“To think that Mary has to mediate and convince God to be merciful undermines the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Following the reaction to the new Vatican document Mater Populi Fidelis (“Mother of the Faithful People”), Father Maurizio Gronchi, a Christology expert and consultant to the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, warned that considering the Virgin Mary as “Co-Redemptrix” or “Mediatrix” distorts the Christian faith and leads to a superstitious view.
“It is superstition to think that the Virgin Mary has the role of holding back God’s wrath. Whoever thinks this way is not in accordance with the Gospel,” Gronchi told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.
The expert spoke about the new document this week alongside Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In the text, the Vatican urges the faithful against using the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix” to refer to the Virgin Mary.
“To think that Mary has to mediate and convince God to be merciful undermines the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he explained.
The document has raised questions in some sectors of the Church, although it is not the first time the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has ruled out proclaiming this as dogma.
According to the Vatican doctrinal note also signed by Pope Leo XIV, St. John Paul II asked the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 1996 to study whether it could be considered a truth of faith that the Virgin Mary is “co-redemptrix” and “mediatrix.”
“He asked Ratzinger for clarification on the matter. He had used this term from a spiritual and devotional perspective,” Gronchi explained.
But as soon as “Ratzinger said it was inappropriate, John Paul II never used it again,” Gronchi added. John Paul II did not use it in his 1987 encyclical Redemptoris Mater (“Mother of the Redeemer”), which deals precisely with the Virgin Mary and her role in the life of the Church and in the history of salvation.
Neither Pius XII, St. John XXIII, nor St. Paul VI ever used that expression, nor did the Second Vatican Council, said Gronchi, who noted that currently “it does not seem that new truths [about Mary] ought to be affirmed.”
