It is a legal and doctrinal ruling. As St. Thomas taught, law directs people either by commanding to do a positive action, forbidding, or permitting (Treatise on Law). When Francis added to the new catechism that the death penalty is now “always inadmissible,” likewise the meaning was obvious to everyone, that he declared it universally forbidden.
A dubia can be presented to Tucho and asked if it’s just advice or a prohibition, until then, in my opinion, it is obviously a strict prohibition to use a title already used by popes.
If the title is confusing to some, then so are terms like “Mother of God,” the “Blessed Sacrament,” justification by “Faith and good works,” or “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” The problem is not with these terms, but with Protestants in particular failing to understand and truthfully represent their meaning.
By “Co-redenptorix mediatrix,” the Church using that term meant that Mary a) participates in a unique way with Christ as Redeemer, b) by presenting all our prayers to Christ on the Cross (and therefore in the Mass), c) by giving her Fiat or yes to God to become the Mother of God, d) that the economy of salvation and grace includes not only Christ but her participating in it, e) and that all graces are distributed to her to the human race.
In other words, you cannot separate Mary from Christ, or vice versa, and her from the economy of grace Christ instituted. She alone stood at the foot of the Cross as a co-redeemer, that is linked uniquely to Christ as Redeemer in such a way that no other human being would be linked.
God could have instituted it differently, but He didn’t. He chose His Son alone to be the Redeemer and Mary alone to be the Co-redeemer. This does not mean her suffering and prayers were equal to that of Christ, but greater than any other human being, in such a way that God the Father gave/gives saving grace to the human race by receiving the merits of the holy sacrifice of His Son, but ALSO in some way hearing the prayers of the Mother of God, and dispensing His grace not only through Christ, but from Him downward and universally through Mary, the Mother of God. It is God’s power that makes that possible, and placed Mary into that role.
And there is only one title that represented fully this truth, and that was Our Lady Co-redemptorix Mediatrix of all graces. It does not take more than a moment to explain it to a person of good will. Translate the Latin, explain simply what it doesn’t mean, and the truths it represents.
I would say it this way: “the title in Latin means Our Lady co-redeemer and channel of all graces. Christ alone is the Redeemer. But His Mother had the secondary role at the foot of the Cross as a co-participant or co-redeemer in redemption. She did that by becoming the Mother of God, suffering more than any other human being besides her Son, offering all our prayers to Christ on the Cross, and dispensing all graces merited by Christ to the whole human race. It doesn’t mean she was a god or equal to Christ. It is her role we believe Christ instituted when he instituted the Church.”
Yet the problem this document now poses is that whenever not only the issue of the title comes up in a discussion or debate, but its doctrinal meaning, then the Protestant or anyone else can point to this new document to deny the traditional Catholic teaching.
If Tucho or Leo are forbidding me to use that title, my conscience orders me to doubt that is a valid law. I am at the very least bound to believe what the title means, and in some circumstances explain that teaching to the non-believer.
If this document means a rejection of traditional Marian teaching represented by the title, then we may now have entered that phase of the Leo pontificate similar to the one entered into after Francis allowed communion for the unrepentant divorced and remarried without an annulment. Theologians will have to ask if there is anything that approaches doctrinal error in this document.
At any rate, my obligatory mode since the election of “give the new pope for now the benefit of the doubt” is wearing very thin. Leo must have known the shock waves and confusion this document would have sent across the world of orthodox Catholics who understand the title, and believe in what that title represents.
Yet he signed it.
This document literally says no person can universally dispense Christ’s grace, therefore effectively that Mary cannot do that.
“No human person — not even the Apostles or the Blessed Virgin — can act as a universal dispenser of grace.”
If God is all powerful and all wise, He certainly can (and does) distribute all His graces of the Cross through Mary, who offers all our prayers to Christ. He could have (and did) set up the economy of grace to include Our Lady acting as a co-redeemer and dispenser of grace, properly understood.
To deny any of this is, for me, a grave insult to our heavenly mother, and it rightfully angers me enough to write this in defense of her.
Instead of teaching the meaning of the title, Tucho and Leo are effectively banishing not only the title, but the proper meaning of it. The ecumenical new religion of conciliar modernism, to achieve its goals, must downplay the role of Our Lady.
She must be placed off in the margins just as the tabernacle, cross, and propitiatory sacrificial nature of the Mass was put off to the side.
We are no longer kneeling looking up at the traditional sanctuary and high altar, with the cross and tabernacle at the center, with Mary standing intimately at her Son’s feet, with the priest offering a propitiatory sacrifice, with the proper understanding and devotion.
Now we have a Protestant meal table, happy clappy music, and a version of Mary that has effectively stripped her of her crown as the majestic Queen of heaven and Earth. As the once titled Co-redemptorix Mediatrix of all graces. It doesn’t conform to the new religion.
What is next?????
May the holy wrath of God correct this injustice, even if faithful Catholics have to suffer to “restore all things to Christ.” Our Lady, who is the co-redeemer and channel of all graces, pray for us.