Vatican wrong to bar ‘Co-Redemptrix’ title, says Dutch bishop

A doctrinal note in early November said the title ‘risks obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation and can therefore create an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith’.

A Dutch bishop sharply criticised the Vatican’s ruling against using the Marian title of “Co-Redemptrix”,

Bishop Rob Mutsaerts, an auxiliary in the Diocese of ’s-Hertogenbosch, said Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), was wrong to decree that the title is “not appropriate” for the Virgin Mary because it obscures Christ’s role in the redemption of mankind. Mutsaerts said “the problem isn’t with Mary, but with Fernández”.

“The term isn’t as shocking as some fear,” the bishop told the Dutch service of the US-based Catholic broadcaster EWTN. “‘Co’ comes from cum: ‘with’. It doesn’t merge two ideas.”

The DDF issued the doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis on 4 November. “This title risks obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation and can therefore create confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith,” it warned.

“When an expression requires many, repeated explanations to prevent it from straying from a correct meaning, it does not serve the faith of the People of God and becomes unhelpful.”

Mutsaerts firmly disagreed. “Cardinal Fernández is imagining things when he says that it is no longer advisable to use the title ‘Co-Redemptrix’ for Mary,” he said. “Christ’s position is so absolute that it would be absurd to think that anyone could truly eclipse Him.”

He quoted two saints and three popes speaking of Mary’s cooperation with her Son in redeeming mankind. Pope Benedict XVI called Mary’s struggle with the cross “almost similar” in intention to that of Christ.

“Almost, I repeat, not quite,” Mutsaerts said. “Only a world at a loss for words would miss the difference.” These authorities trusted that Catholics would understand the distinction, he continued. “Teach the people the meaning, rather than deleting words.”

In July 2024, the DDF reaffirmed a little-known 1974 ruling that supposed Marian apparitions in Amsterdam between 1945 and 1959 were not supernatural in origin. For some conservative Dutch Catholics, these so-called apparitions showed the Church should proclaim a “fifth Marian dogma” defining Mary as “Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate”.

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