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]
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.
Continue reading at Diane Montagna’s Substack