Two crucial problems with the DDF document deserve to be emphasized.
The first is the document’s woefully impoverished understanding of the current theology of why Mary is Co-redemptrix. This problem is most clearly shown in footnote 32, which describes three positions, all of which rely entirely on Mary’s cooperation with Christ and on her merits.
In the maximalist view, held by St. Maximilian Kolbe, Mary becomes Co-redemptrix ontologically at the Immaculate Conception, prior to any action or merit of Mary’s, when she is made spouse of the Holy Ghost, when the Holy Ghost, who is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception, is united quasi-hypostatically with Mary. This is the language that Kolbe uses. As such, she is Co-redemptrix entirely independently of any of her merits, thus making the document’s subsequent distinction between meriting de congruo and de condigno, on this view, not germane.
The second problem relates to the theology of grace—whether grace can be mediated at all through an instrumental cause. This is an unresolved theological dispute. Grace is always bestowed by God as its source and origin, its principal agent and efficient cause. So argues paragraph 53 of the document, citing, in footnote 135, Summa theologiae I-IIae, Q. 112, a. 1.
However, nothing in the Summa precludes the operation of instrumental causes. St. Thomas explains instrumental causality this way, in Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, ch. 70, p. 8, where he writes: “It is also apparent that the same effect is not attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural agent; rather, it is wholly done by both, according to a different way, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to the instrument and also wholly to the principal agent.”
Interestingly, paragraph 65 of the document claims that we should not apply “perfective instrumentality” to Mary and cites St. Thomas to defend this view. It develops the idea that we can receive grace only directly from God, and that Mary is a dispositive cause, not an instrumental cause, of grace; that is, that she merely prepares us or disposes us to receive grace.
Now, the idea that all “mediation” of graces is to be undersood as occurring through dispositive causality instead of instrumental causality is an idea first developed by Alexander of Hales, taken up in the early works of St. Thomas, and then revived by Melchior Cano, Franzelin, and, in a modified form, by Louis Billot. Yet by the time he writes the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas has abandoned dispositive causality altogether, and he holds that instrumental causes (the sacraments) do really confer grace, even though God is always the principal agent. In fact, most Thomists, from Cajetan to Garrigou-Lagrange, agree with St. Thomas’s later position on the operation of instrumental causes, which is clear from any straightforward reading of Summa theologiae III, Q. 62.
Consequently, the comment in footnote 164 of the document is very strange, not to say ill-informed, claiming that “the arguments that Saint Thomas Aquinas used to explain why only God, and no creature, can confer grace cannot be considered superseded, either within his own work or subsequently.” In other words, “don’t listen to the mature St. Thomas. Don’t listen to Cajetan or Garrigou-Lagrange or any of the great Thomist interpreters of St. Thomas. Stick with St. Thomas’s juvenile position.”
Is the DDF claiming to settle dogmatically through this footnote the theological dispute about how grace is conferred by the sacraments in favor of the view held by Melchior Cano, Franzelin, and Louis Billot? That would be a very curious thing to do in a footnote. But then again, footnotes have played a rather outsized part in documents from the past decade or so…
Footnote 169 uses St. Thomas, again, to support the idea that Mary cannot be an instrumental cause of grace, because any instrumental cause “contributes” something of its own. However, it quotes a passage that is not germane to the matter at hand, about actions proper and connatural to an instrument with regard to the creation of the universe, rather than to the mediation of grace.
Paragraph 69 is simply bizarre. It limits Mary’s intercessory prayers to the obtaining of actual graces and not to sanctifying grace. The reason why the Church teaches this distinction with respect to intercessory prayer is to point out that, while God directly gives actual graces, ordinarily God gives sanctifying grace through the sacraments (baptism and penance). In other words, the whole point of limiting intercessory prayer to actual grace is to highlight the centrality of the sacraments. The document, however, makes no mention of the sacraments. Instead, the document speaks of sanctifying grace as immediately and directly caused by God Himself. In this context, the limiting of intercessory prayer to actual graces makes no sense, since one can as easily beg God for the one as for the other.
To conclude, then, the more widespread theological opinion is that God has ordained that the sacraments truly mediate graces through instrumental causality. It is in the very same way that God has ordained that Mary, as the Mother of the Church, should be the Mediatrix of All Graces.
We can say truly that Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces without any confusion about whether or not God is the principal agent, efficient cause, source and origin of all grace. Of course He is. To claim that Mary’s dispensing of grace somehow detracts from Jesus Christ as sole Mediator between God and man would entail the claim that the power of the sacraments to dispense grace also detracts from Our Lord’s unique mediation. This has been asserted by Protestants but it is disturbing to find such an insinuation in a Vatican document.
May God bring good out of evil by inspiring theologians to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of Mary as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces, in order to understand more fully in what sense and how she comes to receive this role.
We should note that even as late as 1570, Pope St. Pius V issued a bull called Super Speculam that forbade priests from discussing the Immaculate Conception in sermons or writing about it in the vernacular, even though the Immaculate Conception was accepted by many saints, theologians, popes, and even by Pope Pius V himself, and a feast was already attached to it. This was because there were two senses in which the immaculate nature of Mary was understood, and it was still to be left to later theologians to clarify the matter. (The bull can be found in Latin on page 874 of this volume of the Bullarium Romanum.)
Again, under the papacy of Innocent X in 1647, the Holy Office decreed, without papal approval, that “it is not permitted to attribute the title of ‘Immaculate’ to the Conception of the Blessed Virgin; one must say the Conception of the Immaculate Mary.” This is an example where, on a disciplinary matter (of how the doctrine should be presented), the Holy Office can err by omission. The term “Conception of the Immaculate Mary” is true but radically insufficient. It was a formulation of the concept as held by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure, in which Our Lady is made immaculate in the womb sometime after her conception.
So, take courage. Our Lady will triumph, and the full truth about her cooperation with her Son in the redemption will shine forth in its radiance.
