Peace, Advent and The Event

Advent reminds us of the great messianic tradition we have inherited from Judaism. The liturgical calendar embraces the kairos, the seasonality, the right-timeness of hopeful anticipation, the catching a glimpse of something approaching from the horizon. Liturgically, we come before God, love, joy and peace. Something’s coming, familiar and strange, known and as if unknown. If we let it free, it comes at us completely new. Something must be truly free so it can release itself, give itself.

The evangelist of Matthew’s gospel presents the Nativity as an event so surprising, so expectant and unexpected, that the earth alone cannot contain it, cannot bear it alone; and so he gives us its extension in the heavens, a supernova, a release of cosmic energy arriving just in time to herald an event of astronomical magnitude; yet more than just a herald, a light to the nations. 

Pax in terris. A righteous hope or a cruel joke for the holidays? Sometimes it seems the public sphere has lost its stomach for peace, hope and revelation. Here in the United States many of us prefer freedom from religion to freedom of religion, prefer to think religious things as if a 19th century child, something seldom seen and never heard. Where is the peace? Where can a sea of faith rest its head? When Motl Kamzoil asks, after hopefully suggesting that it would be a good time for the Messiah to come now, now that his community has been exiled from the shtetl, the Rabbi simply says, “we will have to wait for him someplace else.”

Where shall we wait for the Messiah? In our homes, in a closet, in a shrinking recess of our hearts? How will peace ever find its way to where it needs to be that way? Advent bears the progeny of divine love, of an irrevocable event of peace in the irrevocable event of the union of the human and the divine.

Advent speaks of and to interstellar and intrastellar happenings. Advent truly speaks to the heart, to the secret places, to the slivers of the smallest spaces. Advent also speaks in the larger spaces, in those places in desperate need of peace. It is a message of peace, and if something other than peace is heard, I suppose we’ve forgotten how to hear.

Mater Populi Fidelis, An Opportune Moment

On 4 November 2025 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (formerly the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Holy Office) promulgated into the ordinary magisterium of the Catholic Church Mater Populi Fidelis, perhaps the dicastery's final word on titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary. In particular, the document, named a "doctrinal note," forcefully discourages the loosely used and problematic Marian titles, "Co-Redemptrix" and "Co-Mediatrix," arguing that only Christ Jesus redeems and mediates humanity, while doing no harm to the honor, the hyperdulia, due the Mother of God. The language of the note is concilatory but firm, and should be a win-win, a win for both Mariology and Christology.

The doctrinal note adds clarity for both those with high and low Mariologies. I imagine the document will comes as something of a disappointment for those who embrace extremely high Mariologies, for example Vox Populi Mariae Mediatrici, a lay group whose intellectual wing resides (or resided) in Steubenville, OH, at the Franciscan University, where theologian and strong advocate for the promulgation of a fifth Marian dogma, Professor Mark Miravalle, indefatigably championed the cause. In no way can Catholics construe Vox Populi as dissenting from Church teaching on the honor and prerogatives of Mary, or as remotely schismatic, or proto-schismatic. The membership in the group understands full well Catholic Christology, and understands the terms co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix in a way that poses no threat to Catholic orthodoxy; but the Dicastery nonetheless determined that those terms, however nuanced, would confuse rather than enlighten those Catholics (and Christians in general) whose catechesis is limited to the essentials and fundamentals of the faith.

The number of Marian dogmas will remain at 4, and the mysteries contained in them offer vast spiritual nourishment for those whose Mariologies run the gamut. These dogmas become intelligible only through the lens of sound Christology. Marian apparitions, the most famous of which move the devotions of many toward the terms now to be avoided when thinking of Mary, should garner reconsideration, not of their recognition, but of their meaning in proper devotion and sound theology.