CORREDENTRICE. – This is the technical term used by theologians to express the cooperation of Most Holy Mary in the work of the redemption of the human race.
SUMMARY:
I. The term and the reality
II. Errors and opinions
III. The ecclesiastical magisterium
IV. Sacred Scripture
V. Tradition
VI. The elaboration of reason.I. THE TERM AND THE REALITY
The term was first used in the fourteenth century, in the Tractatus de praeservatione gloriatissimiae Virginis Mariae by an anonymous Minorite. More recently, it has entered ecclesiastical usage, appearing 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).Co-redemption is remote or mediate if it is wholly exhausted in an act preceding the redemptive act (e.g., by 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 by which the Redeemer acquired his merits and satisfactions, the price of our redemption, so that the merits and satisfactions of Christ and Mary constitute one single total principle of salvation: the condign merits and satisfactions of Christ ad simpliciter esse and the congruous merits and satisfactions of Mary (which derive their efficacy from those of Christ) ad melius esse redemptionis.
II. ERRORS AND OPINIONS
Ancient and modern Protestants deny any cooperation of the Most Holy Virgin in the work of the Redemption and therefore reject the title of C. According to them, Mary would have been nothing more than a channel through which Jesus, our only Mediator (I Tim. 2, 5), passed in order to reach us (cf. Zöckler, Maria, in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, XII, pp. 309–36). Catholics, on the other hand, all admit a real cooperation; they differ only when it comes to determining whether this 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
From Pius IX to Pius XII, the Roman Pontiffs repeatedly taught, with sufficient clarity, the immediate cooperation of the Blessed Virgin Mary 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, states: “from this communion of sufferings and wills 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 objective Redemption (that is: through her participation in Christ’s Passion she merited to become Co-redemptrix) from immediate cooperation in subjective Redemption (and therefore she became the dispenser of all divine graces). Descending to greater detail, he concludes: “Since Mary surpasses all in holiness and in her union with Christ, having been associated by Christ with the work of Redemption, she merits for us, as the saying goes, de congruo that which Christ merited for us de condigno, and she is the foremost minister in the distribution of Grace.”
Benedetto XV, in the apostolic letter Inter sodalicia of 22 March 1918 (AAS, 19 [1918], pp. 181-84), states that the Blessed Virgin “was present at the crucifixion of her Son not without a divine design,” that is, “she so suffered and almost died with her Son who suffered and died, so renounced her maternal rights over her Son for the salvation of men, and, insofar as pertained to her, offered up her Son to appease the justice of God, that it may rightly be said that she redeemed the human race with Christ.” Here there is reference to Mary’s immediate cooperation in objective Redemption, and the role that She played in it is emphasized.
Pius XI, in a radio address for the closing of the jubilee of human redemption (28 April 1935), said: “O Mother of pity and mercy, who wast present as a compassionate participant and Co-redemptrix beside thy most sweet Son at the moment when he accomplished the Redemption of the human race..., preserve and continually increase in us, we beseech thee, the precious fruits of the Redemption and of thy compassion” (L'osserv. rom., 29-30 Apr. 1935). Two things here express immediate cooperation: Mary’s co-redemptive compassion during the redemptive Passion of her Son, and the immediate fruit both of Christ’s redemptive Passion and of Mary’s co-redemption, namely, all the graces imparted to us.
IV. HOLY SCRIPTURE — The Proto-Gospel (Gen. 3:15), according to the interpretation given by the dogmatic bull Ineffabilis Deus, expresses an indissoluble union of Maria with Christ in the Redemption, that is, in the struggle with the serpent and in the complete victory over him (the crushing of his head), through which the decree of death was annulled. This crushing of the head, or objective Redemption, was the common effect of Christ and Maria; that is, it was accomplished directly and simultaneously by Christ and Maria (by Maria “together with Christ and through Christ”). This “complete victory” means that Christ and Maria were not only never overcome by the serpent (the negative aspect of the victory), since both were exempted from sin and its consequences, but were always conquerors of the serpent (the positive aspect of the victory), that is, they together wrought and continue to work our Redemption, consisting not only in the distribution of graces but also in their acquisition.
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 Maria (with Christ and through Christ being understood): «Ipsa contetet 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 this declaration, the reading of the Vulgate must be admitted by all (cf. J. Vosté, De latina Bibliorum versione quae dicitur «Vulgata», Roma 1927, p. 27). It therefore possesses a decisive dogmatic value (though not a scriptural one). It thus seems impossible to deny the Virgin an immediate cooperation in objective Redemption.
The corredemption prophesied by God in the Proto-Gospel immediately after original sin began to be fulfilled on the day of the Annunciation (Lc. 1:38 ff.). An angel, sent by God, appeared to the Virgin and asked her, on God’s behalf, to consent to becoming the Mother of the Redeemer as such, since the Incarnation contained Redemption within itself. Her consent was necessary, since God had so ordained it, for the very existence of Redemption, since the Word became incarnate in order to redeem. The Virgin, offering herself to the greatest of sorrows in order to give humanity the most ineffable of joys (Redemption), freely gave her consent by pronouncing her fiat. Through it, therefore, she cooperated in our redemption, and she cooperated in it immediately, since God willed that upon it should depend, with regard to its very existence (not its essence), the Redemption that was initiated and virtually accomplished through the Incarnation. Without that consent, the world would not have been redeemed.
That God, moreover, willed the redemptive Incarnation to depend upon Maria’s free consent is evident from the Gospel narrative itself. For if God had not wished to make the redemptive Incarnation depend upon Maria’s consent, for what purpose would he have had it requested of her? It is in fact in this obvious sense that the whole of Christian tradition has interpreted Luke’s narrative (cf. G. Roschini, Mariologia, 2ª ed., II, pp. 292-295), whose most authentic representative is s. Tommaso (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 30, a. 1, c. e ad 1).
V. LA TRADIZIONE
The immediate cooperation of Mary Most Holy in the objective Redemption is expressed,first of all, in the Eve–Mary parallel. From the time of St. Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, the Blessed Virgin has been constantly presented by the Fathers, Doctors, and ecclesiastical writers as the new Eve, repairer of the first, in the same way in which St. Paul had presented Christ as the new Adam, repairer of the first. This being established, it follows from Sacred Scripture (Gen. 3:1–13; Eccl., 25:33) 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, by free divine disposition, the very destiny of humanity—namely, its salvation—had been linked to her free consent. By giving this consent, therefore, she became an immediate cooperator, that is, the moral and direct cause of the world’s Redemption.
Certainly, it is Christ’s condign merits and satisfactions that effected our Redemption and are applied to us, since Mary’s congruous merits and satisfactions derive all their co-redemptive efficacy from Christ’s condign merits and satisfactions. This, however, does not exclude Mary’s congruous merits and satisfactions—not ad simpliciter esse, but only ad melius esse of the Redemption—that is, so that the plan of the Redemption might be analogous to the plan of the transgression.
For this reason, the Holy Fathers, Doctors, and ecclesiastical writers, besides comparing Mary and Eve, immediately attribute our ruin, with all its consequences, to Eve, and our salvation, with all its effects, to Mary: the placation of divine justice, our reconciliation with God, satisfaction for original sin, the merit of grace, liberation from the slavery of the devil, and the reopening of the gate of heaven (cf. Roschini, op. cit., pp. 304–309). This could 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) took the form of merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption, and efficacy. Mary cooperated in the Redemption: 1) by way of merit, since in her free consent to the redemptive Incarnation all the conditions required for merit are found, namely, charity, a good work freely accomplished, and divine preordination; 2) by way of satisfaction, since through her free submission, manifested in her consent, to an entire life of great sorrows, animated by the most ardent charity, she compensated, insofar as was possible for her (that is, at least de congruo), for the pleasure that impelled our first parents to rebel against God through sin; 3) by way of sacrifice, that is, through the sacrifice by which Christ, in order to reconcile us to God, merited and made satisfaction for the human race, insofar as she offered her Son, renouncing, from the very moment in which she acquired them, the maternal rights that she possessed over Him, for the Redemption of the world. This, however, did not merit for her the title of Priest in the proper and formal sense; 4) by way of redemption, since through 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 by which the human race was redeemed. Indeed, it was her free consent that, by divine disposition, determined the very payment of the price for our Redemption; 5) by way of efficacy, since her participation in the Redemption, like its accomplishment by Christ, having been preordained by God for this purpose, could not remain without effect.But besides the theological elaboration of the fact or reality of immediate cooperation in the Redemption, reason, basing itself on Revelation, also resolves various difficulties raised against II.
To the objection that, according to the perennial teaching of the Church, Christ alone redeemed us, the response is made by distinguishing between the principal, universal Redemption, sufficient in itself, and the secondary, dependent Redemption, insufficient in itself. The former, entirely proper to Christ, does not exclude the latter, proper to Mary. Since the latter depends on and derives its value from the former, one may simply speak, as in fact one has done and continues to do, of the former without speaking of the latter. Moreover, if the uniqueness of the Redeemer were to be understood as excluding any immediate cooperation, it would follow that not only immediate cooperation in objective Redemption would have to be excluded, but also immediate cooperation in subjective Redemption, which is admitted by those same people who advance the objection in question.
To the objection that the Madonna Herself was redeemed and therefore could not be C. (since she would at the same time have been effect and cause), reason responds that Mary’s cooperation was ordered to the Redemption of others, and not to her own Redemption. Christ, therefore, first redeemed Mary (who by herself constitutes an order apart, superior to that in which all the others are found) through an entirely special Redemption, namely, preservative Redemption (not liberative, as in the case of the others), and then, together with Mary, redeemed all the others. Indeed, Christ could perform the same redemptive act (without the need to admit two distinct acts of Redemption or two Redemptions) with a twofold intention and a twofold effect, one of which concerned Mary alone, and the other, together with Mary’s cooperation, the whole remainder of the human race. Having been redeemed by Christ with priority in nature (or logically), before all the others and in a different manner from them, Mary could, with simultaneity in time (that is, at the same instant of time), cooperate with Christ in the Redemption of all the others. The Virgin may therefore rightly be saluted, in the strict sense, as C. of the human race, and for this reason she has at all times deserved the ardent gratitude of all humanity.
