First. That “our Lord’s humanity was to suffer as much as ... would bear a kind of proportion to the offence and realize the principle that human nature was to do as much as possible towards its own redemption.” Whence, obviously, “the distinction of necessary and unnecessary sufferings in the life of our Lord” is untenable.
Second. That “human nature was required to do more than suffer in Christ. It was required to deliberately and willingly offer up that human nature to be united to the Word of God for the purpose of redemption, by means of a representative of the whole human race.” Whence “the necessity of Mary’s consent to the Incarnation and redemption.”
Third. That “it was necessary that the highest representative of human personality, the human head of the race, should be subject also to the highest possible martyrdom which a human person may be subject to, as a reparation coming from a human personality, and unite it with the sufferings of the humanity of the Word, and thus bring its own meed of suffering required by God’s wisdom for our ransom.” “This was necessary,” he adds, “because in our Lord humanity suffered as a nature, not as a personality.”
From these deductions, then, the author concludes that “Mary’s Compassion is a necessary element of the redemption, and Mary is really and truly the corredemptrix of the human race.” But, of course, he is careful to add that “Christ alone redeemed us truly, really, and efficaciously, because he alone could give infinite value to those sufferings, and, therefore, he is the only Redeemer. Mary is the corredemptrix, but only in the sense just explained.” “Those,” he says, “who are afraid to think Mary’s sufferings necessary for our redemption are thinking only of the infinite value required for our sacrifice. Mary has nothing to do with that. In speaking of her co-operation we limit ourselves to speaking of what was required from human nature and human personality as their mite towards redemption, independent of the infinite worth to be given only by Christ’s infinite personality.”
To us, we must joyfully avow, this elaborate argument for Mary’s greater glory appears irrefragable.
What specially delights us in the fourth book, again, is to see our heavenly Mother proved the “channel” and “dispenser” of all grace. This, also, is an unspeakable gain to us. And we need not say that if, on the one hand, our learned theologian has invested his Queen with a sublimity and an awe that makes us feel how unworthy of her notice is our best of love and service, he has inspired us, on the other hand, with more confidence than ever in her tenderness and power.
Those, too, of our readers who have a turn for contemplation and have thought much on Our Lady will meet in these pages with many an idea which has come into their minds before, and which, perhaps, they have been afraid to disclose, or even harbor. Such will join with us in revelling over the logic which makes blessed certainties of these exquisite guesses.
In conclusion, we are quite unable to express our thanks to Father De Concilio for his magnificent book. But he does not need our gratitude. She whose champion he is will not fail to fulfil in his regard the promise which to him must be so precious: Qui elucidant me vitam æternam habebunt—“They who make me shine forth shall have life everlasting.”
Why a Catholic in the Nineteenth Century? By William Giles Dix. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 9 Barclay Street. 1878.
The author of this essay once contributed to The Catholic World a thoughtful article called “The Roman Gathering.” (See Catholic World, May, 1868.) He was then a Protestant. It is consoling to find him no longer among those who, while forced to envy the Catholic Church, remain outside her communion on the strength of some hazy theory or from a superstitious dread of using their reason. Having come, by God’s grace, to see the truth himself, he aims at making others see it equally clearly. He shows very forcibly, and in simple language, “that the New Testament, and the Protestant version of that, proves these propositions: