Old News is Good News

It's been over 6 years since I wrote about the grotesquerie in the Montana court room of the Honorable G Todd Baugh when he gave a slap on the wrist to Stacey Dean Rambold after Rambold raped a 14 year old girl who was a student in his high school class. The girl, who later committed suicide while the trial was pending. 

The Dishonorable G Todd Baugh

The now Dishonorable G Todd Baugh was censured and suspended as a judge by the Montana Supreme Court in 2013 for that judgment,particularly his opinion that the 14 year old victim "appeared older than her chronological age."

In a six-page ruling, the court said Baugh’s actions warranted suspension without pay for 31 days. Noting Baugh's term expires at the end of the year and that he did not seek re-election, the court said the suspension would begin on Dec. 1.

The verdict against Rambold was also overturned by the Montana Supreme Court, who sentenced Rambold to 15 years, with 5 suspended, for the rape of the girl.

The rapist, Stacey Dean Rambold

Both stories are good news, though thin justice for the young girl who was raped by her high school teacher and subsequently killed herself.

Of concern though, is the further development, from 2017, that Rambold has apparently been paroled by the State of Montana after serving only 2 1/2 years in prison,  having completed a sex offender program, and paroled to the Great State of California.

Cherice Moralez (1993-2010)

In your charity, please lift an Ave for the repose of the soul of Cherice Moralez.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

"May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs receive you at your arrival and lead you to the holy city Jerusalem. May choirs of angels receive you and with Lazarus, once a beggar, may you have eternal rest."

Pope Francis and the title of Our Lady as "Co-redemptrix" - Part 2 .... a reply to Fr. George David Byers

In my previous article, "Pope Francis and the title of Our Lady as "Co-redemptrix", I had requested that another blogger, Fr. Byers of Let Us Arise!, remove his erroneous attacks against Pope Francis. I had posted a quoted and corrected version of the message I had sent to him.

Fr. Byer did not approve that post as a reply to his blog. Instead he obliquely referred to my comments, playing off the fact that I am an architect, with another essay titled Co-Redemptrix unnecessary for faith? Un-architecting “relational signifiers”.

Suffice it to say, that Fr. Byer did not address anything of substance in terms of his errors of what the Holy Father actually said, nor even to the point of how a formal definition of "Co-Redemptrix"  might be "necessary for the Faith".  In fact, he didn't even attempt a mutually respectful discussion. Instead he engaged in straw man fallacies, multiple ad hominems, derision, sarcasm, and distortion.

And that's just in the first paragraph:

A rather anthropologically inhumane comment arrived to the blog stating “co-redemptrix as a title […] is not necessary for the faith,” and that “‘Co’ seems to be too strong of a relational signifier.” – That’s from a doctor of philosophy in theology, as it were, so to speak, who’s trying to architect Catholic faith with big words. Oooo! Big words! So, he says:

• The “‘Co’ [of co-redemptrix] seems to be too strong…”

I guess he’s a man of his time. Are we all supposed to be absolute individualists, with no “relational signifiers” that are, you know, too strong, nothing that would disturb our faith so much as to be, like, actually related to others, to God?
Bwahahahaha…. Sorry. This is actually sad.

He then set out on an indistinct path (by his own terms, a "rant") about the importance of "relational signifiers" -- a term he simultaneously derides and places in scare quotes while apparently accepting the validity and import of the words themselves.

The phrase must have stuck in his craw, since he spent quite a bit of energy describing (correctly as it happens to be) the relation we as baptized Catholics have with Our Lord, and the ways it is signified in Scripture: namely, that we are called to a process of identification with Christ -- divinization, or theosis.  But Fr. Byers never shows any Scriptural evidence that Our Lady acts as a co-redemptrix, nor that Scripture obviates any concerns about using the proper and correct relational signifiers.

Through out each of his scriptural quotes, he consistently shows how we are able to participate in the act of Christ because Christ took on our humanity to redeem us.  Nowhere does he get around to any actual objection to what I wrote, and in the middle of that, he apparently he agrees with me:

"Look. Christ is our Redeemer, alone. I know that."

Which of course is presumably the very reason that the Popes don't seem interested in trying to define "co-redemptrix", let alone make is a matter of declared dogma. Which was my point in the first place.  The Church properly avoids ambiguous language, especially in matters of Christology, which properly informs Mariology.

If Fr. Byers really knows that Christ alone is our Redeemer, and that any sense of The Blessed Virgin as "co-redemptrix" is by analogy, and that all analogy has limits, and that without a clear and precise dogmatic definition of what is to be intended and what is to be avoided by the term "co-redemptrix" that the use is subject to misunderstanding and may prove a stumbling block to ecumenism (and even so, it would probably still be subject to misunderstanding and prove a stumbling block), then I am not sure exactly what his complaint is with me.

I don't even know what the title of his latest blog post means, since he did not "unarchitect" anything but rather showed the importance of "relational signifiers", and he never made an argument for why declaring an infallible dogma of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix was necessary for the Catholic Faith.

He evidently just thinks I'm some sort of Muslim or a prostitute or something...   

I have provided a screen shot of my reply to him, since I have no reason to think that he would approve this one either. 

Pope Francis and the title of Our Lady as "Co-redemptrix"

I am posting my reply to Fr. George Byers, who on his blog Let Us Arise treats Holy Father Francis poorly and unjustly.

The title of his essay is "Pope Francis rejects seven popes on Co-redemptrix", which is a startling statement, and opens with:

"I’m going to offer a critique of Pope Francis’ impassioned rejection of Mary as Co-Redemptrix at Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe the other day, December 12, 2019"

He has several grievances, but the heart of his concern seems to be when the Pope said (by Fr. Byer's transcription and translation)

• “Quando vengan con historias de que de declarala esto a ser trato como un dogma o esto – non la perdamos in tonteras.”
• “When they come with stories of having to declare this [Mary as Co-Redemptrix] to be a dogma or whatever – let’s not lose her in stupidities.”

and concludes from that:

“Stupidities.” This, of course, is not a named, but is nonetheless a direct attack on seven previous popes, as well as, it seems to me – and this is perhaps to the point – on Mark Miravale, who has made this title of Co-Redemptrix a life project. He’s done a lot of excellent work on this. What Pope Francis does is simply offensive. If he wants to pick a fight, he should name his adversaries who are alive today instead of hiding behind a bully pulpit. All stupidities about Mary? Really?"

This is all seems fundamentally incorrect: the Holy Father did not reject seven of his predecessors in their use of the term "Co-redemptrix" and he certainly did not directly (or indirectly) attack them, and he did not call the term itself, nor its use "stupid", nor is even the term "stupidities" necessarily the best translation in this context.

I look to any Argentinian Spanish speakers to help here, realizing that Spanish words take on many regional nuances and even completely different meanings from Spain through the various Spanish speaking countries in North, Central, and South America.

From my own high school Spanish course, our first memorized dialogue ("¿Hola, Luisa, que tal?") is still ingrained in my synaptic neural network: a boy invites a girl to his birthday party, she coyly suggests he is only inviting her so he will get more birthday presents.  He replies,

¡No seas tonta! ¡No te invito por eso!

Don't be silly! I don't invite you for that!

I cannot of course speak dispostively here -- my Spanish is not that good, and I am try to construct from context what the Holy Father seems to have been suggesting: after all, immediately after admonishing people to not demand that the Church must declare Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix as a new dogma, he continues to remind us all of what can be unambiguously said of her, on the great occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe:

María es mujer, es Nuestra Señora, María es Madre de su Hijo y de la Santa Madre Iglesia jerárquica y María es mestiza, mujer de nuestros pueblos, pero que mestizó a Dios.

which seems to be something like:

Mary is the Woman, is Our Lady, Mary is the Mother of her Son and of the hierarchical Holy Mother Church, and Mary is mestiza (a 'mixed race woman'): a woman of our people, but who "mixed" with God.

I cannot bring myself to think that the Holy Father chose the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to insult the Virgin. This is the Vatican link to the official text of his homily in Spanish.

Here is the (slightly corrected) comment I made on Father Byer's blog:

I'm pretty sure tontaras (tontaria) in this case is more like "silliness" -- no nos perdamos en tonteras seems more to say, "let not lose ourselves in silliness".   And what is being said to be silly?   That we must declare Mary as Co-Redemptrix as a matter of dogma.  

Pope Francis did not call that title "stupid".  He did not say any of his predecessors were stupid. He did not reject seven of his predecessors. 

BTW, you seem to be the only one who transcribes what he said as "non la perdamos in tonteras"    Most give "No nos perdamos..." which is what it sounds like to me, though I'm not fluent in Spanish and the Argentinian accent is not something I'm familiar with. I would advise you to check on this -- "no nos perdamos en tonteras" makes sense as I have translated it -- your "Don't lose her" is not so clear since he is speaking about the claim that she must be declared Coredemptrix as a matter of necessary dogma.

Cardinal Ratzinger was also concerned for the use of the term as well. His concern seems more than just "it’s correct but the wording could be misinterpreted", but rather that the term itself "departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers, and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings."  and

"“Everything comes from Him [Christ], as the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him ...  The word ‘co-redemptrix’ would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way."  (Cardinal Ratzinger with Peter Seewald, God and the World: A Conversation). [quote taken from David Armstrong's blog on this topic].

"Co-" seems to be too strong of a relational signifier:  co-pilot, co-conspirator, cooperator, co-chair, coworker, coadjutor, etc -- this prefix implies an equality in acting; that either can do the act, and it not a term of necessary subordination.  So I think there are valid reasons the term has not been officially adopted, let alone defined. 

Above all, theological language are terms need to be precise -- the avoidance of ambiguity is important for Christology, as for Mariology.  Other popes may have used Co-Redemptrix as a title without ever defining exactly what was intended: to do so from a papal office would be to make it magisterial as a formal and official definition -- akin to a dogmatic or doctrinal definition.  I can understand why no previous Pontiff did so: it is not necessary for the Faith, and might well be imprudent to do so.  Holy Father Francis seems to say the same, though in his characteristically rougher manner.

I ask you, Father George David Byers, to retract this essay -- it is an unjust and problematic account of what the Pope actually said, and comes across as an attack on the Supreme Pontiff.

Yours in Christ,

Steven J Schloeder, PhD (Theology)
Swarthmore PA