Arthur Burton Calkins. New Catholic Encyclopedia. Editor: Robert L Fastiggi. Volume 2. Gale, 2010.
To deal with the papal Magisterium on Mary since the Second Vatican Council (October 11, 1962-December 8, 1965), one must begin with the council itself and Paul VI, who was at once the pope who presided over all but the first of the four sessions of the council and the pope who strove to implement the conciliar constitutions, decrees, and declarations for the remaining twelve and a half years of his pontificate. Undeniably, the council’s principal treatment of “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and the Church,” which constitutes the eighth chapter of Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is the most extensive exposition on Mary ever promulgated by an ecumenical council. Its decision, however, to include the treatment on Mary in the document on the Church and not as a separate treatise was the subject of intense debates and resulted in the narrowest majority (1,114-1,074) in the history of the council.
Mariological Debate
Behind these votes were two different currents of thought which reflected to a certain extent the rediscovered insights of ecclesio-typical mariology (which sees an analogy between Mary and the Church) that were emerging again at the time of the council and christo-typical Mariology (which sees an analogy between Christ and Mary). Ultimately, the title as well as the content of chapter eight of Lumen gentium would strive to balance these two theological tendencies by considering Mary “in the Mystery of Christ and the Church.” In a rare analysis of this situation by a pope, John Paul II stated in his Marian catechesis of December 13, 1995:
During the Council sessions, many Fathers wished further to enrich Marian doctrine with other statements on Mary’s role in the work of salvation. The particular context in which Vatican II’s Mariological debate took place did not allow these wishes, although substantial and widespread, to be accepted, but the Council’s entire discussion of Mary remains vigorous and balanced, and the topics themselves, though not fully defined, received significant attention in the overall treatment.
The proponents of further precisions on Mary’s role in the work of salvation to whom the pope referred were obviously those who favored the Christo-typical approach. The matter remains more complex, however. The ecclesiotypical insights into Mary as model of the Church, as traveling the path of faith, are surely valid–even if they do not greatly nourish devotion– but this camp also included those who, for ecumenical reasons, favored minimizing statements about Our Lady and her collaboration in the work of salvation.
Interestingly, Christo-typical statements are not wanting in the final text. LG 57 calls attention to the “union of the Mother and the Son in the work of salvation” and LG 58 speaks of Mary’s “consenting to the immolation of the Victim” on calvary and her “uniting herself with his sacrifice.” LG 61 describes how Mary “cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Savior in giving back supernatural life to souls.” LG 62 states that “the Church does not hesitate to profess this subordinate role of Mary.” The classical word to describe Mary’s active role in the work of salvation is Coredemptrix (used by theologians for centuries and found in the Magisterium of PIUS XI three times and in that of John Paul II six times). Here the word was not used out of “ecumenical sensitivity,” but the doctrine was more clearly presented than in any previous conciliar statement.
A specific instance of these two mindsets was illustrated by the clash between these two camps on whether Mary should be described in the conciliar document as “Mother of the Church.” In fact, the title of the third preparatory schema of the Marian text was precisely “Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church” (July 1961). The history of the titles of the various drafts as well as their contents indicate the ongoing tension between those in the ecclesio-typical camp who wanted emphasis placed primarily on the more abstract concept of Mary’s being an exemplar of the Church and those on the other side who wanted to emphasize Mary’s role of spiritual maternity. The title “Mother of the Church” disappeared from the schema that arrived on the council floor in September 1964 and, despite pleas to replace it, the theological commission refused to do so. Thus LG 54 speaks of Mary as “Mother of God and of men, especially of the faithful”; LG 69 refers to her as “Mother of God and of men”; and LG 61 speaks of her as “mother in the order of grace.” In closing the third session of the council on November 21, 1964, after promulgating the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which included the Marian chapter eight and the decrees on the eastern Churches and on ecumenism, Paul VI solemnly declared Mary Mother of the Church and commemorated the act by which Pius XII had consecrated the world to the immaculate heart of Mary on October 31, 1942. It was a decisive moment in the council and was greeted with resounding applause. Paul VI had acted courageously and found a way of overcoming clever maneuvering that spoke to the hearts of bishops and faithful.
Both the Christo-typical and ecclesiotypical currents of Mariology have solid bases in the ecclesial tradition and can be harmonized, as the final title of chapter eight of Lumen gentium and the subsequent papal Magisterium have illustrated. However, when the ecclesio-typical orientation is promoted to the exclusion of the other, as was frequently done by major interpreters after the promulgation of Lumen gentium, Marian devotion is bound to suffer, as in fact it did. Even some of the staunchest champions of ecclesio-typical Mariology found themselves shocked at the rapid and radical decline in Marian piety in the decade after the council. The question of the active collaboration of Mary in the work of salvation was looming on the horizon before the council began, and “though not fully defined, received significant attention in the overall treatment” of Mary in the council, as John Paul II said. It remains the central question in Catholic Mariology and theology in the early twenty-first century, and the subsequent papal Marian Magisterium can only be fully grasped in this perspective. As LG 65 prophetically summarizes the matter: “For Mary, having entered intimately into the history of salvation somehow brings together in herself and reverberates the most fundamental teachings of the faith and, as she is proclaimed and venerated, calls the faithful to her Son and his sacrifice and to love of the Father.”
Pope Paul VI (1963-1978)
Almost immediately after the council, Paul VI found that all the fundamental truths of Catholicism were being contested, often because of inaccurate interpretations of the conciliar documents as well as because of epochal societal upheavals such as the protest movements of 1968. In this context he strove to be a faithful interpreter of the council, presenting the Church’s Marian doctrine in a careful and balanced way in numerous discourses, messages, homilies, and prayers.
LG 66 had made a generic recommendation of “various forms of piety toward the Mother of God approved by the Church,” but Paul VI subsequently felt it necessary to recommend the rosary in two encyclicals (Mense maio and Christi matri), an apostolic exhortation, and on numerous other occasions. In his Rosary encyclical Mense maio of April 29, 1965, he went beyond the minimal recognition in LG 62 that Mary may be invoked as Mediatrix (numerous conciliar battles had been fought over this title regularly used in the preconciliar papal Magisterium), speaking of the “abundant gifts of divine mercy that flow to us from [Mary’s] throne” and of the “treasures of mercy of which Mary has been constituted the minister and generous dispenser” (Mense maio, 9)
His Apostolic Exhortation Signum magnum of May 13, 1967, accompanied by his pilgrimage to Fátima to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady which took place there, testified to the entire Church that solid Marian doctrine leads to solid Marian devotion. In that exhortation he stated:
As each one of us can repeat with St. Paul: “The Son of God loved me and gave Himself up for me,” so in all trust he can believe that the divine Savior has left to him also, in spiritual heritage, His Mother, with all the treasures of grace and virtues with which He had endowed her, that she may pour them over us through the influence of her powerful intercession and our willing imitation. (Signum magnum, 5)
At its conclusion, he exhorted all “to renew personally their consecration to the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of the Church and to bring alive this most noble act of veneration through a life ever more consonant with the divine will” (Signum magnum, 9). Although theological interpretations of the conciliar Marian doctrine were already downplaying Mary’s mediation of grace and the legitimacy of Marian consecration, Paul VI did not hesitate to exercise his teaching authority on these matters.
The pope’s principal Marian document was Marialis cultus of February 2, 1974, on the right ordering and development of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Faithfully following the teaching of LG 67, Paul VI wanted to encourage the faithful about the unique place of Mary in the Church’s worship, particularly in the liturgy as it had been renewed in the post-conciliar books and then in the personal piety of the faithful. The document underscores the Trinitarian, Christological, and ecclesial aspects of Marian devotion and then proposes four guidelines for its development: that it be biblical, liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological. In the third of these guidelines, he stated that “without in any way detracting from the unique character of this devotion, every care should be taken to avoid any exaggeration which could mislead other Christian brethren about the true doctrine of the Catholic Church,” whereas in the fourth he emphasized presenting Mary as an imitable model, especially for modern women, a theme that John Paul would further develop in his Apostolic Exhortation Mulieris dignitatem of August 15, 1988. In the final part of the document, he reflected on and recommended the prayer of the angelus and the Rosary.
On April 24, 1970, the Pope found a profound way to translate the teaching of LG 53 on the “indissoluble bond” between Jesus and Mary in his HOMILY at the Marian shrine of Our Lady of Bonaria in Cagliari, Sardinia: “If we want to be Christian, we must also be Marian, that is we must recognize the essential, vital, providential bond which unites Our Lady with Jesus and which opens to us the way that leads us to him”(Acta apostolicae sedis 62 [1970]: 300-301).
John Paul II (1978-2005)
Speaking in this way, not only did Paul VI insist that Jesus is inseparable from Mary in the Christian life, but he also effectively sketched the profile of his successor, John Paul II, whose episcopal and papal motto was Totus tuus, an abbreviated form of an even older formula of Marian consecration found in St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin: “I am all yours, O Mary, and all that I have is yours” (n. 216, 233). As John Paul II would later indicate in personal testimonies, during his youth he discovered the classic book by St. Louis de Montfort and, as he admitted to André Frossard, became convinced, “The more my inner life has been centered on the mystery of the Redemption, the more surrender to Mary, in the spirit of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, has seemed to me the best means of participating fruitfully and effectively in this reality” (Frossard 1984, p. 126).
Undoubtedly Pope John Paul II has left the largest patrimony of Marian doctrine and devotion of all the successors of St. Peter, and it will be possible only to present a few highlights and to indicate major themes. Already in his very first encyclical Letter, Redemptor hominis of March 4, 1979, he evoked the reality of Marian mediation without using the word: “We believe that nobody else can bring us as Mary can into the divine and human dimension of this mystery [of the Redemption]. Nobody has been brought into it by God Himself as Mary has” (Redemptor hominis, 22). He developed the idea in his next Encyclical Letter, Dives in misericordia of November 30,1980, meditating on the fact that:
No one has experienced, to the same degree as the Mother of the crucified One, the mystery of the cross…. No one has received into his heart, as much as Mary did, that mystery, that truly divine dimension of the redemption effected on Calvary by means of the death of the Son, together with the sacrifice of her maternal heart, together with her definitive “fiat.” Mary, then, is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy…. [she] through her hidden and at the same time incomparable sharing in the messianic mission of her Son, was called in a special way to bring close to people that love which He had come to reveal. (Dives in misericordia, 9)
In this text he deftly introduced the concept of Mary’s active collaboration in the work of Redemption as well as her mediatory role in bringing others to experience its effects.
On May 13, 1981, the Pope suffered an assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square. It was the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady to the three shepherd children of Fátima in 1917. His life hung in the balance for several days, but as soon as he was able, he called for all of the relevant documentation on Fátima. To his dying day, he was convinced that Our Lady had spared his life, and he determined to make the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary which Our Lady had asked for the conversion of Russia. The first such act was made on the first anniversary of the attempt on his life in Fátima. It was renewed in more specific collegial union with the Bishops of the Word on March 25, 1984, in Rome before the image of Our Lady flown in from Fátima. The text of these two acts is virtually identical and employs both the words consecrate and entrust. Russia was not publicly named in either of these acts, but was evidently clearly understood. The Pope would return to Fátima again on May 13, 1991, stating that “the Church … does not cease consecrating herself to Mary.” He returned again on May 13, 2000, to beatify Francisco and Jacinta, the little seers who had died respectively in 1919 and 1920, and had the imminent publication of the third secret of Fátima announced. The thematic of Marian consecration/entrustment and that of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, already abundantly represented in his writings, would be further reinforced through his association with Fátima.
In his Apostolic Letter Salvifici doloris of February 11, 1984, he offered a remarkable exposition on Mary’s role in the mystery of Redemption. First he insisted on the all-sufficiency of Jesus’ sufferings: “The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world’s Redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it” (Salvifici doloris, n. 24). But then he went on to indicate how Mary’s sufferings are inseparable from those of Jesus:
In her, the many and intense sufferings were amassed in such an interconnected way that they were not only a proof of her unshakable faith but also a contribution to the Redemption of all…. It was on Calvary that Mary’s suffering, beside the suffering of Jesus, reached an intensity which can hardly be imagined from a human point of view but which was mysteriously and supernaturally fruitful for the Redemption of the world…. As a witness to her Son’s passion by her presence, and as a sharer in it by her compassion, Mary offered a unique contribution to the Gospel of suffering, by embodying in anticipation the expression of St. Paul which was quoted at the beginning (Col 1:24). She truly has a special title to be able to claim that she “completes in her flesh”—as already in her heart—“what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” (Salvifici doloris, n. 25)
Are these statements of the pope in contradiction to each other? No. He was rather brilliantly expounding on a mystery. The sacrifice of Jesus is all-sufficient, but GOD wished the suffering of the “New Eve,” the only perfect human creature, to be united to the suffering of the “New Adam.” Is the pope saying that Mary could redeem us by herself? Certainly not. But he is saying that she could make her own unique contribution to the sacrifice of Jesus as the “New Eve,” the “Mother of the Living.”
These heretofore somewhat unnoticed declarations of enormous doctrinal value need to be seen as the context for that which John Paul II would present in the third part of his Marian encyclical, Redemptoris mater of March 25, 1987, on “Maternal Mediation.” Commenting on LG 61, he stated:
Mary entered, in a way all her own, into the one mediation “between God and men” which is the mediation of the man Christ Jesus. If she was the first to experience within herself the supernatural consequences of this one mediation—in the Annunciation she had been greeted as “full of grace”—then we must say that through this fullness of grace and supernatural life she was especially predisposed to cooperation with Christ, the one Mediator of human salvation. And such cooperation is precisely this mediation subordinated to the mediation of Christ. (Redemptoris mater, n. 39)
With this encyclical the pope effectively resurrected the explicit language of Marian mediation that had been used frequently by his predecessors, but that had been virtually buried by all of the major commentators after the Second Vatican Council. What is particularly striking is that his encyclical was a veritable tour de force precisely because he theologized on the concept of Mary’s “mediation in Christ” utilizing the language of the council in its maximal sense integrated into many of his own unique insights.
At the conclusion of the Marian year which he had declared from March 25, 1987, to 15 August 1988, he published his Apostolic Letter Mulieris dignitatem, a document primarily “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” but with many profound references to Our Lady. Perhaps one of the most unique features of that document is the pope’s reference in n. 27 to the “Marian profile” of the Church, which takes precedence over the “Petrine.” He had already elaborated this theme at greater length and depth in n. 2-3 of his address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 1987, utilizing the elements of ecclesio-typical theology in a truly maximal formulation.
The Marian Year was also the occasion of the publication of a collection of forty-six Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, each with its own propers, preface, and an accompanying lectionary. The publication of these Masses—some taken from propers conceded to certain religious communities or places, some composed for the occasion—are intended for use at Marian shrines and as votive Masses to be used on ferial days throughout the year and constitute “an event of far from negligible importance in the development by the Magisterium and in the experience of the Christian people of the great riches that are represented by Mary, the Mother of God” according to Cardinal Virgilio Noè. It should be noted that Paul VI had already provided for the publication of the Votive Masses of “Mary, Mother of the Church” and the “Holy Name of Mary” in the second typical edition of the Missale Romanum of 1975 and that John Paul II further expanded the Marian Masses available in the third typical edition of the Missale Romanum of 2002 and provided for an optional memorial of Our Lady of Fátima on May 13.
Surely a high point of John Paul II’s Marian Magisterium was the course of seventy Marian catecheses which he presented during of his Wednesday general audiences from September 6, 1995, to November 12, 1997. These cover major themes in Marian doctrine and devotion, while utilizing texts of the pre-conciliar papal Magisterium, the Second Vatican Council, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and making judicious use of certain contemporary authors. Many of these catecheses further confirm the Pope’s clear affirmation of Mary’s unique collaboration in the work of the Redemption, such as this passage from April 9, 1997:
Applied to Mary, the term “cooperator” acquires a specific meaning. The collaboration of Christians in salvation takes place after the Calvary event, whose fruits they endeavor to spread by prayer and sacrifice. Mary, instead, cooperated during the event itself and in the role of mother; thus her cooperation embraces the whole of Christ’s saving work. She alone was associated in this way with the redemptive sacrifice that merited the salvation of all mankind. In union with Christ and in submission to him, she collaborated in obtaining the grace of salvation for all humanity. (XX/1 [1997]: 621-622)
It should be further noted that in the course of various addresses, homilies, and greetings John Paul II referred to Mary as Coredemptrix on at least six occasions. These clearly were not an exercise of his most solemn Magisterium, but pertain rather to what LG 25 refers to as the “ordinary” papal Magisterium. They are indications that this classical theological term, which indicates that Mary’s role in the work of redemption is always secondary and subordinate to that of Christ and dependent on him, but at the same time altogether unique, remains a legitimate term. Hence it is astonishing that an anonymous article published in L’Osservatore Romano of June 4, 1997, during the pope’s absence from Rome could label these references as “marginal and devoid of doctrinal weight.”
As a committed disciple of St. Louis Marie de Montfort during his entire adult life, it is not surprising that Marian consecration/entrustment was a special feature of John Paul II’s long pontificate. He placed himself, the entire Church and the world into the hands and heart of the Virgin Mary on hundreds of occasions, great and small. His homily at Fátima on May 13, 1982, presents an extraordinarily synthetic catechesis on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Mary’s spiritual maternity, and the meaning of consecration, reaching its culmination in these words:
Consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means drawing near, through the Mother’s intercession, to the very Fountain of life that sprang from Golgotha. This Fountain pours forth unceasingly redemption and grace. In it reparation is made continually for the sins of the world. It is a ceaseless source of new life and holiness…. It means consecrating this world to the pierced heart of the Savior, bringing it back to the very source of its redemption.
Taking his lead from LG 66 and 67, John Paul II was conscious of the importance of the figure of Mary in the ecumenical dialogue. He stressed her significance as our “common Mother” particularly in his encyclical Redemptoris mater (n. 29-34), in his Apostolic Letter Orientale lumen of May 2, 1995 (n. 6 and 28), and in his Marian catechesis of November 12, 1997. In his Encyclical Letter Ut unum sint of May 25, 1995, he specifically identified five “areas in need of fuller study before a true consensus of faith can be achieved” (79), the fifth being “the Virgin Mary, as Mother of God and Icon of the Church, the spiritual Mother who intercedes for Christ’s disciples and for all humanity” (12). In that same encyclical he insisted that “all forms of reductionism or facile ‘agreement’ must be absolutely avoided” (36).
With his Apostolic Letter Rosarium virginis mariæ of October 16, 2002, John Paul II launched a Year of the Rosary from October 2002 to October 7, 2003, yet another effort on his part to promote Marian devotion. The most novel aspect of the Apostolic Letter was his proposal of the luminous mysteries (n. 21) that come chronologically between the joyful and sorrowful mysteries and consist of (1) the BAPTISM of Jesus; (2) his manifestation at the Wedding at Cana; (3) his proclamation of the Kingdom and call to conversion; (4) his transfiguration; and (5) his institution of the eucharist. The entire document is a profound “exhortation to contemplate the face of Christ in union with, and at the school of, his Most Holy Mother” (n. UUS, 3).
No pope had ever commented with more frequency or more depth on the text of John 19:25-29 than John Paul II. He found in it the basis of Marian devotion, Mary’s spiritual maternity, her own kenosis or emptying herself, and her collaboration in the work of redemption and consecration/entrustment. These are rarely simply repetitions of earlier statements, but almost always indicate new and deepening insights. Perhaps the crowning of these occurred in his last Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de eucharistia of April 17, 2003, in 57 of which he wrote:
“Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk. 22:19). In the “memorial” of Calvary all that Christ accomplished by his passion and his death is present. Consequently all that Christ did with regard to his Mother for our sake is also present. To her he gave the beloved disciple and, in him, each of us: “Behold, your Son!” To each of us he also says: “Behold your mother!” (cf. Jn. 19: 26-27). Experiencing the memorial of Christ’s death in the Eucharist also means continually receiving this gift. It means accepting—like John—the one who is given to us anew as our Mother. It also means taking on a commitment to be conformed to Christ, putting ourselves at the school of his Mother and allowing her to accompany us. Mary is present, with the Church and as the Mother of the Church, at each of our celebrations of the Eucharist.
Benedict XVI (2005-)
Although the Marian output of Benedict XVI will probably never equal that of the twenty-seven-year pontificate of John Paul II, there are clear indications that he continues to follow his predecessor in his own unique style and mode of presentation. He concluded his first Encyclical Letter, Deus caritas est, of December 25, 2005, in this way:
The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them. In no one do we see this more clearly than in Mary. The words addressed by the crucified Lord to his disciple—to John and through him to all disciples of Jesus: “Behold, your mother!” (Jn. 19:27)— are fulfilled anew in every generation. Mary has truly become the Mother of all believers. Men and women of every time and place have recourse to her motherly kindness and her virginal purity and grace, in all their needs and aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their moments of loneliness and their common endeavors. They constantly experience the gift of her goodness and the unfailing love which she pours out from the depths of her heart…. At the same time, the devotion of the faithful shows an infallible intuition of how such love is possible: it becomes so as a result of the most intimate union with God, through which the soul is totally pervaded by him—a condition which enables those who have drunk from the fountain of God’s love to become in their turn a fountain from which “flow rivers of living water.” (Jn. 7:38) (Deus caritas est, 42)
He then continued with a prayer entrusting the Church to Mary, saying “You abandoned yourself completely to God’s call and thus became a wellspring of the goodness which flows forth from him.” This text is not only a testimony to the doctrine of Mary’s spiritual maternity, but also to her mediation of graces.
He would present this latter doctrine in even more strong language in his homily on May 11, 2007, at Campo de Marte, São Paulo, for the canonization of Frei Antônio de Sant’Ana Galváo:
Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, stands particularly close to us at this moment. Frei Galvão prophetically affirmed the truth of the Immaculate Conception. She, the Tota Pulchra, the Virgin Most Pure, who conceived in her womb the Redeemer of mankind and was preserved from all stain of original sin, wishes to be the definitive seal of our encounter with God our Savior. There is no fruit of grace in the history of salvation that does not have as its necessary instrument the mediation of Our Lady…. This is the invitation that I address to all of you today, from the first to the last, in this Eucharist without frontiers. God said: “Be holy, as I am holy” (Lev 11:44). Let us give thanks to God the Father, to God the Son, to God the Holy Spirit from whom, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, we receive all the blessings of heaven. (Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI, III/1 [2007]: 820-821)
Benedict also continued to emphasize the precedence of the Marian over the Petrine profile of the Church, particularly on March 25, 2006, in his homily at the Mass for the conferral of rings on the new cardinals. On that occasion, he said:
This providential circumstance helps us to consider today’s event, which emphasizes the Petrine principle of the Church, in the light of the other principle, the Marian one, which is even more fundamental. The importance of the Marian principle in the Church was particularly highlighted, after the Council, by my beloved Predecessor Pope John Paul II in harmony with his motto Totus tuus…. The icon of the Annunciation, more than any other, helps us to see clearly how everything in the Church goes back to that mystery of Mary’s acceptance of the divine Word, by which, through the action of the Holy Spirit, the Covenant between God and humanity was perfectly sealed. Everything in the Church, every institution and ministry, including that of Peter and his Successors, is “included” under the Virgin’s mantle, within the grace-filled horizon of her “yes” to God’s will. (Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI II/1 [2006]: 360)
He concluded his Encyclical Letter Spe salvi of November 30, 2007, with a discreet reference to Mary’s mediation and intercession in n. 49:
Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route…. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by—people who shine with his light and so guide us along our way. Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her “yes” she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us. (cf. Jn 1:14)
Perhaps more important than any explicit Marian statement on the part of Pope Benedict XVI was his very clear presentation of what he called “the hermeneutic of continuity” vis-à-vis “the hermenuetic of rupture” in terms of interpreting the documents of the Catholic tradition and those of the Second Vatican Council in his memorable discourse to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005.
All three of these postconciliar Popes have had the grace to clarify the eighth chapter of Lumen gentium, Second Vatican Council’s major treatment of the Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and the Church. They have continued to present the Marian doctrine of the council in a way that situates it in a larger context that at once appreciates its newness while relating it to the Church’s millennial tradition. Their Magisterium has supplemented the conciliar teaching on many important points and taken its interpretation out of the hands of the minimalists. It now remains to be made known among scholars, priests, and the Church at large, of which Mary remains Mother and exemplar.