Vatican stops use of titles for Mary

chevyontheriver said:

So what do YOU make of it?

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Like the man said, it sends a confusing message about the position of the VBM, one distracts from the unique role of our Lord Christ. There's one Redeemer, and referreing to the BVM as "co-redeemer" sounds as though there are two. IIt's good that the Vatican has seen fit to disallow the term

Gregory Thompson said:

I wonder if the catechism has been updated.

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Was the BVM referred to as a "co-redeemer" in the catechism? I can't imagine that she would be.

Jipsah said:

Like the man said, it sends a confusing message about the position of the VBM, one distracts from the unique role of our Lord Christ. There's one Redeemer, and referreing to the BVM as "co-redeemer" sounds as though there are two. IIt's good that the Vatican has seen fit to disallow the term

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I understand, but the whole meaning behind any of the terms using "co-" was that Mary fully cooperated with Jesus. Never was it meant to be on an equal footing, that's why a number of popes, such as John Paul II, used the title.

Bob Crowley said:

While I think Mary is the "man" of the hour in some ways, I have been a bit concerned about what seems to me to be an over-playing of her role.
My Presbyterian pastor wasn't anti-Catholic, although he obviously had differences of opinion with the Catholic Church.
In one discusssion about Marian apparitions he said "There's been a lot of them" and "I think they're a judgement on a divided church". When Mary calls for devotion to her sacred heart,

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If I'm not mistaken, I think the Sacred Heart is a nomer for Christ, not Mary.

Bob Crowley said:

what she's actually saying is that God wants HIS church back in one piece.
At the same time she is only who she is because of her divine Son.
I think this clarification is overdue.

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Clare73 said:

If I'm not mistaken, I think the Sacred Heart is a nomer for Christ, not Mary.

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That’s correct, and its also a devotion that is blanket-rejected by the Orthodox Church, so in the process of ecumenical reconciliation something the RCC will have to phase out, along with the Immaculate Heart devotions for the BVM. We don’t deny that Christ our God is sacred our that the Blessed Virgin Mary is immaculate but we are extremely uncomfortable about biophysical localizations of that sacredness or immaculacy.

concretecamper said:

Reading between the lines:

Mary is the first and foremost collaborator in the work of redemption and grace.

But let's be eccumenical to the ill informed protestants.

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I guess. The whole thing puts Mary on a very high plane. Too high, in my view. It steps back from a couple of terms, not because they're wrong, but because they're potentially misleading.

hedrick said:

I guess. The whole thing puts Mary on a very high plane. Too high, in my view. It steps back from a couple of terms, not because they're wrong, but because they're potentially misleading.

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There is no co-redmptrix.

hedrick said:

I guess. The whole thing puts Mary on a very high plane. Too high, in my view. It steps back from a couple of terms, not because they're wrong, but because they're potentially misleading.

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I think most who don't agree with the Title Co-Redemptrix view it as a title of equality with Jesus. That is an incorrect view. iMO, the Church should combat the misinformation rather than retreat from the Title.

concretecamper said:

I think most who don't agree with the Title Co-Redemptrix view it as a title of equality with Jesus. That is an incorrect view. iMO, the Church should combat the misinformation rather than retreat from the Title.

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That is the meaning of "co-" in Co-Redemptrix; i.e., equality in redeeming from condemnation, which equality is only by paying the penalty for sin (death), which required a perfect (sinless) sacrifice, which Mary did not (pay) and was not (perfect sacrifice), being born with the imputed sin of Adam (Ro 5:17), as are all those of Adam (Ro 5:12-16, 18-19).

Salvation is through faith in Christ (Eph 2:8-9) and his perfect atoning sacrifice (blood, Ro 3:25). . .not through faith in Mary. . .which is heresy.

Nothing is more clear in the NT.
Where does all this slipshod soteriology come from? . . .certainly not from the word of God.

Clare73 said:

That is the meaning of "co-" in Co-Redemptrix; i.e., equality in redeeming from condemnation, which equality is only by paying the penalty for sin (death), which required a perfect (sinless) sacrifice, which Mary did not and was not.
Salvation is through faith in Christ (Eph 2:8-9) and his atoning work (blood, Ro 3:25). . .not through faith in Mary. . .which is heresy.

Nothing is more clear in the NT.

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Thank you for proving my point.

Clare73 said:

That is the meaning of "co-" in Co-Redemptrix; i.e., equality in redeeming from condemnation, which equality is only by paying the penalty for sin (death), which required a perfect (sinless) sacrifice, which Mary did not (pay) and was not (perfect sacrifice), being born with the imputed sin of Adam (Ro 5:17), as are all those of Adam (Ro 5:14-16, 18-19).
Salvation is through faith in Christ (Eph 2:8-9) and his perfect atoning sacrifice (blood, Ro 3:25). . .not through faith in Mary. . .which is heresy.
Nothing is more clear in the NT.
Where does all this slipshod soteriology come from? . . .certainly not from the word of God.

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concretecamper said:

Thank you for proving my point.

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Good to see you agree that Mary is not a "co-redemptrix."
For that would be blasphemy.

concretecamper said:

I think most who don't agree with the Title Co-Redemptrix view it as a title of equality with Jesus. That is an incorrect view. iMO, the Church should combat the misinformation rather than retreat from the Title.

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Except your church never dogmatized that title. Also pushing for this would create yet another impediment to unity with the Orthodox - no one liturgically venerates the Theotokos as much as we do (Most Holy Theotokos, save us)*, but we already have an issue of division over the Immaculate Heart devotion and the Immaculate conception (that the Blessed Virgin Mary is immaculate is not disputed - our hymns describe her as such, but our model of original sin, which is based on St. John Cassian’s refutation of Pelagius and used to predominate in the West as well as the East does not require the Theotokos to have been conceived immaculately in order to be sinless, without endorsing Pelagianism).

Also its worth noting the birth of the Theotokos is already a miracle, since Saints Joachim and Anna, the Grandparents of God, were childless due either to infertility on the part Joachim or Anna until the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary well past the age when St. Anna was potentially pregnant.

The chief difference between Orthodox and Roman Catholic devotions to the Theotokos is that we avoid mental visualization such as in the Rosary (we try to avoid this in prayer in general as it has proven to be problematic, which I can attest to from my own life experiences - the Holy Icons are all the visualization we need for prayer - and is more precise, and longer, and more liturgical, and at the same time more enthusiastic and pervasive.

We don’t just refer to her as St. Mary in the liturgy, for example, but as “our most glorious Lady Theotokos and ever virgin Mary”, and if I were to quote all of the Theotokia, the hymns to the Theotokos, especially the Stavrotheotokia, it would fill a book, and that’s in addition to the Akathists and Molebens.

Also I would note that what I have said largely applies to the more Byzantinized Ukrainian Greek Catholics in North America, but less so in Ukraine where certain differences in use still apply - there are some Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches here like St. Elias who follow the Typikon so precisely as to be indistinguishable from the Orthodox aside from the petitions for the Pope in the Great Litany and his commemoration in the Diptychs (and also for some reason Roman Catholic translations of the Divine Liturgy in my experience do not use the phrase “unto ages of ages” used by most Eastern Orthodox, except for the Ruthenian converts of the American Carpatho Rusyn Orthodox Diocese, and by the Copts.

* I base this statement on the number of liturgical and devotional services and their duration, such as the Akathist and Moleben, and the canons of the Theotokos and the frequency and diversity of the Theotokion hymns in our liturgy, and the fact that the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox have been celebrating the Assumption or Dormition of Our Lady since the very early church and have regarded it as dogma this entire time; it did not require a Papal decree in the 1950s for it was for us dogma at least as far back as the fourth century when liturgical evidence of it starts to appear, making it as old in attestation as the Roman Canon.

In contrast the Roman Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is beautiful, is now seldom celebrated, and I am not aware of public celebrations of it, and the public rosaries and novenas are not technically liturgical services according to the Western definition of liturgical (interestingly, in Orthodoxy Liturgy properly refers only to the Eucharist but I normally make use of the Western usage for the sake of consistency with Western scholarship, however, in an Orthodox context I will use verbs like liturgize, which means, to celebrate the Divine Liturgy) but were rather classed by Fr. Robert Taft, SJ, as devotions which had become liturgized. In contrast, the Akathist is a Kontakion, an ancient liturgical hymn, sung with a formal preface and closure, and the Moleben features a Canon; likewise equivalent services among most of the Oriental Orthodox do equivalent things (such as the Syriac Orthodox Mawrbo - a recitation of the Magnificat at night).

Also we Orthodox do pray the Hail Mary, and have multiple prayer rules for it, such as the Prayer Rule of St. Seraphim of Sarov.

Valletta said:

I understand, but the whole meaning behind any of the terms using "co-" was that Mary fully cooperated with Jesus. Never was it meant to be on an equal footing, that's why a number of popes, such as John Paul II, used the title.

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Indeed, but the title was never formally dogmatized, and the group pushing for its dogmatization, the Fifth Dogma people, were connected with an apparition the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Blessed Pope Benedict XVI (yes, I referred to him as Blessed; your Congregation for the Causes of the Saints has their schedule for beatification, and I have mine) and later under Gerhard Cardinal Muller, who by rights ought to be Pope now (or Raymond Cardinal Burke, or Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, or Cardinal Sarah, or the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; for that matter His Grace Athanasius Schneider ought to be the locum tenems for those German dioceses that issued a form for the blessing of homosexual unions during the Papal interregnum and falsely claimed to have worked with the DDF to implement it, which the DDF denies), rejected as not worthy of belief.

To allow this devotion to have official status would be yet another win for dubious Marian apparitions (the other being Medjugorje), apparitions which unlike those at Fatima, or the miraculous apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, have not produced any kind of radical mass conversion but which instead have a dark side (for example, Medjugorje has been used by the Franciscans who historically ran all the churches in Herzegovina before it became a Diocese following its incorporation into the Austrian Empire, at which time they were supposed to turn the churches over to Diocesan clergy - at one point they literally bricked up the Church of St. James in Medjurgorje to prevent this from happening) to maintain their influence, and indeed a film was made which depicted the pious Bishop of the Diocese of Mostar in an unflattering light).

Roman Catholics ought to venerate the Theotokos more in the liturgy and in a more controlled manner, with more Marian hymns, better Marian hymns, which already exist in the West by the way; they are in the old Divine Office and Traditional Latin Mass and certain other ancient Latin Masses such as the Ambrosian and Mozarabic - and additionally the importation and Westernization of Eastern Marian hymns such as the Stavrotheotokia, the acheingly beautiful hymns of Mary at the Foot of the Cross, which would go well with the Seven Sorrows devotion, would be very meet. And the use of the Akathist by Western Catholics would be more edifying and focused than the long Rosary services or the Novena.

Clare73 said:

That is the meaning of "co-" in Co-Redemptrix; i.e., equality in redeeming from condemnation,

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No, as has already been stated, it is not. For example, If people cooperate that does not mean those people are equal or have an equal share in doing so.

Always in His Presence said:

What is someone is titled co-manager? What does that mean?

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How about Assistant to the Regional Manager?