c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A lay-led, worldwide movement urging Pope John Paul II to declare Mary, the mother of Jesus,”co-redemptrix”with a special role in the Roman Catholic understanding of salvation is gaining steam within the church and creating concern _ and in some instances, anger _ in Protestant and ecumenical communities.

It’s an issue that touches the most arcane reaches of theology and the deepest levels of popular Catholic piety. But it also has ramifications far beyond Catholicism.

The Vatican itself has sought to play down the issue; a Vatican commission recommended against it and a church spokesman said in September the subject is not under study. Yet the movement’s leader is confident the pope will act before the year 2000.

Mark L. Miravalle, a professor of Marian theology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, says he has met at least twice with the pontiff to urge Mary’s cause and, while refusing to make public those discussions, is confident of papal support.

If John Paul acts, Miravalle said, the new characterization of Mary’s role will not mean she will be promoted to the realm held by the Trinity _ God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit _ but she will be given a special place as mediatrix, a feminine rendering of mediator, closest to Christ.

Miravalle said pressures for the new dogma are building because of the turning of the millennium. John Paul, who has a special fondness for Mary, has declared the year 2000 a jubilee year to be marked by recalling Jesus’ role in the redemption of humanity from sin.”Without Mary’s cooperation with God in agreeing to the birth of Jesus, there would be no redemption,”Miravalle said.

Miravalle said his belief John Paul will act is buttressed by 4.5 million signatures on petitions sent to the pope from Catholics on six continents.

Petition signers include such prominent Catholics as the late Mother Teresa and Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York, as well as 500 bishops and 42 cardinals from around the globe and thousands of Catholic charismatics and members of parish rosary groups who give special devotion to Mary.

At the same time, the movement is causing concern in Protestant evangelical and ecumenical circles. Non-Catholic theologians have labeled the idea”heresy,”and”arrogant.” R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, said if the new dogma naming Mary co-redemptrix is adopted, it will cause a”theological conflagration”between Catholics and evangelicals.

Catholic ecumenists and specialists on Mary are also concerned.

The Rev. Frederick Jelly, a Dominican priest and Mariologist at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., has called for more study on the issue. Jelly, a founder of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said despite the grassroots movement there needs to be more”clarification of what people are talking about when they want to elevate Mary to a higher role.” The society is an organization of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians who consider Mary “first among the saints.” Efforts to theologically understand the role of Jesus’ mother stretch back more than 1,500 years.

In 431 A.D., the Council of Ephesus said she was the Mother of God. The Council of Constantinople declared her perpetual virginity in 681 and her Immaculate Conception _ free of sin at her birth _ came with the first infallible papal declaration in 1854 by Pius IX. Nearly a century later, Pius XII reported seeing an apparition of Mary in the clouds and declared her bodily assumption into heaven.

Miravalle insisted the new definition of Mary as co-redemptrix will not promote her to a full role of redeemer.

“The pope has twice called all Christians to be co-redeemers. By that very fact this cannot be making a statement about (the) trinity _ about divinity. It’s a statement for all to participate in the redemption. Mary uniquely cooperated in God’s work of salvation _ that’s the pope’s statement,”he said.”That’s what co-redemtrix denotes _ Mary’s unique cooperation under Jesus Christ in the work of salvation. The early fathers in using the expression _ the new Eve _ said Jesus Christ is the new Adam and that Mary is the new Eve, who cooperates with and under Jesus …. That’s what the church has meant and that’s what the pope has meant in his … usage in the title of co-redemptrix,”Miravalle added.”It does not make any reference to Trinitarian life.”

Miravalle brushed aside the Sept. 24 statement by papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who insisted the issue is not presently being studied by any Vatican congregation or commission.

Miravalle noted that on that same day, the pope said Christians “can invoke Mary with the titles of advocate, helper, benefactrix and recommend.” He said the pope’s statement was”a corrective _ from a Catholic perspective _ to not consider (Navarro-Valls’ statement) as authentic doctrinal teaching.” The Ecumenical Society’s Jelly acknowledged supporters of the new movement have a “very strong theological foundation” for defining Mary co-redemptrix.

However, he said, others, including himself,”have pointed out that there are some theological questions that have to be settled before it would be opportune to make them doctrines.”

Jelly said Catholic theologians are divided over Mary’s mediation. He said the proposed dogma calls for an understanding of Mary “as mediatrix of all graces”and”co-mediatrix,”which he said is”particularly a problem word because it’s like co-signers of a check, for example.” It puts Mary”on the same level as Christ,”he said, adding that even those who support the proposed dogmatic declaration”have no intention of doing that.” Jelly said he is concerned about what the response to a promulgation would be.”There are those of us who have recommended there be much further prayer and study regarding these things. It is not that we are opposed to them, per se, it’s because there are too many ambiguities.”

In addition, he said there are”many things about Mary we still don’t know. We don’t know whether Mary actually experienced death, for example. So we theologians still have a few things to fight over.”

The issue first came to public notice last June when L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, reported the Holy See had asked a commission of 23 Mariologists to look at the proposal. The group voted unanimously to advise against the promulgation.

The commission also warned the idea is contrary to Second Vatican Council teachings and would be a serious impediment to thawing ecumenical relations with other Christian groups. Ironically, the proposal comes at a time when there is an emerging appreciation of Mary among Protestants who previously avoided the kind of devotion to the mother of Jesus that runs deep in Catholicism.

The Rev. Donald Dawe, a Presbyterian theologian and past president of the ecumenical society dedicated to Mary, is a case in point. He said the idea of such a promulgation is “misleading and dangerous. It is a perilous impediment to the future of ecumenical dialogue.” The Rev. George G. Passias, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, was even stronger. He said embracing Mary as a co-redeemer”is a heresy in the simplest sense.”Imploring Mary to intercede with Jesus is one thing, he said, “but it is another thing to exalt her as the mediatrix between God and men.”

R. William Franklin, a member of the official Anglican-Roman Catholic theological dialogue, said any such declaration as that sought by Miravalle will be “another nail in the coffin of ecumenism.”

A papal proclamation, he said, would stress two points Anglicans and Protestants cannot accept: “The … de-emphasis of Jesus and the re-emphasis of the dogmatic authority of the pope.”

A frustrated Franklin said at times he doesn’t think the Catholic church “gives a damn. It’s an arrogance which stems from the mystical Marian devotion of the current pope.”

END BRIGGS