Co-Redemptrix: Pitiful Objections

 

Mary Immaculate, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Saints: Destroyer of all heresies... 

“She suffered with Him and almost died with Him; she abdicated her mother’s rights for the salvation of mankind and, as far as depended on her, offered her Son to appease divine justice; so we may rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ.” —Pope Benedict XV, Inter Sodalicia (1918)

Prologue

In every age, Our Lady has been attacked where Christ is most denied.

When men grow cold toward the Cross, they soon grow blind toward the Woman who stood beneath it.

Today, even within what calls itself “the Church,” the titles Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all Graces are mocked as “modern,” “unnecessary,” or “sentimental.”

Such objections, clothed in a false zeal for purity of doctrine, reveal a deeper disease — the spirit that St. Pius X unmasked as Modernism: the pride that refuses to see divine mysteries in the humility of God’s instruments.

This brief tract answers the pitiful objections (so far) of those who sneer at her titles.

It does not invent novelties; it simply repeats what the Popes, Fathers, and Saints have always taught—

• that Mary’s share in the Passion and her maternal mediation flow directly from the will of God, and that to deny her place is to wound the beauty of the mystery of Christ Himself.

Let us, then, clear the fog of ignorance and ingratitude, and look once more to Calvary— where the Redeemer and the Co-Redemptrix stood together, and where all grace began to flow through a Mother’s sorrowful heart.

1. “Co-Redemptrix is a modern term, therefore modernist.”?

Co-Redemptrix is only a few hundred years old, meaning it’s modernist by Church standards.😆

Says a pitiful objector, and his objection collapses instantly under a glance at Church history.

The truth it expresses is older than all heresies. From the beginning, the Fathers of the Church proclaimed Mary as the New Eve, united with the New Adam in restoring what the first Eve lost.

• St. Irenaeus (2nd century): “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by Mary’s obedience.”
• St. Epiphanius (4th century): “By her the salvation of the world was begun.”
• St. Augustine: “She cooperated by charity in the birth of the faithful in the Church.”

The term “Co-Redemptrix” is indeed later—but so are “Trinity,” “Transubstantiation,” and “Original Sin.”

Do we call them “modernist”? Certainly not! The Church’s understanding of divine truth unfolds through time; it does not change its meaning.

A Modernist changes the substance of faith to suit the world.

The doctrine of Mary’s co-operation, on the contrary, guards the unchanging mystery of the Cross: that no grace comes except through the Redeemer—and that He willed His Mother to share in that work.

2. “Co-Redemptrix and Baptism of Desire are heresies.”?

This objection is both rash and ignorant.

(a) Baptism of Desire: Catholic and Ancient Doctrine

The Council of Trent teaches plainly that

“justification cannot take place without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof.” (Sess. VI, ch. 4)

This declaration, solemn and dogmatic, upholds that when the Sacrament of Baptism cannot be received in act, its grace may be supplied by desire joined with perfect charity—never apart from faith in Christ and the intention to receive the Sacrament.

Long before the council of Trent St. Thomas Aquinas explains:

 “A man may obtain the grace of baptism before he is baptized in reality, by the desire of baptism… for he is inwardly baptized by the Holy Ghost.” (Summa Theologiae III, q. 68, a. 2)

Thus, desire (votum) joined to faith and charity confers the sanctifying grace which baptism ordinarily imparts—though not the character of the sacrament.

This truth was not new in Trent or in St. Thomas Aquinas; it is found in the Fathers and Doctors:

• St. Ambrose, preaching at the funeral of the unbaptized Emperor Valentinian II, wrote:

 “Did he not obtain the grace which he desired? Certainly, because he asked for it, he received it.” (De obitu Valentiniani)

• St. Augustine affirms:

 “The faith and conversion of heart, if necessity prevents baptism, will suffice.” (De Baptismo contra Donatistas, IV.22)

• St. Bernard of Clairvaux teaches the same principle:

 “Not only martyrdom for Christ supplies for baptism, but also faith and conversion of heart, when the sacrament cannot be had.” (Ep. 77 ad Hugh. de S. Vict.)

• Pope Innocent III, in his letter Debitum pastoralis officii (1206), declared that a catechumen who dies with the desire of baptism “is saved by faith and the desire of the sacrament, though not by the sacrament itself.”
• Pope St. Pius V, in the Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent, II, 2, 30), teaches:

 “Those who, without baptism, are prevented by death from receiving it, yet who have the desire and resolve to receive it, are regarded as baptized in the sight of God.”

These witnesses—from the Fathers to the Popes—express one and the same Catholic doctrine:

that the grace of the sacrament is not absolutely tied to its visible reception, for God Himself is not bound by His sacraments, though we are bound to them.

To reject this is not fidelity, but a misunderstanding of the Church’s teaching on grace and the sacraments.

To affirm it is to echo the harmony of the saints:

 “Faith working through charity justifies man—whether by the water of baptism, by the blood of martyrdom, or by the fervent desire of the soul.”

To call this heresy is to accuse Trent, the Fathers and Popes of error—a blasphemy against the Church’s infallible magisterium.

(b) Co-Redemptrix

This title does not mean Mary is equal to Christ, but that she co-operated with Him—freely and dependently—in the work of redemption.

Popes have taught this repeatedly:

• Leo XIII: called her “the associate of the Redeemer.”
• St. Pius X: “From this union of suffering and purpose between Christ and Mary, she merited to become the reparatrix of the lost world.” (Ad Diem Illum)
• Benedict XV: “Together with Christ she redeemed the human race.” (Inter Sodalicia)
• Pius XI: publicly invoked her as “Co-Redemptrix.”

To deny this is not to defend the Faith but to mutilate it.

3. “The proponents are just in love with words.”?

This third objection reveals not intelligence but Modernist disdain for dogmatic clarity.

The Church’s vocabulary is not sentimental—it is precise armor forged against error.

• When the Fathers coined “Trinity,” they defended the reality of three Persons in one God.
• When Lateran IV defined “Transubstantiation,” it crushed the symbolists who denied Christ’s Real Presence.

Likewise, “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of all Graces” protect two inseparable truths:

1. That Christ alone is Redeemer and Mediator by His own power;

2. That Mary, by His will, participates in His redemptive act as a unique and subordinate helper.

To despise these sacred words is to despise the precision of Catholic faith itself. “Let your speech be yea, yea; no, no,” says the Lord. Truth does not fear definition.

4. The Heart of the Matter

At Calvary, she did not merely stand—she consented.

The Virgin’s place beneath the Cross was not that of a spectator, but of a co-sufferer and co-offerer.

While the Eternal High Priest offered His Body and Blood for the salvation of the world, the Immaculate Mother offered her Son and herself in perfect union with His divine will.

Her sorrow was not passive grief but active oblation.

In that moment, the prophecy of Simeon was fulfilled: “Thy own soul a sword shall pierce” (Lk 2:35).

Thus, by her interior participation in the Passion, she became the Mother of the Redeemed, the New Eve beside the New Adam, giving spiritual birth to those for whom He died.

From that hour, all graces flow through her maternal hands—not by her own power, but by divine appointment, as dispenser of the treasures her Son merited.

To call this “modernist” is to mock the Gospel itself, for St. John received her not as a symbol of sentiment, but as a living channel of grace when Our Lord said: “Behold thy Mother.” (Jn 19:27)

5. The True Modernism

Ironically, those who sneer at these Marian truths fall into the very Modernism they pretend to resist.

Modernism dissolves revealed truth into emotion; it treats doctrine not as something to believe, but as something to feel.

When men reject the precise theological language by which Popes and Councils have expressed Mary’s role in redemption, they repeat the Modernist error—substituting sentiment for submission.

They cloak unbelief in the name of “purity,” forgetting that the Church’s purity lies in fidelity to all that God has revealed, not in pruning away what embarrasses human pride.

The Bride of Christ is not purified by denying her Mother; she is corrupted by doing so.

Conclusion

It must be reiterated that to honor Mary as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces is not to exalt her above Christ, but to confess that Christ’s grace is so abundant it makes His Mother the living channel of His mercy.

To reject these titles is to turn away from Calvary’s mystery—where the New Eve stood beside the New Adam, and together, in perfect harmony of love and suffering, crushed the serpent’s head.

Let the mockers laugh.

The faithful will continue to echo the saints:

"O Mary, Co-Redemptrix of the human race, Mediatrix of all graces, lead us to the Heart of thy Son!”