(LifeSiteNews) — Over the course of time, the Ordinary Magisterium, together with numerous Saints and Doctors of the Church, have taught the Marian doctrines of Coredemption and Mediation, employing among other expressions the specific titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of All Graces.” Consequently, it cannot be maintained that the Ordinary Magisterium, along with Saints and Doctors of the Church over so many centuries, could have led the faithful astray through a consistently inappropriate use of these Marian titles. Moreover, throughout the ages, this Marian doctrine and the use of these titles have also expressed the sensus fidei—the sense of faith of the faithful. Therefore, by adhering to the traditional teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium regarding Coredemption and Mediation, and by recognizing the legitimacy of the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of All Graces,” the faithful do not depart from the right path of faith nor from a sound and well-informed piety toward Christ and His Mother.

In the early Church, St. Irenaeus, a second-century Doctor of the Church, laid the essential groundwork for the Marian doctrines of Coredemption and Mediation, which would later be developed by other Doctors of the Church and the Ordinary Magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs. He wrote: “Mary by yielding obedience, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.”[1]

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Among the numerous affirmations of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Popes concerning the Marian doctrines of Coredemption and Mediation, and the corresponding titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of All Graces,” one may first cite the encyclical Adjutricem Populi of Pope Leo XIII, in which he refers to Our Lady as a cooperator in the work of Redemption and as the dispenser of the grace that flows from it. He writes: “She who was so intimately associated with the mystery of human salvation is just as closely associated with the distribution of the graces which for all time will flow from the Redemption.”[2]

Similarly, in his encyclical Jucunda Semper Expectatione, Pope Leo XIII speaks of Mary’s mediation in the order of grace and salvation. He writes:

The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven… St. Bernardine of Siena [affirms]: ‘Every grace granted to man has three degrees in order; for by God it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it descends to us’… May God, ‘Who in His most merciful Providence gave us this Mediatrix,’ and ‘decreed that all good should come to us by the hands of Mary’ (St. Bernard), receive propitiously our common prayers and fulfil our common hopes… To thee we lift our prayers, for thou art the Mediatrix, powerful at once and pitiful, of our salvation… by thy participation in His ineffable sorrows, … be pitiful, hear us, unworthy though we be![3]

Pope St. Pius X offered a succinct theological exposition of Coredemption in his encyclical Ad Diem Illum, teaching that by reason of her divine motherhood, Mary merits in charity what Christ alone, as God, merits for us in strict justice—namely, our redemption—and that she is the dispenser of all graces. He writes:

When the supreme hour of the Son came, beside the Cross of Jesus there stood Mary His Mother, not merely occupied in contemplating the cruel spectacle, but rejoicing that her Only Son was offered for the salvation of mankind, and so entirely participating in His Passion, that if it had been possible, she would have gladly borne all the torments that her Son bore. And from this community of will and suffering between Christ and Mary she merited to become most worthily the Reparatrix of the lost world and Dispensatrix of all the gifts that Our Savior purchased for us by His Death and by His Blood. […] Since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with Jesus Christ, and has been associated by Jesus Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for us de congruo, in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us de condigno, and she is the supreme Minister of the distribution of graces. … It has been allowed to the august Virgin to be the most powerful Mediatrix and advocate of the whole world with her Divine Son. The source, then, is Jesus Christ. But Mary, as St. Bernard justly remarks, is the channel (Serm. de temp on the Nativ. B. V. De Aquaeductu n. 4); or, if you will, the connecting portion the function of which is to join the body to the head and to transmit to the body the influences and volitions of the head – We mean the neck. Yes, says St. Bernardine of Sienna, “she is the neck of Our Head, by which He communicates to His mystical body all spiritual gifts” (Quadrag. de Evangel. aetern. Serm. 10., a. 3, c. 3).[4]

Likewise, Pope Benedict XV teaches: “By uniting herself to the Passion and death of her Son, she suffered as if to death … to appease the divine justice, as far as it was in her power, she sacrificed her Son—so that it may rightly be said that she, together with Christ, redeemed the human race.”[5] This is the equivalent of the title of Co-Redemptrix.

Pope Pius XI affirms that, by virtue of her intimate association with the work of Redemption, Mary rightly merits the title of Co-Redemptrix. He writes: “By necessity, the Redeemer could not but associate his Mother in his work. For this reason, we invoke her under the title of Co-Redemptrix. She gave us the Savior, she accompanied him in the work of Redemption as far as the Cross itself, sharing with him the sorrows of the agony and of the death in which Jesus consummated the Redemption of mankind.”[6]

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In his encyclical Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII emphasizes the universality of Mary’s role as dispenser of grace, saying: “She gives us her Son and with Him all the help we need, for God ‘wished us to have everything through Mary’ (Saint Bernard).”[7]

Pope St. John Paul II repeatedly affirmed the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s role in the Redemption and the mediation of all graces, employing the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of All Graces”. To cite just a few, he said: “Mary, though conceived and born without the taint of sin, participated in a marvelous way in the sufferings of her divine Son, in order to be Coredemptrix of humanity.”[8] “In fact, Mary’s role as Coredemptrix did not cease with the glorification of her Son.”[9] “We recall that Mary’s mediation is essentially defined by her divine motherhood. Recognition of her role as mediatrix is moreover implicit in the expression ‘our Mother,’ which presents the doctrine of Marian mediation by putting the accent on her motherhood. Lastly, the title ‘Mother in the order of grace’ explains that the Blessed Virgin co-operates with Christ in humanity’s spiritual rebirth.”[10]

Regarding the truth conveyed by the Marian title Mediatrix of All Graces, Pope Benedict XVI taught: “The Tota Pulchra, the Virgin Most Pure, who conceived in her womb the Redeemer of mankind and was preserved from all stain of original sin, wishes to be the definitive seal of our encounter with God our Saviour. There is no fruit of grace in the history of salvation that does not have as its necessary instrument the mediation of Our Lady.”[11]

St. John Henry Newman, who was recently proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, defended the title Co-Redemptrix before an Anglican prelate who had refused to acknowledge it. He declared: “When they found you with the Fathers calling her Mother of God, Second Eve, and Mother of all Living, the Mother of Life, the Morning Star, the Mystical New Heaven, the Sceptre of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled Mother of Holiness, and the like, they would have deemed it a poor compensation for such language, that you protested against her being called a Co-redemptress.”[12]

The term Co-Redemptrix, which by itself denotes a simple cooperation in the Redemption of Jesus Christ, has, for several centuries, in theological language and in the teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, carried the specific meaning of a secondary and dependent cooperation. Consequently, its use poses no serious difficulty, provided it is accompanied by clarifying expressions that emphasize Mary’s role as secondary and dependent in this cooperation.[13]

Bearing in mind the teaching on the meaning and proper use of the titles Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces, as consistently presented by the Ordinary Magisterium and upheld by numerous Saints and Doctors of the Church over a considerable span of time, there is no serious risk in employing these titles appropriately. Indeed, they emphasize the role of the Mother of the Redeemer, who, by reason of the merits of her Son, is “united to Him by a close and indissoluble tie,”[14] and is thus also the Mother of all the redeemed.[15]

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In certain versions of the prayer Sub Tuum Praesidium, the faithful have confidently invoked Our Lady for centuries, calling her: “Domina nostra, Mediatrix nostra, Advocata nostra.” And St. Ephrem the Syrian, a fourth-century Doctor of the Church, who is venerated by the Church as the “Harp of the Holy Spirit,” prayed thus:

“My Lady, most Holy Mother of God and full of grace. Thou art the Bride of God, through whom we have been reconciled. After the Trinity Thou art the Mistress of all things, after the Paraclete Thou art another comforter, and after the Mediator Thou art the Mediatrix of the whole world, the salvation of the universe. After God Thou art all our hope. I salute thee, o great Mediatrix of peace between men and God, Mother of Jesus our Lord, who is the love of all men and of God, to whom be honor and benediction with the Father and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”[16]

[1] Adv. Haer., III, 22, 4.

[2] September 5, 1895.

[3] September 8, 1894.

[4] February 2, 1904.

[5] Apostolic Letter Inter Sodalicia, March 22, 1918.

[6] Address to pilgrims in Vicenza, Italy, November 30, 1933.

[7] November 20, 1947.

[8] General Audience of 8 September 1982.

[9] Homily at the Mass in the Marian shrine in Guayaquil, Ecuador, January 31, 1985.

[10] General Audience of October 1, 1997.

[11] Homily at the Holy Mass and Canonization of Fr Antônio de Sant’Ana Galvão, OFM, May 11, 2007.

[12] A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on Occasion of His Eirenicon. Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, Volume 2, Longmans, Green, and Co., New York, 1900, p. 78.

[13] Cf. Dictionnaire de la Théologie catholique, IX, art. Marie, col. 2396.

[14] Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, 53.

[15] Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, 63.

[16] Oratio ad Deiparam, cf. S.P.N. Ephraem Syri Opera Omnia quae exstant… opera bet studio Josephi Assemani, Romae 1746, tomus tertius, p. 528ff.

This essay also appeared in Diane Montagna’s Substack. Published here with permission of Bishop Schneider, who sent it to LifeSiteNews.