Looking at our world from a theological perspective, this is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central. Good morning, everyone. It is Tuesday, November the 4th, 2025. It is currently 934 a.m. Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas, and I have some breaking news hot off the press. I've had no time to even research this. I've not had any time to look anything up. So this is very breaking news. So that means more to come. We'll have to have more in-depth conversations about this. I'll have to look some things up. But literally, I was just downstairs. I just did a broadcast. What? It feels like 10 minutes ago, 15 minutes ago. I just got that uploaded. I walked downstairs and I was kind of thinking, well, you know, you see today, he said I had seizures overnight. So it's kind of a post seizure day. I had major dental work less than 24 hours ago. You know, okay, I got the one broadcast done. It wasn't great. You know, I didn't really, I went a little longer. That kind of turned into a review. I was kind of critiquing, you know, what I had just done. I'm trying to determine, do I broadcast anymore today? You know, what should I do? Kind of just having these conversations with myself. And then I look down and I see this headline. Jesus, not Virgin Mary, Save the world, Vatican says. The headline again, Jesus, not Virgin Mary, save the world, Vatican says. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. So, I'm like, I'm just gonna go right back upstairs. I'm just gonna go live and I'm just gonna report this. And then we can, well, my listeners are some of the best researchers out there. They'll start researching and they'll start looking everything up. And then later on, maybe we can have a more further discussion, add more detail if necessary. I'm assuming you're going to see podcasts all over the place about this in the next 24 hours. I bet you're going to see even a lot of discussion about this on Sermon Audio in the next 24 hours, so it's something to pay close attention to. If you do see further discussion about this, let me know just so that I know, okay, see, I was right. I think I'm going to be right on this, but here it is. This was published, now, I found it at msn.com. I did not do any searching to see what other sources are covering this right now. So this is like, I mean, when I say I saw the headline and immediately came up here, that's exactly what has occurred, all right? Again, the headline, Jesus Not Virgin Mary Saved the World, Vatican Says. According to this, it was posted about four hours ago, all right? Then it says, Vatican City. Jesus may have heard words of wisdom from his mother Mary, but she did not help him save the world from damnation, the Vatican said on Tuesday. Now this is very important because a lot of times you'll hear people criticize Catholicism as almost making Mary a co-mediator, right? Oh, they make her a co-mediator, and that is wrong. There's only one mediator between man and God, and that is Christ Jesus. Mary was not a co-mediator in any way, shape, or form. Catholicism is wrong. Many people will offer that criticism, and now we have the Vatican saying, listen carefully, let me state this again, First paragraph of this article, Jesus may have heard words of wisdom from his mother Mary, but she did not help him save the world from damnation, the Vatican said on Tuesday. In a new decree, Approved by Pope Leo, the Vatican's top doctrinal office instructed the world's 1.4 billion Catholics not to refer to Mary as the co-redeemer of the world. No longer refer to her as the co-redeemer of the world. Don't do that. That's what the Vatican is saying. Now, this is a new decree. Let me make it very clear. I have not looked up this decree. I have not looked at the Vatican website to find this decree. So there's still lots of things that need confirmation. Let me make that just very clear. This is literally me trying to process this in real time. Next paragraph. Jesus alone saved the world, said the new instruction, settling an internal debate that has had befuddled senior church figures for decades and even sparked rare open disagreement among recent popes. It would not be appropriate to use the title Co-Redemptrix, said the text. This title creates confusion and imbalance and the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith. Now that co-redemptrix, a lot of times that's been discussed and debated. Do Catholics teach that Mary's the co-redemptrix, the co-redeemer? And if so, that's majorly a problem, right? And so this has been an ongoing conversation, and it's been debated within Catholicism as well. Catholics believe that Jesus redeemed humanity by his crucifixion and death. Church scholars have debated for centuries whether Mary, who Catholics and many Christians call the Mother of God, helped Jesus save the world. The late Pope Francis fiercely opposed granting Mary the title of co-redeemer and at one point calling the idea foolishness. She never wanted to take anything for herself from her son, Francis who died in April said in 2019. France's predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, also opposed the title. His predecessor, John Paul II, supported it, but stopped using the title publicly in the mid-1990s after the doctrinal office began expressing skepticism. So there's been debate, but it's been pretty much, I think even within most Catholic circles, saying, hey, hey, let's not do that. That's not the way to go. Now, the last paragraph here is this. The new Vatican instruction highlighted Mary's role as an intermediary between God and humanity. By giving birth to Jesus, she opened the gates of the redemption that all humanity had awaited, it said. According to the Bible, Mary's response to the angel who told her she would become pregnant was, let it be. The end. That's the end of the article. It's very short. There's not even a link. One of the things that drives me crazy about modern day journalism is you post things online and you're making a reference to something else that is typically available online. So provide a link to the additional source so that I can click on it and immediately see the decree that you are referring to. But currently I don't have a link to the decree because I haven't even had a chance to look it up. Let me just summarize. The headline, Jesus, not Virgin Mary, saved the world, the Vatican says. Jesus may have heard words of wisdom from his mother, Mary, but she did not help him save the world from damnation, the Vatican said on Tuesday. In a new decree approved by Pope Leo, the Vatican's top doctrinal office has instructed the world's 1.4 billion Catholics not to refer to Mary as the co-redeemer of the world. Do not refer to her as that, as some had done and maybe devotional Catholicism. Some have kind of done that, and now they're being told, don't do that anymore. They're being instructed not to do that. How will this be received? Will there be any pushback? If there's pushback, it'll be primarily probably, I'm assuming, from American Catholics, but that's just my guess. But we'll see how well this is received. It would be interesting to hear how Catholic parishes are going to handle this on Sunday during Mass. I'm assuming this is going to get brought up in almost every Catholic church on Sunday during Mass, and they're going to be like, no longer refer to Mary as co-redeemer. So that's been a major criticism offered towards Catholicism, and now the Catholic church just said, no, no, or nobody should be referring to her as co-redeemer. So that criticism will have to be—well, pastors who offer that criticism will have to stop and now offer what has actually been decreed by Pope Leo as of today. Now, I don't know the decree, where it falls, because within the Catholic system, different documents have different levels of authority. How authoritative is this? Is this a decree? This is binding. Do not refer to Mary as co-redeemer. Within the Catholic magisterial system, how much authority, how much force is given to this? Is it just a suggestion or is it like basically no, that's not acceptable, it's no longer acceptable within Catholic theology or Catholic doctrine to refer to Mary as co-redeemer? I don't know. I have lots of questions. I do not have lots of answers, but I just literally saw this a few minutes ago. I wanted to get up here and let everyone know. So what should you do? One, do due diligence and do research. We need to find the actual decree from the Vatican. We need to look it up, and then we'll need to read it for ourselves. So let's work on doing that. Two, be very careful if If you're seeing different people say different things, what you need to focus on is what the decree says, not what anybody else is saying about the decree first and foremost. And then we need to figure out what level of authority this decree has, and then it'll be mainly I'm not really worried about what the non-Catholics are saying. I'm going to be more interested in how different Catholic parishes are handling this in their homilies and how it's going to be handled Sunday at Mass when they will have a larger crowd there. Is that what the entire homily is going to be about? A correct understanding now of what they should believe about Mary. So, there you have it. Breaking news! We'll get more information and then we will try to report that to you at an appropriate time, right? There you go. Thank you for listening. Everyone have a great day. God bless.