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This Christmas, How Should Jesus’s Mother Mary Be Honored?

This Christmas, How Should Jesus’s Mother Mary Be Honored?

Last updated on: December 22, 2025 at 11:58 am by Richard Ostling

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This Christmas, How Should Jesus’s Mother Mary Be Honored? 2025-12-22T11:58:24-05:00 Richard Ostling

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Statue of the Virgin Mary with her baby Jesus / anujatilj @ pixabay.com

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

How should Christians honor the Virgin Mary’s unique status as the mother of Jesus Christ? How speak of her? What believe about her?

Catholics and Protestants have well-known disagreements, but now there’s vigorous debate within Catholicism over the Vatican’s lengthy November “doctrinal note” titled Mater Populi Fidelis (“The Mother of the Faithful People”), which concludes 30 years of discussion on Mary’s role in salvation. See www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20251104_mater-populi-fidelis_en.html/

Devotees of Mary sent a last-minute appeal against this new decree to Pope Leo XIV, who approved it for publication. Then on December 8, a 23-page protest, with implicit criticism of the Pope, was issued by bishops and more than 40 scholars on the Theological Commission of the International Marian Association (IMA; text at https://internationalmarian.com/). They insist that the Holy See must now enact “substantial clarification and modification” of its new policy.

The big news is the Holy See’s declaration that “it is always inappropriate to use the title ‘Co-Redemptrix’ to define Mary’s cooperation” in salvation because that risks “eclipsing the exclusive role of Jesus Christ” as humanity’s sole Redeemer, with Mary clearly subordinate. (Some translations say it is only “inopportune.”) The Vatican does not oppose identifying Mary as the “Mediatrix,” but cautions that here, too, misunderstandings “could easily obscure the biblical truth” that there is “one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus” (I Timothy 2:5; this and Bible quotes below per official Catholic translation). The Vatican warns that designating Mary as the “Mediatrix of All Graces” in particular raises “difficulties.”

Unsuccessful Campaigns

Over five centuries, popes and countless parishioners have venerated Mary under these titles. Catholic devotees have long campaigned without success for their church to define these titles and concepts as mandatory dogmas. As of 2023, more than 8 million Catholics signed a current petition asking Rome for a Co-Redemptrix dogma.

The November decree recalls that the world’s bishops at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) purposely avoided the Co-Redemptrix title “for dogmatic, pastoral, and ecumenical reasons.” Reportedly, the Council’s closest vote was 1114-1074 against producing a separate decree on devotion to Mary. Instead, her role is integrated within the context of the Council’s Constitution on the Church. Mariologists insist the Council nonetheless affirmed the substance of co-redemption in such teachings as the “union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation.” The Council invoked Mary as “Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix and Mediatrix.”

Two new Marian dogmas have been defined by the modern papacy. In 1854, Pope Pius IX codified the Immaculate Conception, that Mary “was preserved free from all stain of original sin” from her conception. In 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption dogma, that Mary, “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” as the heavenly Queen. The popes stated that a good Catholic must affirm both beliefs.

Mary’s Catholic centrality is quotidian. She is invoked during each daily Mass. The two dogmas above are observed on “holy days of obligation” when Mass attendance is expected, Immaculate Conception (December 8, when Mary is also honored as the Patroness who protects the United States) and Assumption (August 15). Another obligatory day celebrates her as the Mother of God (January 1), and she is included in Nativity (December 25) and All Saints (November 1).

Other Dates

Other liturgical calendar dates uplift her Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (February 2), acceptance of the angel’s Annunciation (March 23), Visitation to Elizabeth (May 3), Queenship (August 22), Birth (September 8), as Our Lady of Sorrows (September 15), Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7), her own Temple Presentation (November 21), and Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12).

The most important of Mary’s many titles theologically is Mother of God, defined by the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) to affirm that Jesus is both God and man. In a 1987 encyclical, the highest level of papal teaching, John Paul II identified her as Mother of the Redeemer, Mother of the Son of God, mother of her Creator, Mother of mankind, and Mother of the living. She is also invoked as the New Eve and Queen of the Universe, Queen of Heaven, Queen of Peace, and otherwise.

The centrality of “venerating” Mary (as opposed to “worship”) includes near-universal recitation of the Rosary, wearing the Scapular, the Miraculous Medal, pilgrimages to shrines of her apparitions at Lourdes or Fatima, and continual prayers asking the heavenly Mary to intercede with God on behalf of believers’ petitions as the Dispensatrix of God’s graces.

The IMA protest worries that the devotionals are “founded upon Marian coredemption” and as “Mediatrix of all graces,” so rejecting these “doctrines” will “throw many Marian practices” into “unnecessary confusion and doubt.” Also, if prior teachings and titles from popes are now considered inappropriate, “why should the faithful have confidence in the papal Magisterium” (referring to teaching authority)?

What the Bible Says

With the biblical evidence, Matthew and Luke separately teach that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus after faithfully consenting to God’s plan, a remarkable and historic choice. She then married Joseph, who apparently adopted Jesus as his legal son. With the wedding miracle at Cana, Mary tells servants to “do whatever [Jesus] tells you.” In Mark, Jesus meets resistance in his hometown of Nazareth and says “a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house,” indicating family members and presumably Mary did not (yet) believe in him.

At the Crucifixion, Mary remains faithful while male apostles disappear and suffers along with her son, and Jesus tells John that she is now his mother, the basis for her motherhood of the church and of all believers. Mary is present with the earliest church after Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. And she is usually interpreted as the woman at both ends of the Bible, in Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12.

As for Protestants, their “Scripture alone” principle rules out the above Catholic concepts and practices, limits beliefs on Mary to biblical information, and excludes later developments. Protestants thus do not affirm “perpetual virginity,” meaning Mary and Joseph never had marital relations. That belief emerged early in church history, became defined doctrine at the Second Council of Constantinople (A.D. 553), and fostered the clergy celibacy rule that Protestants reject. Protestants cite Matthew’s statement that Joseph “had no relations with her until she bore a son” (Matthew 1:25). The Catholic Study Bible says “until” neither implies nor excludes marital relations. As for Jesus’s “brothers” and “sisters” mentioned in the Gospels, Catholics explain they were cousins or else children of Joseph with a first wife who died.

For further research, note the irenic Protestant appreciation in “Mary for Evangelicals” (InterVarsity Press) by Tim Perry, seminary dean at Canada’s Providence University College. Also significant is “The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary” from 27 theologians in the official U.S. Catholic-Lutheran dialogue.

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