allegiance to the one supreme being.

Bishop Barron takes great pains in this talk to point out the “non-competitive” transcendence of God.

From the talk, starting just after the 15:00 timestamp…

Weirdly. Strangely. Intriguingly. Jesus is fully human AND fully divine. The two natures coming together without mixing, mingling or confusion. Now what does that tell us? It tells us that God is very strange. It tells us that the God we’re talking about is not a finite or limited nature, that God is not one being among many, even the highest being.

How come? Because the beings of the world always relate to each other in a competitive or mutually exclusive way. You can’t come up here and take my place without supplanting me. I could turn this podium into ash by burning it. The antelope could become a lion but only by being devoured. Right?

There’s a competitiveness among finite natures, a mutual exclusivity; but then again, listen to Chalcedon: in Jesus, divinity and humanity come together but without competition, without mixing, mingling, confusion; without one supplanting the other.

What does that entail? It has to entail that God is not one of the finite natures in the world, not one being among many, not even the supreme being. Why? Because the supreme being would be in competition with a finite – another finite being – which is why our great tradition speaks of God not as ens summum, highest being.

What’s the highest being? I don’t know… Jupiter or something, or a seraph. I don’t know the highest being, the most, the biggest thing around. That’s what God isn’t.

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

Rather, following Thomas Aquinas, our tradition speaks of God as ipsum esse subsistens, the subsistent act of to be itself, not a being, but being itself.

Think here of St Anselm. We know Anselm from the ontological argument, if we know of him today. Anselm says, “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought.” Right? And you say, Well sure he means the Supreme Being. There’s us and things higher than us, and up, and up, and then the highest thing. That must be God.

But think about it for a second, God is that than which NOTHING greater can be thought. If God were simply a Supreme Being, then God plus the rest of beings would be greater than God alone, right? If God were like Zeus or Jupiter, some high being, then Jupiter plus the world is greater than Jupiter alone, but that can’t be the true God. God is that than which NOTHING greater can be thought.

God is strangely other, uniquely other. Katherine Tanner, the contemporary theologian, says that God is otherly other, meaning his transcendence is a strange transcendence. In my language, God is non-competitively transcendent to the world. His very otherness making possible the most intimate connection.

Now, here I’ll quote Saint Augustine. Augustine said the true God is intimior intimo meo et superior summo meo. God is closer to me than I am to myself and higher than anything I can imagine. Is God in this room? Well, no, of course not. This room was made up of beings exclusively. All of us, the walls, ceiling. This room is full of beings. God’s not in this room. God is totalitare alitare, we say. Right. Totally other. But is God in this room?

Yes, because ipsum esse, the sheer act of being itself is the ground of everything in this room. Intimior intimo meo et superior summo meo. That’s the strangeness of God, the non-competitive transcendence of God. Look how the Bible catches this. The prophet Isaiah: “As high as the heavens are above the earth so high are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways above your ways.” And a few verses earlier: “Could a mother forget her baby? Even if she forgets I will never forget my own. I have carved you in the palm of my hand.”

What reality can be simultaneously superior summo meo et intimior intimo meo, but the God who is ipsum esse, non-competitively transcendent to the world?

Continued…

 

[Dolphin]

Are you suggesting that perhaps (though we will never know) other people before Mary were offered to bare Jesus but said no? And that’s why we have so much history before Jesus? I find this unlikely but is interesting to think about

 

[HarryStotle]

Here’s an image now that catches this, I think: Moses on Mount Sinai. He sees a bush that’s on fire but not consumed and from that bush comes eventually the name of God. “If people ask me what’s your name what will I tell them?” And God responds: “I Am Who I Am.” One way to read that is: “Stop asking me stupid questions. You know I mean…” “Well, which one are you? Which being are you, saying, “I Am Who I Am?” “I’m not this or that. I’m not here or there, up or down. I Am is my name.”

But now what’s the image, see, that catches this philosophical idea? The burning bush. The bush that has become luminous and radiant and beautiful, and is not consumed when the true God comes close. We are enhanced and rendered luminous and we are not consumed.

Contrast that, by the way, to the ancient myths – the Greek and Roman myths. When the gods break into human affairs, what happens? People are incinerated. Things have to give way, as this bullying, competitive, divinity crashes in. Then look at this biblical image – the closer the true God gets, the more radiant and luminous the world becomes. Do you see how the Incarnation is simply the fullest expression of this dynamic? There’s the way the true God exists.

So this idea…

The burning bush. The bush that has become luminous and radiant and beautiful, and is not consumed when the true God comes close. We are enhanced and rendered luminous and we are not consumed.

…might apply to Mary. Mary, through her fiat, may have been “enhanced and rendered luminous and not consumed” nor in any way in competition with God, by her very closeness to God. Jesus (God) did live inside her for nine months and received his own human genetics from her – a human “burning bush,” so to speak.

Perhaps it is that proximity to God that makes her very special, but in a way that detracts nothing from God because of the “non-competitive transcendence” of God, as explained by Bishop Barron.

 

[HarryStotle]

Are you suggesting that perhaps (though we will never know) other people before Mary were offered to bare Jesus but said no? And that’s why we have so much history before Jesus? I find this unlikely but is interesting to think about

Not that they “were offered,” more like none were ever worthy because none were ever so fully disposed to the will and presence of God as Mary was.

Being a human “burning bush,” so to speak, might require something of our own whole being’s submission to God’s will – not submission as “being devoured” competitively by God, but being “consumed in love” by God because she accepted fully God’s love, and none but Mary have done that.

Perhaps, that is why she physically “gave birth” to the fully human, fully divine, Son of God, Jesus.

 

[C.Longinus]

The title isn’t saying anything Church teaching hasn’t said, albeit in a much more confusing way than the norm.

 

[HarryStotle]

The title isn’t saying anything Church teaching hasn’t said, albeit in a much more confusing way than the norm.

Sometimes confusion is a necessary step towards clarity?

Isn’t clarity another way of saying “I understand” – in this case, God. Do we understand God? Perhaps legitimate confusion is God’s way of bringing us to him through faith seeking understanding?

 

[C.Longinus]

Isn’t clarity another way of saying “I understand” – in this case, God.

This isn’t about the whole person of God so…:man_shrugging:t6:

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Isn’t clarity another way of saying “I understand” – in this case, God.

This isn’t about the whole person of God so…:man_shrugging:t6:

No, but it is about the person and role of Mary.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t even figured myself and my own role out yet, so I do not exactly think my view of Mary’s role to be clear or non-confused.

 

[C.Longinus]

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t even figured myself and my own role out yet, so I do not exactly think my view of Mary’s role to be clear or non-confused.

So by your admission, you’re confused about your role. So why the uproar about the Holy Father not muddying the waters on Mary’s?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t even figured myself and my own role out yet, so I do not exactly think my view of Mary’s role to be clear or non-confused.

So by your admission, you’re confused about your role. So why the uproar about the Holy Father not muddying the waters on Mary’s?

I suppose because he is making a definitive claim – he called the idea of declaring Mary co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’. How is he certain of that? Holy men and women in the past have made virtually the same claim about Mary. I am certainly not going to say they were being foolish. Does the Pope have that kind of certainty about the clarity of saints from the past?

Besides that, notice my claims above have all been tentative – I am struggling to understand using resources that I find particularly enlightening. As with everything, I believe we are called to clearer understanding by asking questions and posing possible answers.

I am not calling any possible answers, ‘foolishness.’

 

[Gorgias]

(Ouch! $550+ bucks! I got my copy for $16.00)

This is his dissertation, isn’t it? It should be available for order on sites that print and distribute dissertations, for much less $$$…

 

[Dolphin]

That is an interesting way to put it. I wonder if Protestants would think we are turning Mary into a god with this title? Most already think we pray to her.

Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI reject notions of co-redemptrix

 

[Cathoholic]

Gorgias . . .

This is his dissertation, isn’t it? It should be available for order on sites that print and distribute dissertations, for much less $$$…

Yes. And if you go to the comments section of his book (on Amazon), someone lays out exactly how you can order Pitre’s dissertation and get it in PDF format for about $40.00 if I recall correctly.

Edit.

Here is the book.

Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement Paperback – March 1, 2006​

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801031621/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i5

And here is the post.

5.0 out of 5 stars

BUY HIS DISSERTATION, not this outrageously priced book!

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2019

Format: Paperback

DONT BUY THIS BOOK AT SUCH OUTRAGEOUS PRICES! Go to “proquest” online, click on the “search dissertations” tab, and type in “Pitre, Brandt” in the author search engine. This book is Dr Pitre’s doctoral dissertation, which can be downloaded in pdf for $40 on proquest. A hardcover or paperback book can be ordered there too.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-...ef=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0801031621

 

[C.Longinus]

I suppose because he is making a definitive claim – he called the idea of declaring Mary co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’. How is he certain of that? Holy men and women in the past have made virtually the same claim about Mary.

But did any of these holy men and women speak ex cathedra? What most proponents want is the infallible declaration of this title, which as the Holy Father has said, will lead to more harm than good.

 

[pnewton]

No, that word does not necessarily mean equal. However, the fact it is used so often of equals is a good argument that it it confusing.