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Hello and welcome to a Masterclass in Mariology. This is Dr. Mark Mirvalle. I'm joined by my
colleague and friend, Dr. Robert Fastiggi, and in this program we're going to discuss
the first of the great four Marian dogmas, the Theotokos, the Mother of God. But before
we get into that, and again because we're seeking to offer a type of seminar on a graduate
Mariological level, that we would make some distinctions between what are sometimes called
the three Ds, that of dogma, doctrine, and discipline. Otherwise, as we talk about the
four Marian dogmas and the fifth Marian doctrine, we could have a confusion. And even things
like why there is a present historic move to have the fifth Marian doctrine, the Truth
of Our Lady as the Spiritual Mother of All Peoples, inclusive of her roles as co-redemptrix,
mediatrix, and advocate. Why we're seeking, why there's the movement that seeks to have
that solemnly proclaimed. So, Robert, let's start and welcome to the program. Always a
blessing to have you, of course.
My pleasure, my honor, really. You do a wonderful job. You must be a great teacher in class.
Thanks, Scott. Well, let's start with these three categories, dogma, doctrine, and discipline.
And I know classically that dogma is defined as a truth immediately revealed by God, which
the teaching magisterium has designated as such. And that typically comes through two
vehicles. One is, of course, the ex cathedra proclamation by the Holy Father, an infallible
statement. The other general mode for a definition, a dogma, a dogmatic definition, if you will,
is through an ecumenical council then confirmed by the Holy Father. Blessed Pius IX says that
a dogma is really the perfection of a doctrine. So, it's already a doctrinal truth, but it's
brought to a higher appreciation by the faithful. So, your thoughts and further explanation
on what is a dogma?
Yes. Well, the word doctrine, doctrina, means a teaching. But a dogma would be a solemn teaching that the church has set forth as revealed by God.
And so, doctrine has a Latin root, but dogma ultimately goes back to Greek. So, it's a truth revealed by God to which we must give assent to faith.
And as you mentioned, some dogmas are recognized as revealed by God by ex cathedra pronouncements like the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption.
Others are proclaimed at or defined at ecumenical councils, such as Mary as Mother of God, Theotokos, which we'll discuss today.
Then there are also what were called dogmas by virtue of the ordinary universal magisterium, where the bishops throughout the world, united with the Holy Father, with the Roman pontiff, agree on one position as definitively to be held.
So, Lumen Gentium 25 of Vatican II explains this well, but also it's there in Dei Filius, the dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith of Vatican I. People don't realize that.
But I would just note this, that with the perpetual virginity of Mary, or we could say the threefold virginity of Mary, most theologians say that's a dogma by virtue of the ordinary universal magisterium, witnessed to by multiple documents of the magisterium,
and also by liturgy, that she's referred to as ever virgin in the first Eucharistic prayer, the Roman Canon. But I would also note that some believe that, like this Father Bastero, believe that at the Latin Synod of 649, which affirmed, defined Mary's threefold virginity,
it was confirmed by Pope St. Martin I. So, some say that has the same authority as an ex cathedra pronouncement. So, as long as we understand it's a dogma, whether it's by ex cathedra or by ordinary universal magisterium, but the other three dogmas, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, ex cathedra, papal pronouncements,
Mary, Mother of God, the Council of Ephesus, reaffirmed at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 with absolute clarity.
And that's a great summary to it. I think the first two categories of dogma obviously have a great clarity when you have a papal definition, like the Immaculate Conception, Assumption, that's straightforward. And then, of course, as we're going to talk about, Ephesus, and then confirmed by the Holy Father, that's also a dogmatic dimension.
Some theologians hesitate to use the expression dogma, even though it's still an infallible teaching, when they talk about that which comes forward from the ordinary universal magisterium. But your summary is correct. It's a truth immediately revealed by God, and that's confirmed by the teaching authority of the Church, and that's the heart of dogma.
And so let's go from dogma to that middle category, which is sometimes, especially in recent years, Robert, been I think a source of confusion for many. Doctrine, what a doctrine pertains to. And I know in classic works, works that you have in fact edited, like Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma,
the presentation of doctrine is a truth pertaining to faith in morals, which the ordinary magisterium has not solemnly defined, but has still guaranteed its truth. And I think that's a very important distinction, because it doesn't have to be solemnly defined to be something which, going back to Lumen Gentium 25,
we still owe an assent of mind and will to the manifest mind of the Pope. So maybe you could speak a little bit more on this category of doctrine, how it's different from dogma, but still calls us to a religious center of mind and heart.
Very good. Well, you know, there was this 1989 profession of faith, and that I had to take, assuming my teaching role at the seminary, and you've taken, I'm sure, maybe several times before your diaconal ordination, you had to take it.
But there, the highest level of assent is to the creed, the Nicene Constantinopolitan creed, but also those truths which have been set forth as revealed by God, either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary universal magisterium.
Then there's the second level of these definitive teachings. They've not been said to be revealed by God, but the Church has made a definitive judgment about the matter, about this matter of faith and morals, such as the Church does not have authority to confer priestly ordination upon women.
So that's the second level. And these, we have to give irrevocable consent or assent to. But then there's this third level of teachings of the ordinary magisterium, which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops teach in their authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to make a definitive judgment.
So these are, because of the authority of the Pope, let's say, in an encyclical or a teaching of the, let's say, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, but the Pope confirms it, it has magisterial authority, and we are to give religious submission, obsequium is the Latin, of mind and will to the teaching, even if it's not set forth infallibly.
Some people say, well, if it's not infallible, we could disagree with it. This is actually error 22 of the 1864 Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX, that some German professors were saying, we only have to give assent to infallible teachings.
But he said, no, you have to give assent, even to all authentic teachings of the magisterium. So Pius X issued a motu proprio, a document, saying that the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and which at that time was magisterial, must be adhered to. And so, even though some of them were qualified later on, but at that time, in other words, out of respect for the authority,
we give religious submission of will and intellect, which sometimes is a matter of humility before the teaching office, the teaching authority, and we have the right as Catholics to ask for clarification. People might have difficulty, but dissent is not justified, according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its 1990 document on the ecclesial vocation.
of the theologian. What is allowed is respectful questioning, asking for clarification, but not public dissent. That's considered a problem. And people still, oh, we can dissent if it's not infallible, or I don't like this teaching, so I don't have to listen to it. Then it makes the authority one's own subjective judgment, rather than the authority of the magisterium.
Yeah, great point, Robert. And, you know, this is not unknown to at least our era, with the release of Humanae Vitae in 1968, and the great dissent. You even had, unfortunately, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops come up with a statement with an expression of, quote, licit dissent, which is a, it's a bit of something that Rome was quick not to affirm and has never affirmed that you could have.
licit dissent in any public forum. Now, in the document of Ratzinger in 1990, there's a, there's the issue of a theologian who's struggling with something concerning faith and morals, and he's dealing with his spiritual director, but that's very different than going to the public and saying, like certain individuals did, Charles Curran and others, during the time of the release of Humanae Vitae, saying, exactly to your point,
I can dissent because it's not infallible. This was the kind of the theological justification for the major protests against Humanae Vitae that took place in Washington, DC.
And even a cardinal came to Franciscan University years back, his name is not important, but made essentially the same claim. If it's not infallible, one can dissent, and this is simply not acceptable.
Lumen gentium 25 is very clear that even when the Holy Father is not speaking ex cathedra, that we are called to give a religious assent of mind and will to the manifest mind of the Pope. And it's also true, you know, just for further kind of context, there's not a single moral teaching, Robert, that has ever been solemnly defined.
Abortion, contraception, premarital relations, these have not been defined. Why? Because there's not a need to define them. They're in the heart of the encyclical's teaching. So anybody who thinks that, and really the encyclical is your typical mouthpiece of the ordinary magisterium.
As well, excuse me, the Lumen gentium talks about repeated references of the Holy Father, things like there was a Coridemtrix, repeated references by several popes and repeated references, that too categorizes something as official magisterium.
But we can never use the fact that it's not infallible to say we're not bound by this as Catholics faithful to the church.
That's right. And in Lumen gentium 25, we have to adhere to teachings of the Roman pontiff, even if they're not ex cathedra, according to his manifest mind and will. And these can be principally known either by the nature of the document in question, his manner of speaking, or whether this is something repeatedly reaffirmed.
So sometimes his manner of speaking is important if he's just giving a personal opinion in a homily, but he doesn't say, I want everyone to hold to this.
There's still a question whether Mary died or fell asleep before her glorious assumption. And in a homily, John Paul II, I think it was 1997, shows that he favors the belief that she died.
But he doesn't, his way, manner of speaking is not to impose this. So it just shows, well, we all can believe that because the pope has affirmed it, you know, so that sometimes we have to pay attention to what is being said, the nature of the document.
But if it's something repeated again and again, like Mary as mediatrix of grace, or even of all grace, how often this has been repeated and said, well, it's not been defined. Well, that's maybe why there was a Cardinal Mercier saw the need for a definition, because so many people were questioning it.
That's a great point. And especially when you have every pope from Benedict XIV back in the 18th century up, including Pope Francis, who either taught the doctrine or used the title mediatrix of all graces, that's ordinary papal magisterium.
And I, for one, hold to the infallibility of the ordinary papal magisterium. When you've got 2024 years of a track record where there's never been a clear case of teaching in error on faith and morals by the vicars of Christ, even when they're not speaking infallibly, I think that's a wonderful foundation for accepting the Holy Spirit's protection from error, even of the ordinary magisterium.
Now, of course, people are not obliged to believe that, but I think there's good reason to believe that.
That's my position, at least grave error or heresy. There's all these people now saying the Pope can teach heresy and so on. But if you look very carefully at the actual text of Pastore Ternus of Vatican I, it seems to rule that out.
I know it was discussed at Vatican, you know, in the discussions before the document, but Bishop Gasser said we're affirming not an extreme position of any school, but what St. Robert Bellarmine taught.
And he said this is the position that the Pope can never teach heresy is pious and probable, but then in Book IV, Chapter VI of De Romano Pontificiae, he tries to, he shows how it could be proven.
So I think that they were on very strong grounds. And also, there are like, there clearly are moral judgments, which acquire or they acquire infallibility by the unanimous teaching of the Roman pontiff and the bishops down through the centuries.
Like Humanae Vitae, a strong case could be made that that's infallible, the judgment there. Or in Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life, John Paul II, on three moral issues, actually appeals to the ordinary universal magisterium, that it's a grave moral evil to directly kill the innocent.
Abortion, direct abortion is a grave moral evil, as well as euthanasia. And he said this is, you know, founded upon the natural law affirmed in Scripture and testified by the ordinary universal magisterium. So those are infallible moral judgments. There doesn't have to be a definition, because it's already been affirmed as ordinary universal infallible teaching by the Roman pontiff.
Right. And so we can almost say that in now St. Paul's, the sixth credo, the first category is dogma, the definitive, and that third category really represents doctrine in a general sense. And then we have what is called discipline. And Robert, I'm always a bit shocked with how many people don't distinguish between discipline and doctrine.
And, you know, again, classic theology would say a discipline is a practical dictate based on a doctrine, but in seeking of an application of that doctrine, but by its very nature, it can be changed.
So in the first category of dogma, it cannot be changed. Doctrine cannot be changed in the sense of an intrinsic contradiction to what the church has guaranteed to be true. Discipline, by its very nature, not only can change, but is meant to change. Comments on that?
Exactly. I mean, people say, well, how could it be wrong to eat meat on Fridays prior to Paul VI, and now it's allowed except during Lent? But that's a matter of discipline, or how long the fast must be from solid food and drink other than water prior to receiving Holy Communion. That's a matter of discipline.
And these disciplines can change, you know, over time, and they have changed. Sometimes some documents have a doctrinal affirmation, but then sometimes there's, popes will have different applications of discipline.
And I think sometimes people overreact because Pope Francis sometimes leaves a little bit of room for discretion on the part of pastors. You know, just like one footnote in Amoris Laetitia, where he says, you know, those who are divorced and civilly remarried, in some cases, they could have recourse to the sacraments.
Well, they always would have recourse to confession. And in several other places, he has affirmed, you know, you cannot receive Holy Communion in mortal sin. So, I mean, that's the doctrine. But then allowing pastors to discern if in some cases there might not be full culpability.
But it's not denying the dogma of the indissolubility of marriage. It's just allowing pastors a little bit more discretion, or we could say prudence in judging certain difficult cases.
Yeah, it's very important point, Robert, because, look, it's a messy world right now. There's a lot of wounded people. There's a lot of people who no longer have a society that has natural law forming it. And so you're going to have different degrees of culpability.
Remember, as we know, what mortal sin requires, there's got to be grave matter, there's got to be sufficient knowledge, and there has to be appropriate freedom. Well, in many cases, that third dimension is not present now, let alone, in many cases, that second dimension isn't present as well.
And so if the Holy Father makes a call to apply the same doctrine, what St. Paul says in Corinthians about, you know, those who take the Eucharist unworthily, you know, have to examine themselves, and they put a condemnation on themselves if they receive them unworthily, that's legitimate for the Holy Father to make applications of that in the real world right now.
Because we're not in the 1950s. The Eucharist is the same. Sacrilege is the same. But how that's applied can be very different because of the challenges of our particular age. And therefore, the church allows discipline to be changeable to best apply doctrine in a given period of the church.
Exactly. And that's why sometimes bishops on a local level have to discern how to apply certain disciplines. You know, even in canon law, Canon 915 deals with those who should be denied Holy Communion, but Canon 916, I think, could be used more.
It's saying that those who are conscious, you know, conscious of grave sin should not receive Holy Communion. But that's always been the teaching of the church, you know, going back to St. Paul. So sometimes a bishop has to discern what's the best way to deal with individuals who are, let us say, actively supporting attacks on human life, such as abortion and so on.
So sometimes on a local level, you have to leave the pastors, the bishops, some discretion, you know, like with fiduciary supplicants about blessing, never blessing sin or blessing unions. People have misinterpreted this on the left and the right.
But whether or not, in what cases it would be appropriate if people ask in irregular situations to receive a blessing, then discernment has to be used. And it may be in some places this would create scandal and the document says always avoid scandal.
So sometimes that's what I think people get upset with. They want very strict disciplinary rules. But when we deal with the multiplicity of cultures and the levels of people's understanding and culpability, sometimes there has to be an allowance for a little bit of discernment, I think, would be the best word.
Right. And in fact, you know, in 1950, you could not receive Holy Communion unless you fasted the night before, from midnight, from either food or water. And then the church realized, well, people were not coming to communion. And so then water was permitted. And then it was a few hours before, and then ultimately it led, in our time, to an hour before reception.
And certainly there were people in the 50s saying, well, this is too lax. The church is getting lazy and lax by allowing water from midnight beyond. And sometimes it's hard for the individual to see the universality of what the Pope teaches and what the church administers in terms of an application of the doctrine, which is universal.
But I have to say, Robert, I find this fascinating. And maybe we'll chase a master class in Mariology with a master class in dogma. But we have to get now to the first Marian dogma, the Theotokos.
So the historical context is the Council of Ephesus, 431, but a great battle that will take place before that, which, of course, we know to be in historianism. And it once again reminds us that the truth about Mary protects the truth about Jesus.
It's a beautiful dimension that a mother, even in her truth, protects, and really in that sense, in our understanding, perfects the reality of God becoming man and all that surrounds that. So perhaps just a few opening comments on the controversy, which leads and brings us to the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Yes. Maybe before I mentioned that, this is a dogma revealed by God. And some people say, well, where is mother of God explicitly in Scripture? But I mean, in St. Paul's letter to the Galatians, 4,4, God sent his son born of a woman.
Well, God's son is God, God from God, light from light. And he's born of a woman. So who is his mother, Mary? So she's the mother of the Son of God. And then in the visitation in the Gospel of Luke, when Elizabeth hears the sound of Mary's greeting, she said, who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Well, who is the Lord? She's not speaking about Lord Caesar. She's speaking about the Lord God. So it's testified in Scripture. Then we have some testimony that the title, Theotokos, or God-bearer, but bearing God to give birth, because there's another Greek word, Theophoros, which is applied to St. Ignatius of Antioch, which could translate God-bearer, but bearing God within oneself, within one's heart.
But this is, Theotokos means bearing God like a pregnant woman. You know, you're ready to give birth, the birth giver of God. So, but we have some references, some say Hippolytus had used the title or Origen. Some scholars dispute that. Well, he died around 254.
But certainly by the early 4th century, it was common in the 300s. Then it's used by the Cappadocians, by St. Athanasius. So it was in common use. But then what happened, the controversy began when Nestorius was made the patriarch of Constantinople, even though he was from the school of Ephesus.
And then a homily was given, and he objected to the homily because the priest giving the homily referred to Mary as Theotokos. And he had difficulty with this. And even some from the school of Antioch told him, hold off, it's been used.
You know, this was John of Antioch, who later would affirm the term, and also Theodoret of Cyre. You know, no, the term's been used, but he, Nestorius said, no, it's better to speak of Christotokos. And what were his reasons? Well, he did have some legitimate concerns. He wanted to affirm the two natures.
He wanted also to say the human, the divine nature cannot suffer or change. But his problem was how to put this all together and understand the union. But he seemed to be saying, well, Mary gives, conceives Christ, the man, and then the word of God unites himself.
He dwells in her like dwelling in a temple, or he inhabits the child that she conceives. So it was a case of conjunction. He himself denied that he was saying two persons, but that's the way it was perceived.
He said, there's one prosopon, one persona, one mass, or one appearance, but it was an inadequate understanding. But in the newer Denzinger, they actually, Father Huneman actually included the, not only the second letter of Cyril, which was, gives the actual dogma, but the second letter of Nestorius to Cyril,
where he explains his reasons. And, you know, he says, well, he's right that the divine nature cannot suffer. And he's also right that there's two natures. But this is what he says about the Mother Mary.
Would anyone suppose that the divinity of the only begotten to be something created by the Spirit? So this was his concern. If Mary is called Theotokos, then somehow she conceives and gives birth to God, which she does. But the divine nature is what he was thinking of.
Well, Cyril, who was a sharp mind and a gifted, and he's a doctor of the church, I mean, we have to, in his second letter, which was affirmed as dogmatic at the council, and then I'll just say a little bit about the formula of concord, of union that occurred two years later.
But he says, for this was not an ordinary man who was at first begotten of the Holy Virgin, and then the Word descended upon him. Rather, the Word united flesh to himself from his mother's womb, and is said to have undergone begetting in the flesh in order to take to himself flesh of his own.
For this reason, the Holy Fathers have not hesitated to speak of the Holy Virgin as the Mother of God, or Theotokos in Greek. Not certainly because the nature of the Word or his divinity had the origin of its being from the Holy Virgin. He's answering Nestorius' concern, and the concern that sometimes even some Protestants today have.
But because from her was generated his holy body, animated by a rational soul, a body hypostatically united to the Word, and thus it is said that the Word was begotten according to the flesh.
Sorry. Robert, that's an outstanding summation of the theology and history that leads us to this. I have to go back to something you said earlier with the Theotokos is not in the Bible.
I want to patiently say that one can grow weary of hearing this expression, where is it explicitly in the Bible? Because that's such a, dare I say, a 101 theology type of objection, or really early.
I mean, where is Trinity? Where is hypostatic union? Where is the word Bible in the Bible? We get this because we are in what used to be a post-Protestant country. I don't think we can call ourselves a Protestant country anymore.
But because we're so used to that question being posed to us, fair enough, unless it implies that scripture is the only source of revelation. And so that has to be addressed straight up when you say it's not in the Bible as if a term is not in the Bible.
Do we not believe in the Trinity? Do we not believe, if we don't believe in the hypostatic union, our discussion today is worthless.
Exactly.
Again, just a quick reference, especially those who may be faced with this more often. It's simply not a legitimate exception or rejection of a premise, of a doctrine, of a truth to say, where is it in the Bible? It's not explicitly in the Bible.
Because ironically, the Bible never says it's the only source of revelation. The Bible and the church has never, and Christianity doesn't even in general, grant by usage that things like the Trinity are not in the Bible.
But bringing us forward in your discussion, Nestorius did deny that he was talking about two persons, but he would then also say things like, the Son of God is distinct and different from the Son of David. Well, that's two persons.
That's right.
There's a bit of word crafting in the theology of Nestorius. If you're familiar with Pius XI's very strong statement on the anniversary, the 1500 anniversary of the Council of Ephesus, he makes a clear reference to the stubborn obstinacy of Nestorius.
We say that not to be against charity, but that this was not just an intellectual error that he would not respond to with correcting. And in fact, he says, de facto, he is speaking about two separate persons.
Then that said, we lose redemption. So people might say, well, aren't we being a little bit picayune about nature in person with this? If Nestorius is right, none of us are saved, Robert, because it means a God-man did not die on Calvary for us.
Only a man died on Calvary for us. That's not sufficient to pay the price for the sins of all humanity. So the surreal defense of Orthodox Christology and Mariology is what protects our salvation.
That's why it's no light matter. Calling her the Christotokos in the mind of Nestorius meant Mary is mother of only the human person, not the God-man who saves. And that's why what some have called the Ephesus syllogism, which was not used directly there, but can be derived as very simply, Jesus Christ is God.
A. B. Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ. Therefore, C. Mary is the mother of God.
Yes, absolutely right. And, you know, Cyril was a strong-willed man, but highly intelligent and absolutely Orthodox on this point, that Mary is the Theotokos, that the one she conceived in her womb was the Word of God.
And she supplies, that's why her divine maternity is so important, that she supplies the human nature and that we say in the creed that, you know, he's born out of or of the Virgin Mary, ek, you know, not just by, but out of.
She contributes to the human nature, so it's so important. And then, you know, Cyril started the council prior to even the papal legates coming, but he knew that Pope Celestine was in absolute agreement, so there was no problem there.
But then the bishops of Antioch come a little bit later, and they were upset that it had begun without them being there, and so they kind of protested, and it took two years before they could come to a formula of union, but they did agree, thanks be to God, under John of Antioch, to call Mary mother of God and accept the teaching.
So it was unified, so, and Nestorius was deposed, and at the Council of Chalcedon, some who were thought to be siding with Nestorius, Theodore of Cyre and Ibis of Edessa, had to anathematize, agree to the anathematizations of both Eutyches, who was the monophysite, the extreme monophysite, and also Nestorius, and then they were allowed to come back.
So if this is how important it is, it's been just repeated again and again, and I might say this about not being in Scripture, we know Luther said we go by Scripture alone, that's sola scriptura, but he accepted Mary as mother of God and also ever virgin.
And Calvin also, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, did accept that Mary is the mother of the Son of God, but then he writes a letter to the Calvinists in England and saying, the mother of the Son of God, but don't call her that, because it will lead to the superstitions of the papists.
So I mean, you believe it, but then you don't want to use the title. It's so bizarre. And then it was liberal Protestants in the 19th century, maybe some in the 18th, who began questioning calling Mary mother of God, and now some evangelical Christians later, they just because they want to say, well, we're not Catholic, that's a Catholic teaching.
It's not just a Catholic teaching. It's the Anglicans, traditionally accepted Eastern Orthodox, if you deny that Mary is Theotokos, they'll let you know that you're in error.
Absolutely. No, it's true, Robert. And there is a creeping historianism in our own day, and that's why it's worth all these distinctions. There are, again, evangelical authors who have so much that they want to distance themselves from a Catholic concept of this.
A, they say the obvious, well, Mary's not the mother of God, the Father. Well, of course she's not. The church has never said, well, Mary's not the mother of the Holy Spirit. Of course she's not. But then, and that's a more general reason they don't like, you know, calling Mary mother of God, but that's a lack of clarity and understanding of what happens at Ephesus, what the church means by that.
The church means that Mary is mother of God, the Son made man, not mother of the Father or mother of the Spirit. But then, again, it gets a little bit more concerning because you've got one evangelist, for example, saying Mary is nothing more than an incubator.
She is a human incubator and shouldn't get any more respect than that. She only gave flesh, and that's, I would hate for his own mother to read this comment about our blessed mother. I wonder if he calls his mother an incubator.
But so much do they have inelastic against the church's teaching that they violate all generations will call me blessed, even in an imperfect understanding of that, calling Our Lady an incubator in really derogatory terms.
But they're setting up, again, an historianism where we're going to lose, we would lose our salvation if they're right. So much are they opposed to this title, but they're really fighting Jesus. They're really opposing the Redeemer, the God man who saves us when you're going after this.
Exactly, exactly. I mean, I had one Protestant tell me Mary is the mother of the body of Jesus, or Mary is the mother of the human nature. But what mother gives birth to a nature? What mother gives birth to just a body? Mothers give birth to persons.
I'm so glad you bring that up, because it brings us to the two corollary understandings which are necessary for really understanding this dogma. The first is, what is motherhood? And the second is, what does Mary give to the hypostatic union, and what does she not give?
Well, classically, motherhood is defined as when a woman, with the help of a man, provides an offspring with a nature identical to her own through a process of conception, gestation, and birth. Now, I wouldn't put that on a Mother's Day card, but it's accurate. That's what motherhood is.
Now, when we say, for example, that Elizabeth is the mother of John the Baptist, we're not saying that Elizabeth insoles John. That's an act that's done by Almighty God at the moment of conception. But you still call Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist.
So, Mary gives to Jesus what our mothers gave to you and me and all of our viewers, a nature identical to her own. And in this case, it was an immaculate nature, an immaculate human nature.
But, and this is a critical adage, it's a human nature inseparably united to the Word, hypostatically united to the Word. So that when Mary gives birth to Jesus, we can truly say she's giving birth to God, to God the Son made man.
So again, don't go Nestorian and try to separate Jesus into two persons. That's the error of the past, and it's the error of the present in some unfortunate cases as well.
Exactly. And it was 1972, I think, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Paul VI had to address some Christological errors, and that some were separating Jesus, you know, Jesus from his divinity, almost. So it's almost like making two persons.
So these errors come up again and again, or you have Schleiermacher, you know, at the beginning of the 18th century, really beginning of the 19th century, that is saying Jesus was the one with the highest God consciousness, you know, so that this is, it's ultimately a denial of the divinity of Christ.
And we have to preserve both his humanity and his divinity, but he's consubstantial with God from all eternity, but he's consubstantial with us after the Incarnation. The Council of Chalcedon teaches that.
So he shares our humanity, full humanity, and Pope Leo the Great said that from the mother he assumed nature, not guilt, you know, natura non culpa. I think this is an embryonic testimony to her immaculate conception.
So he has a full human nature from his mother, but he didn't contract any guilt. So it's almost like an intuition of what would later be developed into the immaculate conception. But you know, all of this, the divine maternity, as we could call it, or Mary as mother of the word incarnate, is so important for all of Mariology and also for Christology.
It's so central. Maybe you could talk about why it's so central.
Well, yeah, certainly. In fact, it reminds me that, you know, Cardinal Ratzinger speaks about his own Marian conversion in the Ratzinger report. And originally he thought things like, you know, Mary, certainly Bernard's statement, De Maria Nunquam Satis, he thought that was too much, you know, about Mary never enough, but also Mary as crusher of the heresies.
But in fact, the mother inner very being as providentially given by God is a existential ontological protection of the errors and the heresies of the early church.
Because, you know, what do we have in the first seven centuries, Robert, we have those who attack the hypostatic union in different ways. And again, what's the hypostatic union one divine person, a fully divine nature of fully human nature.
So some want to attack his divinity and there we have the Aryans. Others want to attack his humanity, then we have the monotheists. Some want to attack their union.
And then we have the historians, and it goes on and on. The truth about Galatians 4.4 protects us from all of those heresies. God in the fullness of time, God sent his son born of a woman, a human woman.
And even when the angel says the child in the enunciation in Luke 1.13 and following the child born to you shall be called son of God.
Well, Mary is the mother of the son of God, the reference in Elizabeth, the reference again of St. Paul. And so that's not accidental. The truth about the mother protects the full truth about Jesus in this unique hypostatic union, which will never be repeated in history.
The God-man. And that's why we can say Jesus is both son of the father and son of Mary, but he's not two sons.
He's one son receiving his divinity from the father, his humanity from the mother, and doing so both to be the high point of creation, as we'd say, in a Franciscan mode, and also for the sake of the redemption, which we say in a Thomistic mode.
Exactly. And as Chalcedon put it, the two natures come together in the one person without confusion or change, but without division or separation into one hypostasis, one prosopon, one persona, but one hypostasis.
The hypostatic union is so important. Hypostasis translates as person. We say, well, what is a person? Well, Boethius defined it in individual substance of a rational nature, but St. Thomas perceived this with the divine persons, they're not three substances.
So he said it would be better to speak of three subsistences. Well, a subsistence then would be, as a person, would be a unique subject of an intellectual nature that cannot be communicated or shared with another. Persons communicate with each other, but you cannot communicate or share in comune, in common, your personhood with another.
So this is, we're each unique. So the hypostatic union is, this is the unique hypostasis, incommunicable subsistence of the word of God that took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. I mean, this is scriptural, you know, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. How did he become flesh? Ex Maria Vergine, out of the womb of the Virgin Mary.
And as you, you know, I have to think of Wojtyla, our beloved St. John Paul II, because he says in the person and act and even love and responsibility, Boethius is right, but it has to go beyond, beyond just an individual substance with an intellect and a will, a rational nature.
And as Wojtyla says, it's a person whose only appropriate response to is love and the inability to assert the I, not E-Y-E, but capital I of someone else. That's part of that individuality of person.
And so that's what our Lord has. That's what our mother contributes in terms of giving him a human nature, like his own, just like our mothers gave to us, but in this unity. And Robert, we're out of time, but maybe you could also just add, we mentioned this beautiful insights about Nestorianism and what happened in terms of even some members of the leaders, the followers of Nestorian,
historically coming to a Orthodox position in time. If you could just give us a brief summary, because I find it fascinating.
Yes, exactly. You know, Nestorius was not hardly mentioned until around the early seventh century. They mostly tried to follow Theodore of Mopsuestia. But then almost like by intuition, one of their greatest theologians, Babaeus the Great, you know, who died in 628, he issued a creed, which became substantial, which is really why maybe we shouldn't call the Church of the East Nestorian.
And of course, in 1994, there was the joint Christological declaration with John Paul II, where they accept calling Mary mother of God. But this is from Babaeus the Great. And he says, there are two natures, divine and human, united in Christ. Therefore, there was only one son and one union person. God, the word, is consubstantial with the Father. And because of the union, the Blessed Mary is called mother of God and mother of man.
He sounds like Cyril.
Yes.
So that's the beauty of time, even the fact that it took two years to get the final unity. But the council, what St. Cyril gives to us as a doctor of the Church, and it's still such a foundation in a real sense, all the other truths can be seen as deriving from this first dogma.
Although there's been some, you know, it's been posed as the fundamental principle of Mariology, but I think there's other possible dimensions that can also further explicate Our Lady's relationship to humanity.
Things like mother of the redemption, mother of the Redeemer, but also mother of the redeemed, which is always founded on the Theotokos, but it includes us.
And I think that is at least arguably a rich model as well, in terms of where we start when we ask, what is the truth about Mary?
Yes, and being the mother, first of all, it communicates her intimacy with God. You know, there's this intimacy between mother and son, which we can't even fathom.
That's why it's an indissoluble bond, as Vatican II put it. But then also being the mother of the incarnate Word, Christ, who's the head of the Church, she becomes the mother of the members of the Church.
And then she also unites with him in his offering, which we'll talk about in a future episode about Mary and co-redemption. But all of this is grounded in that intimate bond between Mary and Jesus, the incarnate Word.
And this is why she's been described by Pope Francis and others as the bridge between us and God. As St. Francis of Assisi said, she made, you know, the Lord of glory, our brother.
And that's why I think if we talk about a fundamental principle of Mariology, I think it would do the mother's heart well if all of her human children were in some way included in that foundational, because the intimacy she has with our Lord, which is, you know, unutterable.
She also, to a really great degree, shares with us. She's our mother with that same intimacy. And you want the first truth about the mother to also reflect the full love of the mother. Incredible love of Jesus, which is almost beyond words, but also this incredible maternal love for each one of us as the spiritual mother of all peoples.
So, well, Robert, listen, thank you for a wonderful synthesis and so much richness. And I want to thank our viewers. We've got a number of very kind and positive responses for our humble efforts in a master class in Mariology.
And we're grateful it serves some purpose in trying to relay the full truth about Our Lady. I think Robert would agree. We will still fail miserably because the truth about the mother is so extraordinary, but it's a lot of fun trying. So, Robert, thanks so much for being with us for this episode.
And in our next episode, we will continue to discuss Marian dogma and we will proceed to what is commonly accepted as the second historic Marian dogma, Our Lady's threefold virginity before the birth of Jesus, during the birth of Jesus, and after the birth of Jesus. So thanks so much for being with us. Robert, thanks again for your invaluable contribution.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. We give thanks to the Holy Mother of God. That's what they said. It's reported that at Ephesus, after the definition, the crowds were saying, Hail, Holy Mother of God, Mother of God, you know, Theotokos, Theotokos.
Yeah, yeah. A chant today, we'd only get a football game, but back then they did it for ecumenical councils. So they had something right. Very good. Thanks so much for being with us. God bless you all.
God bless you.