Co-Redemptrix

CO-REDEMPTRIX. - This is the technical term used by theologians to express Mary Most Holy's cooperation in the work of the redemption of the human race.

I. THE TERM AND THE REALITY

The term was used for the first time in the 14th century, in the Tractatus de praeservatione gloriatissimiae Virginis Mariae by an anonymous Minorite. Recently it has entered ecclesiastical usage, being found in certain decrees of the Holy Office (cf. AAS, 5 [1913], p. 364; 6 [1914], p. 108) and of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (cf. ASS, 41 [1908], p. 409).

The corredemption is remote or mediate if it is exhausted entirely in an act prior to the redemptive act (for example, giving flesh to the Word of God); it is instead proximate or immediate if it extends, in a secondary and subordinate manner, to the redemptive act itself, that is, to the sacrifice with which the Redeemer acquired his merits and his satisfactions, the price of our redemption, in such a way that the merits and satisfactions of Christ and of Mary constitute a single total principle of salvation: the condign merits and satisfactions of Christ ad simpliciter esse and the congruous merits and satisfactions of Mary (which draw their efficacy from those of Christ) ad melius esse redemptionis.

II. ERRORS AND OPINIONS

The early and recent Protestants deny any cooperation of the Most Holy Virgin in the work of the Redemption, and therefore reject the title of Coredemptrix. According to them Mary would have been nothing but a channel through which Jesus, our only Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5), passed in order to reach us (cf. Zöckler, Maria, in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, XII, pp. 309-36). All Catholics, on the other hand, admit a true cooperation; they divide only when it comes to determining whether such cooperation is remote or mediated (Lennerz, Goossens, Smith and a few others), or proximate or immediate (Bittremieux, Bover, De la Broise, Fritchoff, Lebon, Dillenschneider, Carol and many others).

III. THE ECCLESIASTICAL MAGISTERIUM

The Roman pontiffs, from Pius IX to Pius XII, have repeatedly taught, in a sufficiently clear manner, the immediate cooperation of Mary Most Holy in the Redemption. Thus, for example, Pius X, in the encyclical Ad diem illum of 2 February 1904 (ASS, 36 [1904], pp. 449-62), after recalling Mary's compassion at the Cross, asserts: "from this communion of sorrows and of will between Mary and Christ, she merited to become the most worthy repairer of the lost world and therefore the dispenser of all the divine graces acquired for us by Jesus through his death and his blood."

The Pontiff distinguishes immediate cooperation in the objective Redemption (that is: by her participation in the passion of Christ she merited to become the C.) from immediate cooperation in the subjective Redemption (and therefore she became the dispenser of all divine graces). And going further into detail he concludes: "Since Mary is superior to all in holiness and in her union with Christ, associated by Christ with the work of the Redemption, she merits for us, as it is usually said, de congruo what Christ has merited for us de condigno, and she is the first minister of the distribution of Grace."

Benedict XV, in the apostolic letter Inter sodalicia of 22 March 1918 (AAS, 19 [1918], pp. 181-84), asserts that the Blessed Virgin "not without a divine design was present at the crucifixion of the Son," that is to say, "she so suffered and almost died with her Son who suffered and died, she so abdicated her maternal rights over the Son for the salvation of men, and immolated the Son, as far as it pertained to her, to appease the justice of God, that it can rightly be said that she redeemed the human race with Christ." Here there is question of Mary's immediate cooperation in the objective Redemption, and the parts she had in it are brought into relief.

Pius XI, in a radio-broadcast prayer for the closing of the jubilee of the human redemption (28 April 1935), said: "O Mother of pity and mercy, who was present as compassion and C. beside your most sweet Son in the act in which he accomplished the Redemption of the human race..., preserve and continually increase in us, we beseech you, the precious fruits of the Redemption and of your compassion" (L'osserv. rom., 29-30 April 1935). Two things express here the immediate cooperation: Mary's co-redemptive compassion during the redeeming passion of the Son, and the immediate fruit both of Christ's redeeming passion and of Mary's co-redemption, that is, all the graces that are imparted to us.

IV. SACRED SCRIPTURE

The Protoevangelium (Gen. 3:15), according to the interpretation given by the dogmatic bull Ineffabilis Deus, expresses an indissoluble union of Mary with Christ in the Redemption, that is, in the struggle with the serpent and in the full victory over him (crushing of the head), by means of which the decree of death was canceled. This crushing of the head, or objective Redemption, was the common effect of Christ and of Mary; that is, it was brought about directly and simultaneously by Christ and by Mary (by Mary "together with Christ and through Christ"). This "full victory" means that Christ and Mary were not only never conquered by the serpent (the negative side of the victory), since both were set apart from sin and from its consequences, but were always the conquerors of the serpent (the positive side of the victory), that is, they brought about and continue to bring about together our Redemption, which consists not only in the distribution of graces but also in the acquisition of them.

This interpretation is confirmed by the well-known reading of the Vulgate in which the crushing of the serpent's head (that is, objective redemption) is attributed proximately to the woman alone, that is, to Mary (implying with Christ and through Christ): "Ipsa conteret caput tuum." Now, the Council of Trent declared the Vulgate authentic, because of the use made of it in the Church for so many centuries. By virtue of that declaration, the reading of the Vulgate must be accepted by all (cf. J. Vosté, De latina Bibliorum versione quae dicitur «Vulgata», Rome 1927, p. 27). It therefore has a decisive dogmatic (not scriptural) value. It seems, then, that an immediate cooperation of the Virgin in objective Redemption cannot be denied.

The corredemption, prophesied by God in the Protoevangelium immediately after the original sin, began to be fulfilled on the day of the Annunciation (Lk. 1:38 ff.). An angel, sent by God, presents himself to the Virgin and asks of her, on God's behalf, her consent to become the Mother of the Redeemer as such, since the Incarnation contained the Redemption within itself. Upon her consent depended, since God had so disposed, the very existence of the Redemption, since the Word became incarnate in order to redeem us. The Virgin, offering herself to the greatest of sorrows in order to give humanity the most ineffable of joys (the Redemption), freely gives her consent by pronouncing her fiat. With it, therefore, she cooperated in our redemption, and she cooperated in it in an immediate manner, since God willed that the Redemption, which was begun and was wrought virtually with the Incarnation, should depend upon it as regards its very existence (not as regards its essence). Without that consent the world would not have been redeemed.

That God furthermore willed that the redeeming Incarnation should depend upon Mary's free consent appears evident from the Gospel narrative itself. If God had not willed to make the redeeming Incarnation depend upon Mary's consent, to what purpose would he have had it asked of her? In this obvious sense, indeed, all Christian tradition has interpreted Luke's narrative (cf. G. Roschini, Mariologia, 2nd ed., II, pp. 292-295), of which the most authentic representative is St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3rd part, q. 30, a. 1, c. and ad 1).

V. TRADITION

Mary Most Holy's immediate cooperation in objective Redemption is expressed, first of all, in the Eve-Mary parallel. From St. Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian onward, the Blessed Virgin has been constantly presented to us by the Fathers, the Doctors, and ecclesiastical writers as the new Eve, the repairer of the first, in that same way in which St. Paul had presented Christ to us as the new Adam, the repairer of the first. That said, from Sacred Scripture (Gen. 3:1-13; Eccl. 25:33) it follows that Eve was the moral and direct cause of our ruin, since she induced Adam to consent to sin. The same must be said of Mary. She knew that the very destinies of humanity, that is, its salvation, had been bound by free divine disposition to her free consent. By giving this consent, therefore, she became an immediate cooperator, that is, the moral and direct cause of the Redemption of the world.

Certainly it is the merits and condign satisfactions of Christ that accomplished our Redemption and that are applied to us, since Mary's congruous merits and satisfactions draw all their corredemptive efficacy from the merits and condign satisfactions of Christ. With this, however, Mary's congruous merits and satisfactions are not excluded, and not indeed ad simpliciter esse but only ad melius esse of the Redemption, so that is, the plan of Redemption might be analogous to the plan of the transgression.

For this reason the Holy Fathers, the Doctors, and ecclesiastical writers, besides comparing Mary and Eve, immediately attribute to Eve our ruin with all its consequences, and to Mary our salvation, with all its effects: the appeasement of divine justice, our reconciliation with God, satisfaction for original sin, the merit of Grace, liberation from the slavery of the devil, the reopening of the gate of heaven (cf. Roschini, op. cit., pp. 304-309): this would not be explained without a proximate, immediate cooperation in the Redemption.

VI. THE ELABORATION OF REASON

The redemptive cooperation or causality of Christ (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 48) was in the manner of merit, of satisfaction, of sacrifice, of redemption and of efficiency. Mary cooperated in the Redemption: 1) in the manner of merit, since in her free consent to the redemptive Incarnation there are found all the conditions required for merit, namely charity, a good work freely performed, and divine preordination; 2) in the manner of satisfaction, since by her free submission, manifested by her consent, to a whole life of great sorrows, animated by the most ardent charity, she compensated, as far as was possible for her (that is, at least de congruo), for the pleasure that drove our first parents to rebel against God by sin; 3) in the manner of sacrifice, that is, in the sacrifice by which Christ, to reconcile us to God, merited and made satisfaction for the human race, inasmuch as she offered her Son, renouncing, from the very moment in which she acquired them, the maternal rights that she had over Him, for the Redemption of the world. By this, however, she did not merit to be called Priest in the proper and formal sense; 4) in the manner of redemption, since by the meritorious and satisfactory offering of the divine Victim, over whom she had, as has already been said, maternal rights, she participated in the payment of the price with which the human race has been redeemed. It was her free consent, in fact, that determined, by divine disposition, the very payment of the price for our Redemption; 5) in the manner of efficiency, since her participation in the Redemption, like its accomplishment by Christ, having been preordained by God for that purpose, could not remain without effect.

But besides the theological elaboration of the fact or reality of the immediate cooperation in the Redemption, reason, resting on Revelation, also resolves various difficulties raised against it.

To one who objects that, according to the perennial teaching of the Church, Christ alone has redeemed us, the answer is to distinguish between the principal Redemption, universal and sufficient in itself, and the secondary Redemption, dependent and insufficient in itself. The first, entirely proper to Christ, does not exclude the second, proper to Mary. Since the second depends on the first and draws its value from it, one can simply speak, as has in fact been done and is still done, of the first without speaking of the second. Moreover, if the uniqueness of the Redeemer were to be taken in the sense of excluding any immediate cooperation, it would follow that one would have to exclude not only immediate cooperation in objective Redemption, but also immediate cooperation in subjective Redemption, which is admitted by those very persons who propose the aforesaid objection.

To one who objects that the Madonna was herself also redeemed, and therefore could not be C. (since she would have been, at the same time, effect and cause), reason answers that Mary's cooperation was ordered to the Redemption of others, and not to her own Redemption. Christ, therefore, first redeemed Mary (who alone forms an order apart, superior to that in which all others are found) with an entirely special Redemption, that is, preservative (not liberative, as with the others), and then, together with Mary, redeemed all the others. Christ, in fact, was able to place the same redemptive act (without the need to admit two distinct acts of Redemption or two Redemptions) with a double intention and with a double effect, one of which concerned Mary alone, and the other, together with Mary's cooperation, the whole rest of the human race. Having been redeemed by Christ, with a priority of nature (or logic) before and in a manner different from all others, Mary was able, with simultaneity of time (that is, in the same instant of time), to cooperate with Christ in the Redemption of all the others. The Virgin therefore can rightly be hailed, in the strict sense, as C. of the human race, and for this she has merited, at all times, the ardent gratitude of all humanity.

Gabriele Roschini