Ladislaus, you've proven my point better than I stated it, and I don't think you realize it.


I asked you to produce one theologian who said the title was never appropriate. You produced three who said it was ambiguous, required explanation, or had better be avoided. That's not the same claim.



Your own Merkelbach "warmed to the idea" once explained, and you admitted this yourself. His objection was etymological, not doctrinal. He then spent pages expounding the glorious reality the title names. That is the opposite of "always inappropriate."



Pohle is even more damaging to your case. On pp. 122-123 he rejects "coredemptrix" as misleading. Then on pp. 123-124 he immediately champions "Mediatrix" and proceeds to describe Mary as one who "co-operated in a unique manner in the Redemption," who "formed the Divine Victim in her chaste womb, prepared Him for the slaughter, and, standing beneath the Cross, offered Him up for the salvation of mankind." He calls her the diacona sacrificii, the deaconess of the sacrifice. He affirms everything Co-Redemptrix means while disliking the word. That's a dispute about terminology, not doctrine.



Now: does the new Vatican docuмent do what Pohle did, reject the label while affirming the substance? No. It rejects the title AND guts the substance. Consider what Francis himself said, quoted approvingly in the docuмent: "The Virgin Mary... was a disciple, the disciple of her Son, and the first disciple." Not Co-Redemptrix, not Mediatrix, not diacona sacrificii, not the New Eve who offered the Victim on Calvary. A disciple. Set directly against the title "co-Savior" as if the only alternative to co-equality with Christ is reducing the Mother of God to the level of any faithful follower. Pohle would have been appalled. His diacona sacrificii, the woman who prepared the Divine Victim for slaughter and offered Him for the salvation of mankind, is something immeasurably more than a disciple. So is Merkelbach's Co-Redemptrix once properly explained. So is Benedict XV's Mary who "together with Christ redeemed the human race" (Inter Sodalicia, 1918). Francis's formulation doesn't just avoid a title. It flattens the qualitative distinction between Mary's unique cooperation in objective redemption and the ordinary union of suffering that belongs to every baptized soul. That is a denial of substance, not a prudential avoidance of terminology.



And it contradicts direct papal teaching. Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) taught that Mary, "always most intimately united with her Son, as another Eve she offered Him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father for all the children of Adam sin-stained by his fall, and her mother's rights and mother's love were included in the h0Ɩ0cαųst." She offered Christ. Actively. Sacrificially. Universally, for all the children of Adam. That is not a disciple uniting her sufferings to her Master's. That is the diacona sacrificii exercising a unique maternal role in the objective work of redemption. Yet par. 65c of the new docuмent says she "does not add anything" to Christ's salvific mediation and should not be regarded as an instrumental agent. If she offered the Victim to the Eternal Father for all mankind, she was doing something. She was not "adding nothing."



The docuмent continues in the same direction. Par. 54 forecloses any instrumental causality in the communication of grace, collapsing distinctions the entire Thomistic tradition maintained. And par. 67 rejects Mediatrix of All Graces, the very title Pohle championed as the proper alternative to Co-Redemptrix. So even following Pohle's own recommendation, the docuмent condemns your position.



Consider too that in 1956, The Thomist published a major survey of the European controversy over Mary's co-redemptive merit (Sr. Mary Vincentine, S.C.L., "The Controversial Issue of Mary's Merit," The Thomist XIX, no. 4, Oct. 1956, pp. 415-445). The debate was not about whether Mary was Co-Redemptrix. Every participant on both sides took that for granted. The controversy was about whether her merit rose to the level of relative condign rather than merely congruous. Even the strongest opponent of condign merit in that debate, Fr. Dillenschneider, C.SS.R., still affirmed Mary as "Mediatrix and Co-redemptrix of our salvation in actu primo" with "social grace" and "social merit," explicitly insisting she is "a person with a social mission" qualitatively distinct from a simple member of the Mystical Body (Dillenschneider, Pour une Coredemption mariale bien comprise, Rome, 1949, p. 138). The minimum position in that debate, held by the man most skeptical of the title's stronger implications, is already far beyond what the 2025 docuмent permits. Francis's "disciple" falls below the floor of what was theologically permissible across all schools.



Pius XII seems to have anticipated precisely this kind of reductive minimalism when he warned theologians in Ad Caeli Reginam (1954) to "beware of too great a narrowness of mind when they are considering that unique, completely exalted, indeed almost divine dignity of the Mother of God which the Angelic Doctor teaches we must attribute to her 'by reason of the infinite good which is God.'"



On papal usage: you claim one source, a letter to a sodality, with some "gross mistranslations." This is factually wrong. Leo XIII used "Co-Redemptress" in the encyclical Jucunda Semper (1894), not a private letter. St. Pius X indulgenced a prayer containing "Co-Redemptrix of the human race" in the official Raccolta (1914). You cannot indulgence a theologically defective prayer. Pius XI used the title explicitly on three separate public occasions: a 1925 apostolic brief, a 1933 allocution to pilgrims from Vicenza, and a 1935 radio message. Which of these are the "gross mistranslations"? Specify the texts and demonstrate the errors, or withdraw the claim. And Van Noort's claim that "ecclesiastical practice makes no use of it" was already false when he wrote it in 1910. Leo XIII had used it sixteen years earlier.



On Trent's solus Redemptor: if this excludes Co-Redemptrix, it equally excludes Mediatrix, since unus Mediator (1 Tim 2:5) is just as absolute. Yet Pohle himself champions Mediatrix, and no Catholic theologian has ever held that the uniqueness of Christ's mediation excludes Mary's subordinate mediatorship. The logic is identical for both titles or it is valid for neither.



Now, to clarify what I actually claimed. I was not saying it is heretical to question the prudential wisdom of using a particular word. Pohle and Merkelbach were orthodox men who questioned the word. My point was about the theological doctrine expressed under these titles, the doctrine that Mary uniquely, actively, and voluntarily cooperated in the objective work of redemption in a manner qualitatively distinct from any other creature, and that she exercises a genuine mediating role in the distribution of all graces. That doctrine was taught by multiple popes from Leo XIII through Pius XII, grounded in the Fathers from Irenaeus forward, and held as at minimum theologice certa by the consensus of approved theologians. A docuмent that declares it "always inappropriate" to name this doctrine by its proper title, while simultaneously denying that Mary adds anything, denying instrumental causality, denying the universal mediation of graces, and reducing her role to "disciple," is not exercising terminological caution. It is undermining a doctrine that has every mark of belonging to the ordinary universal magisterium. And yes, that is proximate to heresy and borders on blasphemy against the Mother of God.



So here is my challenge: find me one approved pre-conciliar theologian who held ALL of the following simultaneously: (1) Co-Redemptrix is always inappropriate, (2) Mediatrix of All Graces should also be rejected, (3) Mary adds nothing to Christ's salvific mediation, (4) Mary is not an instrumental agent in the economy of grace, and (5) Mary's role at Calvary is best described as that of a disciple.


Every theologian you cited to defend the docuмent held positions the docuмent itself condemns. You've dressed a novelty in the borrowed authority of men who would have rejected it.

Tucho and company don't care about doctrine.  The reason they are attacking Mary has everything to do with who their Father really is.  And of course there are other errors and heresies, this is but one more added to the pile.  To criticize others who are reacting to it is just bizarre.