This is so silly; just jaws flapping in the wind.
Why worry about who’s a “redeemer” when the whole idea of redemption is an advertising angle: How do you sell a religion unless it’s good for something?
“What can our new religion “Christianity” be good for?”
“How about, uh, telling people they”ll live forever either in a good place or a bad place depending on whether they accept and donate to our religion?”
“Say, that might just work!”

“just jaws flapping in the wind”
Like most of what you say, I’m sure.

This is indeed a curious thing. In many ways it would re-open the work begun at the Council of Nicea and succeeding Councils. It is akin to opening up the Canon itself. For anyone outside of Christianity this is a lot of wind but nothing is moving – or to take the Pentecost metaphor a bit further – a lot of flame but not much heat (see also: burning bushes, Moses, Exodus). You get my point.
I am not a huge fan of this entire line of thought (no surprise to anyone who has read anything I have written here). However I do ponder with some amusement the consequences. First, it would mean that the Roman Catholics, who at one time seemed to be forming a cultural bloc with the Protestant evangelical conservatives (mostly American), would find themselves standing alone. That is except for one other group that may declare themselves kindred spirits (of a sort), the New Age, priestess/Goddess movement.
I am constantly awed by the kaleidoscope that is religion, even in this secular cynical age. Gee, it’s fun to watch!

“Like most of what you say, I’m sure.”
Very scholarly comeback, Nate.

But seriously, Nate, as a near neighbor of the RCC what would your bunch think if they did that? What do you see as the odds they would do that in the next decade or two?
I think j brings up interesting points in his post.

The Orthodox don’t use the “co-redemptrix” language to talk about Mary, but we’ve always had a very high view of Mary’s role in saving the world. Simply put, Christ couldn’t save the world unless Mary let him, because the incarnation depended on her freely committing herself to the work of forming God’s body. Of course, for the Orthodox, all people are supposed to be “co-redeemers” with Christ, combining their own struggles for personal and universal redemption with Christ’s work to create a kind of “synergy” between divinity and humanity. Mary is really the prototypical example of the kind of cooperation with God to which all are called: we are all called to synergize our wills with God’s will and thereby become unique, irreplaceable, and infinitely valuable agents in the world’s deification.
While some might raise a fuss over the specifics of the Catholic language about Mary, in spirit, the Orthodox aren’t nearly as different as either or them are from most Protestants, and I wouldn’t think that officially proclaiming Mary co-redemptrix would create any serious new tensions between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

St Mary at Fatima supposedly said something about she being a coredemptrix.
There’s one part of this dogma that seems unclear to me. We know that God could give graces to people in the world before the incarnation of Jesus, because it is impossible to do any good without God’s grace and there were people who did good before the incarnation of Jesus. However, Mary has not existed for eternity, but was created as any other human being within a specific timeframe, before which she didn’t exist. How is it said then that she is the mediatrix of all grace?… is it meant that God’s grace, which he formerly gave without Mary, has Mary as its mediatrix now?
I don’t think this should pose a critical problem to the ecumenical dialogue. I don’t say this because I don’t think it wouldn’t be divisive for the churches, but because unless the dialogue will progress to the point where it addresses and attempts to solve those divisive differences (as opposed to simply focusing on what we have in common) it can’t ever be successful in achieving full communion.
If the dialogue tries to achieve full communion by suppressing those doctrinal differences, it will simply never be successful.
God Bless,

DM: “it is impossible to do any good without God’s grace”
It’s tempting to let that by since it’s in the middle of a theological speculation but it’s too strong a wrong statement to let stand.
First of course there’s the whole question of the existence of a god, any god, let alone your particular god. There’s no proof any of them exist, yours in particular (whichever one it is) is a mere wisp of a hypothesis and one shouldn’t base the existence of good in the world on a wisp of a hypothesis.
Second is the common sense observation that lots of people do good things, perhaps everyone does the odd good thing. There are lots of reasons for doing them, many based on reciprocation, many because we feel better having done a good thing (there must be fascinating discussions on how evolution led to that).
As is true of so very many things, no god is necessary.

“Second is the common sense observation that lots of people do good things, perhaps everyone does the odd good thing.”
That kind of misses the point, though, nnmns. Classical Christian claims about goodness being a product of God’s grace aren’t about whether or not the person displaying goodness believes in God or does good things for God’s sake; some liberal Englightenment political theorists, like John Locke, made that claim, but it’s not the same as the older, more theological idea of all goodness coming from God. At heart, the classical idea is about ontology, not psychology or ethics. The question is not, “What was the motivation for this person to do this act?” but “What is the ground of being of the goodness of the act that was performed?” And the answer is that everything that is good is good because it participates in the Being-Goodness of God by grace. An atheist can do good acts that participate in God’s goodness because they too are created by God in God’s image and are the recipients of God’s grace, even if they do not recognize it. Atheists can have what many of the Church Fathers called “logoi spermatikoi,” seeds of the Logos-Christ, active within them and leading them to do good, seek truth, and appreciate beauty. They can even become what Karl Rahner called “anonymous Christians,” people who share in salvation despite the fact that they dwell outside the visible church or have even rejected the church and the gospel it preaches.

“As is true of so very many things, no god is necessary.”
How would someone know this to be true unless one could quantifiably isolate the source of grace? Where does it come from? Is there a ‘grace’ gene or a character gene (we’ve yet to isolate the ‘God’ gene or the ‘gay’ gene)? Because someone doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean God could or would not choose to bestow His (or Her) grace upon that person. Until this is scientifically verified (you chose to go there) then your synopsis is merely a ‘wisp of a hypothesis’ as you so eloquently put it.

Nate,
I truly do not mean this as a “shot” at you. But one of my complaints with Christian Classicists is that they tend to over think these things. To much effort goes into working through the various hypotheses and hypotheticals. I read nnmns’ question as one of genuine interest.
First we need to define “good”. What is the definition for a pragmatist is not the same as for a moralist is not the same for a Christian. Pragmatist – that which benefits the largest number of people. Moralist – that which meets an independent ethical standard. Christian that which comes from God/Christ/ Spirit (trinitarian thinking) or simply that which comes from God. It is not fair or appropriate to believe that what is true for one perspective is equally true for another. There are problems with each of these.
But none of this has to o with co-redemption. Elevating Mary will, in the eyes of Joe and Josephine Pewsitter (distant cousins to the Alaskan “Plumbers”) set the RCC apart and make them even more distinctive and different. In that we have finally healed rifts centuries old and recognized the RCC folks not to be threats (I recall this well from my per-1960 & ’64 childhood), I think this choice of theoretical theology might rip open those same rifts for little purpose. Perhaps that is why b16 has been slower to make these pronouncements than was jp2.

“Classical Christian claims about goodness being a product of God’s grace aren’t about whether or not the person displaying goodness believes in God or does good things for God’s sake”
No, they are about grabbing all the glory for their side. Actually all goodness is due to tiny splashes of sauce from the flying spaghetti monster. You may not believe that but your chances of disproving it are exactly the same as my chances of disproving your claim.
In other words they are both pretty silly.

“How would someone know this to be true unless one could quantifiably isolate the source of grace?”
Should have made myself clearer. No “grace” is necessary. Possibly even no sauce (see above). There are simpler explanations than some highly unlikely god spattering us with “grace”, whatever that is. So I point out that no god is necessary, and no grace.

“I read nnmns’ question as one of genuine interest.”
It seems like you read wrong. As usual, it looks like he’s just trying to find another excuse to make silly accusations against Christian thinkers and mock Christian theology.
But I don’t see how you can “overthink” these things, anyway, at least not any more than we typically “overthink” science or history or art or politics. Perhaps some people are content stifling their reason and imagination, but for other people, the lived experience of life and beauty and wonderment prompts reflection, reflection that more often than not only deepens and enriches the experience. I suspect that most of those who think that classical theology is “overthinking” the faith simply haven’t yet learned how to differentiate between devotional meditation and cold reason. Theology isn’t about cold reason reason but about our passionate response to an experience that demands the full devotion of all our faculties, including the faculty of rational thought.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say that it’s “not fair or appropriate to believe that what is true for one perspective is equally true for another.” I’m not suggesting that what is true from one perspective is true for all other perspectives. All I was doing was offering a classical perspective on the ontology of “goodness,” one that definitely makes certain assumptions about what is good and what is not good, but one that doesn’t exclude anyone from the possibility of participating in goodness knowingly or unknowingly. Again, the question/claim here is an ontological one, not a behavioral/motivational one; it’s first and foremost about existence. Classical (pre-Christian) metaphysics says that if the One is identical to the transcendentals of being/truth/goodness/beauty (and Christians would add love), then all real instances of being/truth/goodness/beauty are such only by ontological participation in the One.

“it looks like he’s just trying to find another excuse to make silly accusations against Christian thinkers and mock Christian theology.”
Calling them silly doesn’t make them silly and a lot of Christian theology is eminently mockable.
j was correct in classifying various kinds of “good”. And to implicitly claim there’s only one kind and it comes from a hypothetical deity is to imply there probably is no good. But there is; it’s all around us, as is bad.
Oh, and we can also have “life and beauty and wonderment” without a god, too. Once again, no god is needed.
“Again, the question/claim here is an ontological one, not a behavioral/motivational one”
That is apparently your question/claim. You have a habit of defining the argument into where you imagine your strength lies. In fact the question is about the various meanings of “good” and the attempt to hijack it for Christianity’s imagined god alone.

“j was correct in classifying various kinds of “good”. And to implicitly claim there’s only one kind and it comes from a hypothetical deity is to imply there probably is no good.”
First of all, nowhere did I say that there was only one sort of good. There are all kinds of “goods” in the world that resemble each other to varying degrees. But of course, since the issue at hand was about the kind of “good” that Christian theology typically says comes by grace, that’s not meant to be inclusive of all things to which somebody somewhere attaches the word “good.” Like I said before, I’m talking about “good” as a transcendental. Other kinds of “goods” can be dealt with on their own terms, but they may or may not be directly relevant to a discussion about God’s grace.
Second, I have no clue how saying that goodness comes from a metaphysical source somehow undermines the idea of good. That, quite frankly, makes no sense.
“Oh, and we can also have “life and beauty and wonderment” without a god, too. Once again, no god is needed.”
You can certainly have that without believing in God, no doubt. I never said otherwise. But whether in a theistic worldview they can truly be present unless by God’s grace is a whole different question.
“That is apparently your question/claim. You have a habit of defining the argument into where you imagine your strength lies.”
If I recall correctly, the original claim was about all goodness coming by God’s grace. The statement was made from an explicitly Christian (specifically Catholic) standpoint. You responded by challenging the statement. I corrected you by saying you likely misread the intent of the statement. That’s what the argument was about: the meaning of the Christian claim that all goodness comes from God’s grace. In the classical Christian context, the context out of which the claim was most likely being made (since it was, after all, about Mary being a mediatrix of grace), that idea is predominanly ontological; it’s not about whether or not a person believes in God and is doing something good for God’s sake. You’re the one who is bringing in considerations that are extraneous to the original passing claim and shifting the discussion away from what the other poster was talking about.
“In fact the question is about the various meanings of “good” and the attempt to hijack it for Christianity’s imagined god alone.”
Again, the question never was about various meanings of “good.” Go back and read the post. The question was clearly, explicitly, about Mary being mediatrix of grace.
Furthermore, I have no idea how trying to offer an ontological explanation of something is trying to “hijack” it. Does a scientist “hijack” something when they offer a biological or chemical or physical explanation for some phenomenon? Does a psychologist or sociologist “hijack” human behavior when they offer explanations of how people behave individually and socially? According to you, Christians must not be able to say things like “God created the whole world,” because that would an attempt to “hijack” the world for God, right?
The idea’s downright silly. The purpose needn’t be about “hijacking” goodness for God (whatever on earth that actually means) but about offering an explanation of the ontological source of goodness (which is a pre-Christian philosophical endeavor). It’s a way of recognizing the presence of true goodness throughout the whole world, outside the boundaries of the visible church. I’m sorry if it offends you that I believe in God and that God created you as well as me, and your being (which is truth and goodness and beauty) comes from God just as much as mine does, but I can’t see how it’s any different from your believe that God didn’t create either you or me and that neither of our goodness comes from God. You, as an atheist, are guilty of “hijacking” goodness to no smaller degree than I am.

Is Mary the `Coredemptrix’ of Humanity?
No!

Nate, the context is why I said I was tempted to let it go. But taken at face value it’s a bold claim about goodness, implicitly all goodness. So I responded. And there we are.

It is indeed a claim about all goodness insofar as that goodness is understood as an objective moral/aesthetic/ontological value inherent in a thing or act, but not necessarily goodness in other senses (e.g., consumer “goods,” a scheme that is “good” because it effectively accomplishes a goal, a child that has “good” behavior, “good” health, and other non-univocal uses of the term). Yes, it contains presuppositions about what moral goodness is, and what kinds of things and acts can rightly be called good, just like everyone has their assumptions about that. The only claim that’s any different from anyone else’s moral claims is that here the goodness is said to be present in a thing or act judged good because because that thing or act participates in God, who is Goodness itself. Why that’s even remotely controversial is beyond me. Do you honestly expect a Christian, or anyone else who believes in a God who is Creator of all, to say that anything exists that doesn’t come from God and share in God’s power to be? It’s as if you’re asking us Christians to stop believing that God creates the atheists too, and to stop believing that atheists continually depend on God for their being the same as everyone else, just because an atheist can say, “Look, I don’t believe in God, and I still exist, so you don’t need God to exist!” Sorry, but that argument wouldn’t prove that existence doesn’t depend on God; likewise, you can’t show that goodness isn’t rooted in God just by showing that goodness still exists in people who don’t believe in God.
But again, how any of this amounts of “hijacking” goodness any more than any other type of explanation for morality and goodness, whether scientific of psychological or philosophical, is totally beyond me. I’m afraid you’re going to have to be 1,000 times clearer if want me to understand what’s so controversial about Christians believing that God is the Creator and source of goodness.

The only claim that’s any different from anyone else’s moral claims is that here the goodness is said to be present in a thing or act judged good because because that thing or act participates in God, who is Goodness itself. Why that’s even remotely controversial is beyond me.

The point is, to a person reading that the claim is made that all goodness comes from “God”. To a lot of us that’s an outrageous claim. Had it been “according to the Bible all goodness comes from God” or such I’d have no problem with the truth of the statement. As it stands, I do. It’s not just Christians all locked into their beliefs who read this stuff, I hope, and I may point out when extravagant claims about Christianity or any other religion are made.
If I said “all goodness comes from atheists” or “all goodness comes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster” as a serious claim I think you’d be among those jumping on me. Those claims would be no less extravagant than the one made earlier.

I am Roman Catholic but I think “Coredemptrix” is not as good a description as “Theotokos”: birth giver to God or Mother of God.
She is the Mother of Jesus, but if you read in the Gospel of John, at the Wedding at Cana she gave birth to the ministry of Jesus in a direct but subtle way.
She told the waiter “Do whatever he tells you” implying that Jesus will now start even though He was resisting to start his ministry and miracle working. She gave birth to the this.

Since the other guy was quite obviously asking a question about Catholic theology, I think it would have been pretty clear that he was making a claim out of a Catholic perspective. Quite frankly, a person shouldn’t have to prefix every claim with “According to such and such…” just to avoid annoying someone else, especially when it’s already clear which perspective they’re speaking out of.
And yes, if you said that goodness comes either from atheists or from the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I’d probably roll my eyes, and I made make an objection. But both of those statements are different my claim by leaps and bounds. For one, as I already made clear a few times now, no one ever said that all goodness comes from Christians, from the Church, or anything like that. Saying “All goodness comes from the transcendent source of everything that exists” is different by far from saying that all goodness comes from some group of people, whether those people are atheists or Christians or whoever. It’s also different from saying that all goodness comes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster because the FSM is a piece of satire, not the end result of philosophical inquiry. The ancient Greeks and the Jews and Christians and Muslims who took up where they left off, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Toaists–we all have “metaphysical” and “supernatural” beliefs that, historically speaking, are NOT just “made up” by someone. They’re the results of serious attempts to explain the world, attempts which may be right or wrong, but serious and rationally critical ones nonetheless, attempts that lay at the very foundations of Western an Eastern cultures. Despite what a few disgruntled atheists hope, a piece of satire like the Flying Spaghetti Monster simply does not function as an equivalent to anything in any of the major religious-philosophical traditions. Frankly, only those who are profoundly, mockably ignorant of the richness of the world’s intellectual traditions could make that kind of assertion.

Nate,
I get the feeling you have recently finished a raft of papers. Your posts are long and a bit intense. There is no need to be dismissive, demeaning, or simply nasty. As I wrote a while ago – assertive is not the same as aggressive. Your aggression overshadows your assertions.
Certainly he FSM is a parody of things religious. The discussion about “good” is not about a thing, so FSM does not apply. However the discussion about Mary is about a thing – person. I wonder about the redeeming part of this whole discussion. I understand the redemptive acts of Jesus. But what were Mary’s? Other than being Jesus’ mother, goading him (in a motherly way) to getting his ministry started (Cana), and being present at the crucifixion and maybe (which Gospel is the most authoritative – for another discussion) at the resurrection, what did she do? It is all well and good to honor her distinctive role, but there seems to be something more here, hidden, or at last not obvious.

“the FSM is a piece of satire, not the end result of philosophical inquiry”
Your particular god is not the result of “philosophical inquiry” in a logical sense, it’s the result of centuries of first writing religious tracts by men of unknown motivation followed by intentional and unintentional edits of those and choosing which to include and no doubt still more intentional and unintentional edits, followed by men and later also women reading it through their own eyes and brains, influenced by their lives, followed by their influence on your ancestors and your teachers’ ancestors followed by their influence on you as mediated by your genetics and experiences.
In short, your particular god is the result of a very long and involved random process, as is everyone else’s. As is my view of the world which doesn’t happen to include a god. It will simplify a lot of peoples’ lives when you come to realize your god isn’t the result of some exalted philosophical process but more nearly of a down and dirty random process like everyone else’s.
And if you’re not ready to accept that revealed wisdom just remember a lot of different religions did go through processes more or less as exalted as your religion’s process and came out with quite different conclusions than yours.

nnmns,
I have no idea why you always insist on reading everything I write in the worst possible light, as if you’re less interested in understanding what I’m trying to say than you are in trying to pick a fight so you’ll get yet another chance to make a jab at I believe (or at least what you think I believe). Nowhere–nowhere!–did I say that my religion is the product of some “exalted philosophical process” as opposed to everyone else’s set of beliefs. If I recall correctly–and looking back at my previous post, it seems that I do recall correctly–I placed beliefs right alongside pre-Christian Greek thought, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and so forth. Yes, there is some “down and dirty” randomness in the development of Christianity, as in the development of every religion, every philosophy, every science, every tradition of thought; and your insinuation that I wouldn’t already be aware of that insulting both to me and to every university with a program in theology or religious studies or philosophy of religion. To be concise again: Duh! we all know this! Quit assuming we religious people are stupid and have to be reminded by you of how silly our beliefs are.
And to jestrfyl:
My goal is not to be nasty, but after a while it gets quite irritating when you’re constantly surrounded by people who assume your beliefs are mockable before they learn what those beliefs are, who assume you’re too naive and unintelligent to know the most basic facts about the religion you’ve committed your whole life and career to researching, and who never tire to make it known that they thing you’re spending a dozen or more years of life going to school for is a complete waste of time. I’m not agressive, I’m defensive, because I’ve learned to be from being around people who find no small amount of pleasure in insulting me, my friends and colleagues, and what I do. A person can only be on the receiving end of mockery for so long before they can’t take it any more.

Well we may talk past each other at times. Apparently we do. When you say your god is “the end result of philosophical inquiry” I naturally presumed you think that’s kind of a big deal. Even an “exalted philosophical process”. If you don’t, I’m sorry for my misjudgment.
Now if you are serious about knowing your religion is a result of a random process how come you take it so all-fired seriously?

Apparently, we’re talking past each other again.

Nate,
I usually spend the first part of Monday morning preparing for the coming Sunday. In that yesterday was Pentecost, that makes this Sunday “Trinity Sunday”. This certainly goes to the question about Mary.
The appointed Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for this Sunday is John 3:1-17. That selection includes this line:
“No one has ascended to heaven except for the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man”. In addition to this most of what is in the Mary tradition is extra-canonical. Given all these things, what is the Biblical justification for this added role for Mary? In traditions that are very Biblically based, I expect there will be little appreciation for what the RCC theologians are proposing. My own liberal theological tradition prefers to set aside some of the more magical/mystical/metaphysical portions of the stories and focus on the relational/service/ethical dimensions, so this new role for Mary is no big deal either way. (I actually fall somewhere between all these perspectives).
Anyway, I think the question that has not been made clear is a concise (in brevity is wit; in wit is wisdom) statement of the justification for Mary’s distinctive role. I think that most human wisdom comes in the form of stories and not in discourse (partly why John gets less play than the synoptics in the Sunday services of worsip and RCL). So what story would be told to fortify this new understanding of Mary?
The other part of this is how this might effect ecumenical relations. Religions have enough touble getting along. Will this simply create another barrier and obstacle to mutual ministry?