Vatican Rejects Over-the-Top Claims About the Virgin Mary. Trad Catholics Rebel

The Vatican is beginning to look and taste a lot like Das Lebkuchenhaus — the Gingerbread House in the fairytale, Hansel and Gretel. In the Brothers Grimm story, the brother and sister are lost and hungry in the forest when they find a witch’s Lebkuchenhaus.

“When they came closer, they saw that the little house was built entirely from bread with a roof made of cake, and the windows were made of clear sugar,” Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm tell us in the enchanting story that has transported wide-eyed children to the magical world of make-believe.

Hansel reaches up and breaks off a little of the roof to see how it tastes, while Gretel stands next to the windowpanes and nibbles at them.

The witch leads them into the house. “Then she served them a good meal: milk and pancakes with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterward, she made two nice beds for them, decked in white. Hansel and Gretel went to bed, thinking they were in heaven,” write the Brothers Grimm.

Many Protestants who convert to Roman Catholicism often do so because they stumble across what they imagine is a hermeneutical Lebkuchenhaus. This chimerical house of candy is an internet illusion manufactured by the witches’ coven of Catholic apologetics. The witch assures potential converts that they will find sanctuary in Rome’s Lebkuchenhaus. Here, she claims, the magic wand of the Magisterium will sweep away epistemological confusion and interpretative dissonance.

The witch guarantees that the convert will possess the golden chain of doctrinal consistency under the silver canopy of ecclesial unity if they join the “One True Church.” Protestants who are mesmerised by the witch’s spell fall for the myth of magisterial continuity.

With a wicked wink and an impish giggle, the witch sings her lullaby as she tucks the credulous convert into bed: Roma locuta, causa finita est. Rome has spoken; the matter is finished.

The convert sleeps serenely, thinking he is in heaven. Then, on October 4, he is rudely woken from his slumber by Rome’s diktat on Mary, which cautions against according her the titles of “Co-redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of All Graces.” Mater Populi Fidelis isn’t inconsequential. It is signed by Pope Leo and issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). It is unambiguously designated a “Doctrinal Note,” and not “prudential advice.”

Tradcon Commentariat Prediction Misfires

The Catholic slugfest over the Vatican’s mutation of Marian doctrine is riotously farcical. Even before Rome has spoken, tradcon (traditionalist and conservative) pundits have begun hysterically speculating on what Rome would say about Mary.

Two months before the publication of Mater Populi Fidelis, the National Catholic Reporter interviews Mariologist Mark Miravalle, who breathlessly announces that he “has been struck by the clear and profound Marian references Leo XIV has made in these first 100 days of his pontificate.” The NCR headline thunders: Mariologist Sees ‘Providential’ Signs in Pope Leo XIV’s Marian Devotion. Miravalle prognosticates: “Leo XIV will proclaim the long-awaited and long-petitioned proclamation of a fifth Marian dogma … proclaiming Mary as Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces, and Advocate for humanity.” Because “the heart of Pope Leo is Marian” and half his coat of arms is “unmistakably Marian,” Miravalle observes.

Eric Sammons, the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine, trumpets on X: “I look forward to Our Blessed Mother being officially declared as Co-Redemptrix. I also look forward to a legion of Catholics ready to defend the title to our Protestant brethren.”

Alas, for Prophet Sammons, Catholics are now having to defend the Vatican’s Olympic-style somersault before Protestants, who are engaged in the most jubilant carnival of schadenfreude since Pope Francis announced in 2016 that Martin Luther had got it right on sola fide. 

Tradcon Catholics Break Ranks With Rome

But instead of meekly chanting Roma locuta, causa finita est, the tradcon punditry begins vociferously protesting against the pope, like the foot soldiers of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, the minute the document hits the web. For the convert, the candy, chocolate, and sugar of Grimm Brothers’ Lebkuchenhaus suddenly turns into Harry Potter’s Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans, tasting of earwax and vomit.

The Catholic media, Crux (awarded the privilege of the first exclusive interview with Pope Leo XIV), captures the king-sized fiasco in its headline: New document about ‘Co-redemptrix’ opens hornet’s nest in Church. The Catholic sedevacantist website Novus Ordo Watch erupts with sociopathic schadenfreude, headlining its story: Mayhem Unfolds as Leo XIV Decides Against Marian Titles ‘Co-Redemptrix’ and ‘Mediatrix of All Graces.’

The high priests of traditionalist Catholicism don their homemade zucchetti and sit on their self-made cathedrae pontificating why Pope Leo and the DDF are execrably wrong to rule that “it is always inappropriate to use the title ‘Co-redemptrix’ to define Mary’s cooperation.” The self-appointed interpreters of Scripture and Tradition (who never miss an opportunity to berate Protestants for rejecting Rome’s magisterium) spin out lists of previous popes and saints who referred to Mary as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all Graces and insist they will defy Rome’s diktat on Mary.

A wag on X sums up the shipwreck of the Titanic in five words: “Today we are all magisterium,” responding to trad Catholic influencer Taylor Marshall.

Most ironically, tradcon priests and bishops jump on the Magisterium-smashing juggernaut and, in no uncertain terms, tell the Holy Father that he is wrong and they are right. The Transalpine Redemptorists issue their own doctrinal note: “The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer do not accept this new teaching.” They accuse Rome of flirting with the Jansenist heresy. 

Why Should Catholics Trust an Auxiliary Bishop Over the Pope?

In a YouTube interview, Bishop Athanasius Schneider upbraids Mater Populi Fidelis as “sad” because it “downplayed” the “honour” of Mary. Schneider has erected his own parallel magisterium in his book Credo: A Compendium of the Catholic Faith, which serves as a Catechism to correct what he sees as the errors of the Second Vatican Council. In his jeremiad, Schneider rubbishes the document as “an example of Marian minimalism.” Maybe he’s right. But if Catholics cannot trust the Bishop of Rome, why should they trust the Auxiliary Bishop of Kazakhstan?

Schneider argues that his brand of Mariology has existed “since the beginning.” But this is pious piffle. Catholic scholars diligently demonstrate that Marian devotion began to creep into the church only after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. It was practically non-existent before then, except among heretical groups like the Kollyridians. In his monograph, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology, S. Benko shows how many historians would “point to Marian piety as the natural outgrowth of the goddess-cults in the ancient world.” Far from opposing Roman Mariology, Benko endorses it while at the same time arguing that “it is paganism baptised, pure and simple.”

Meanwhile, our Protestant convert nibbling on the witch’s bonbons in her Lebkuchenhaus is poised to puke as he watches a mob of tradcon Catholics with pitchforks and torches surrounding the Apostolic Palace and yelling: “Crucify Leo! Crucify Tucho! We have no magisterium but our own!”

The banner flashing across the screen in the Lifesitenews interview with Fr. Charles Murr screams: “Vatican’s Rejection of Co-Redemptrix Title Marks New Low in Modernist Agenda.” Murr seethes from his soapbox: “No Catholic that I know is happy about it. Protestants are happy about it.” Murr then spouts off the hackneyed caricature of Protestants dissing Mary. They do not even call her the “Blessed Virgin Mary,” he blusters. Never mind his ignorance of Protestantism; Murr doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea that Anglicans and Catholics have an agreement on Mary titled “The Place of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Life and Doctrine of the Church.” And the Lutherans and Catholics hammered out an agreed statement on Mary in 1990! Doesn’t Murr know that many Protestant churches honour Mary in the feasts associated with her: Annunciation, Visitation, Purification, and Christmas? But fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and Murr pokes his pitchfork up the pope’s posterior, shrieking: “It’s sacrilegious. It’s blasphemous. It’s an outrage.”

And it’s not just respectful dissent against Rome, as is obvious from the screeds of the tradcon lynch mob just cited. Fr. James Mawdsley, a holocaust denier, tells Catholic Unscripted that Rome’s ruling on Mary is “evil” and “pure poison.” Mawdsley, a rabid antisemite, trashes the document, the DDF, and Pope Leo as “useless.” 

Repent and Return to the Rock

How do you solve a problem like Maria? First, recognise that Rome herself is responsible for centuries of overblown Mariology, which it has finally and bravely decided to tamp down. An example par excellence of the roots of Rome’s hyperbolised Mariology is the mistranslation of Genesis 3:16 in the Vulgate, which reads: “she [Mary] shall crush your head” instead of “he [Jesus] shall crush your head.” The Vatican finally corrected the copyist’s error in the Nova Vulgata of 1979. If Rome cannot get its Bible translation right (and for centuries refused to derive its doctrine from the original languages of Scripture — Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), how can you trust its magisterium to get the interpretation right?

Second, concede that the Lebkuchenhaus of Rome’s magisterium is a dystopian delusion. “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” because most Catholics don’t give a hoot about it anyway. When Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, declaring artificial contraception to be gravely wrong, theologians, bishops, and priests dissented in droves. Survey after survey has revealed that the overwhelming majority of Catholics promptly shredded Humanae Vitae and placed wholesale orders for pills and condoms. Now, tradcon Catholics are aping their liberal counterparts. The Catholic apologetic sales pitch of unity under a centralised papacy is fiction.

Third, acknowledge that an authoritative magisterium does not eliminate the conundrum of interpreting the Apostolic Deposit; it exacerbates it. You now need an interpreter to interpret Rome’s interpretation of Scripture or Tradition, or Rome’s interpretation of its own previous documents. Or you need to fall back on private judgment (the tradcon pundits who are using their own private judgment). And you are even more confused because the pundits are disagreeing with each other and with Rome. And the magisterium is cheerfully contradicting its own previous magisterial pronouncements.

“At every stage, Rome moves one step backwards, claiming to help while simply adding another layer requiring interpretation. The infinite regress isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. It keeps you perpetually dependent, perpetually needing more ecclesial guidance, perpetually coming back for the next level of ‘authoritative’ interpretation,” writes Craig Ireland.

Fourth, if you are a tradcon Catholic, know that it is time to replace hubris with humility, triumphalism with truth, and supremacism with historical scholarship. If you are a Protestant who is licking lollipops from the Lebkuchenhaus of Rome’s magisterium, know that it is time to return to Scripture. Be like the Bereans. Paul describes them as “more noble than those in Thessalonica” because they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

Sing with the Psalmist: “Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Say with St. Augustine: “I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.” Heed Jesus’ parable of the two builders and build your house on the rock of His Word and not on the quicksand of Rome’s magisterium (or Schneider’s Credo). Jesus concludes the parable by clarifying that the rock is “these words of mine” (Matthew 6:24).

Rome’s magisterium is “ecclesial gaslighting with a Latin accent,” Ireland warns. “The emperor has no clothes. He just employs better tailors.” I would add: the new watchword of Roman Catholicism is not “Rome has spoken; the matter is finished,” but “Rome has spoken; let the debate begin.”

Canon Dr Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.