Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and the Franciscan Tradition: The Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv: Volume 4

By Peter Damian Fehlner OFM Conv. and R. Trent Pomplun

In this fourth volume of Collected Essays, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and the Franciscan Tradition, Peter Damian Fehlner traces the development of the Franciscan theologies of redemption, co-redemption, and the Immaculate Conception as they both flow from and return to a very concrete spirituality rooted in devotion to the persons of Jesus and Mary. The main protagonists in these studies are the towering figures of Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. Framed within an ecclesiological and sacramental worldview, shaped by the correlative and markedly Franciscan doctrines of the Absolute Primacy of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception, Fehlner outlines the theological background and rationale for affirming Mary's co-redemptive role in creation and salvation history. In articulating this great vision of the church, Fehlner discloses the Catholic and Franciscan understanding of Tradition and its progressive penetration and integration of doctrinal and devotional development into the life of the church. For Fehlner, Mary's co-redemptive association with her Son and her union in charity with the Holy Spirit provides both the primary instance of and the hermeneutical key for prayerfully receiving and living the mysteries of our salvation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Sep 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781532663888

Peter Damian Fehlner OFM Conv.

Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv. (1931–2018), was a Franciscan priest and theologian. For nearly forty years he taught theology in Franciscan schools and seminaries in Italy and the United States. He is the author of several books and countless articles in theological and pastoral journals. His final work was published posthumously as The Theologian of Auschwitz: St. Maximilian Kolbe on the Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church (2019).

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Chapter 1: Fr. Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M.: His Mariology and Scholarly Achievement, originally appeared in Marian Studies 43 (1992) 17–59. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol43/iss1/7

Chapter 2: The Mystery of Co-redemption according to the Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure, originally appeared as Il mistero della Corredenzione secondo secondo il dottore seraphico san Bonaventura, in Maria Corredentrice: Storia e Theologia II: Scuola Francescana, 11–91 (Frigento: Casa Mariana, 1999).

Chapter 3: The Sense of Marian Co-Redemption in St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus, originally appeared in Mary at the Foot of the Cross–I, 103–18 (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2000).

Chapter 4: The Marian Discourses of St. Bonaventure, originally appeared as Il discorsi mariani di san Bonaventura, in Immaculata Mediatrix 4 (2004) 17–65.

Chapter 5: Mary and the Eucharist in St. Bonaventure, originally appeared in Immaculata Mediatrix 5 (2005) 311–38.

Chapter 6: The Franciscan Mariological School and the Co-redemptive Movement, originally appeared in Marian Studies 59 (2008) 59–88. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol59/iss1/8

Chapter 7: The Concept of Redemption in the Franciscan-Scotistic School: Salvation, Redemption, and the Primacy of Christ, originally appeared in Mary at the Foot of the Cross–VIII, 111–56 (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2008).

Chapter 8: "The Debitum Justitiae and the Debitum Peccati: An appendix to Rosini’s Mariology of Bl. John Duns Scotus," originally appeared in Ruggero Rosini, Mariology of Blessed John Duns Scotus, 255–83 (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2008).

Chapter 9: Sources of Scotus’s Mariology in Tradition, originally appeared in Bl. John Duns Scotus and His Mariology, 235–94 (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2009).

Chapter 10: Coredemption and Assumption in the Franciscan School of Mariology: The ‘Franciscan Thesis’ as Key, originally appeared in Mariological Studies in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe–I, 163–249 (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2013).

Chapter 11: Total Consecration to the Immaculate Heart and the Mariology of St. Bonaventure, originally appeared in Mariological Studies in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe–I, 251–330 (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2013).

Appendix 1: Review of De Scriptura et Traditione, originally appeared in Miscellanea Francescana 64 (1964) 103–19.

Appendix 2: Foreword: Prologus Ordinationis Scoti, originally appeared in Giovanni Duns Scoto, Prologo dell’Ordinatio, i–xiii (Frigento: Casa Mariana, 2006).

Appendix 4: Introduction to Carolus Franciscus Varesius, Promptuarium Scoticum, for the Series Scripta Scotistica Antiqua, originally appeared in Carolus Franciscus Varesius, Promptuarium Scoticum: Scripta Scotistica Antiqua, i–vi (Frigento: Casa Mariana, 2005).

Abbreviations

1 Cel. Thomas of Celano. S. Francisci Assisiensis Vita et Miracula. Edited by Eduardus Alenconiensis. Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre, 1906.

2 Cel. Thomas of Celano. Vita secunda S. Francisci. Analecta Franciscana, vol. 10. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1927.

Brev. Bonaventure. Breviloquium. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 201–91. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

CE Fehlner, Peter Damian. The Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv., 8 vols. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2023.

Chr. mag. Bonaventure. Christus unus omnium magister. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 567–79. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

CK Kolbe, Maximilian. Konferencje ascetyczne: notatki słudiaczy z przemówień Ojca Maksymiliana Kolbego. Niepokalanów: OO. Franciszkanie, 1976.

Col. Jn. Bonaventure. Collationes in Evangelium Ioannis. In vol. 6 of Opera Omnia, 535–634. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

Comm. Luc. Bonaventure. Commentarius in evangelium S. Lucae. Vol. 7 of Opera Omnia. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1895.

Comm. Jn. Bonaventure. Commentarius in Evangelium Ioannis. In vol. 6 of Opera Omnia, 239–532. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

Corp. Chr. Bonaventure. Sermo de sanctissimo corpore Christi. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 553–66. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

De don. Spir. Bonaventure. Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 457–503. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

Hex. Bonaventure. Collationes in Hexaëmeron. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 329–454. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

I, II, III, IV Sent. Bonaventure. Commentarius in IV libros Sententiarum. In vols. 1–4 of Opera Omnia. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1882–89.

Itin. Bonaventure. Itinerarium mentis in Deum. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 295–313. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

Lect. I, II, III John Duns Scotus. Doctoris Subtilis et Mariani Ioannis Duns Scoti Ordinis Fratrum Minorum opera omnia, vols. 16–21. Edited by Charles Balic, Barnaba Hechich, et al. Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1960–2004.

Leg. maj. Bonaventure. Legenda maior. In vol. 8 of Opera Omnia, 504–564. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1898.

Lig.vit. Bonaventure. Lignum vitae. In vol. 8 of Opera Omnia, 68–86. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1898.

Myst. Trin. Bonaventure. Quaestiones disptuatae de mysterio Trinitatis. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 45–115. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

Ord. I, II, III, IV. John Duns Scotus. Doctoris Subtilis et Mariani Ioannis Duns Scoti Ordinis Fratrum Minorum opera omnia, vols. 1–14. Edited by Charles Balic, Barnaba Hechich, et al. Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1950–2013.

Scien. Chr. Bonaventure. Quaestiones disputatae de scientia Christi. In vol. 5 of Opera Omnia, 3–43. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891.

ST Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Opera Omnia. Vols. 4–12. Rome: Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1888–1903.

Vitis myst. Bonaventure. Vitis mystica sive tractatus de passione Domini. In vol. 8 of Opera Omnia, 159–229. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1898.

WK Maximilian Kolbe. The Writings of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, 2 vols. Florence: Nerbini International, 2016.

Abbreviations for Distinctions in Individual Texts

a. articulus

ad ad oppositum

au. articulus unicus

c. capitulum

col. collatio

con. contra

d. distinctio

fm. fundamentum

n. numerus

opp. oppositum

prol. prologus

prooem. prooemium

q. quaestio

resp. respondeo

Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner and the Franciscan Mariological Tradition

Trent Pomplun

University of Notre Dame

Introduction

It is sometimes said that Americans have made little contribution to the church’s doctrinal traditions beyond the work of John Courtney Murray (1904–67). Had a great Marian silence not descended upon the church after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), theologians would be obliged to acknowledge the American contribution to Mariology, most notably in the works of Dominic Unger (1907–82), Juniper Carol (1911–90), and Peter Damian Fehlner (1931–2018). Of these three American Franciscans, Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner left the most impressive body of philosophical and theological writings, most of which are unknown to professional theologians outside the Franciscan family. This volume of the Collected Essays gathers eleven articles, addresses, and book chapters on St. Bonaventure’s doctrine of Mary’s coredemption and its development in Bl. Duns Scotus and the larger Franciscan Mariological tradition.¹

These essays, which were written for various audiences and purposes, vary accordingly in length and tone. Some of the shorter ones are clearly intended as learned introductions to certain aspects of the Franciscan Mariological tradition. Some are more technical, showing Fr. Peter to display a scholastic apparatus and rigor rarely seen since the Second Vatican Council. I tend to think of them as two movements followed by a coda, with each movement beginning with an historical survey of Franciscan Mariology and developing a particular dimension of Fr. Peter’s Mariology. The first movement, comprising the five essays written between 1992 and 2005, takes up the theme of coredemption in the writings of St. Bonaventure and explores its manifest variations and applications. The second movement, comprising the essays written between 2008 and 2013, integrates the Seraphic Doctor’s understanding of Mary’s coredemption into the larger Franciscan Mariological tradition, allowing St. Bonaventure to take his rightful place alongside Bl. John Duns Scotus as an abiding source of the tradition but also to illuminate several better-known aspects of the thought of the Subtle Doctor and his followers.

Although St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus are the giants of the Franciscan Mariology, the tradition developed from St. Francis to Maximilian Kolbe. As an heir to the speculative strand that originated in the Mariology of Angelo Volpi (d. 1647), Fr. Peter stands at the very end of this tradition.² Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that his contributions to this tradition represent the pinnacle of the Franciscan Mariology stretching back to the Golden Age of Scotism. Among the authors favored by Fr. Peter, Bartolomeo Mastri (1602–73), Francesco Lorenzo Brancati di Lauria (1612–93), and Carlos del Moral (d. 1731) stand out as its chief representatives.³ Although rarely acknowledged by mainstream academic theologians, this tradition flourished between the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Before Vatican II, the majority of professional theologians were preoccupied with the issues raised, defined, and illuminated by this tradition.⁴ In many respects, the ressourcement of the Franciscan Mariological tradition reached its peak just as Fr. Peter entered the Franciscan family.⁵

Fr. Peter defended and developed this tradition in all his writings, but the essays collected here represent his most direct engagement with his predecessors. As one will see, certain guiding principles remain as consistent themes across these essays. Fr. Peter assumes and argues for the unity of St. Bonaventure’s writings. No worthwhile methodological distinction, he argues, can be made between the Seraphic Doctor’s scholastic and spiritual writings, and no systematic or dogmatic argument can proceed on the assumption of such a separation. Rather, the whole range of the saint’s writings, including the biblical commentaries, mystical opuscula, and sermons, must be taken into account to gain an historically accurate account of Bonaventure’s theology. Fr. Peter also assumes and argues for the unity of the Franciscan Mariological tradition. While he would never be so naïve as to think that St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus agreed on all matters—or even on all Mariological matters—Fr. Peter rejects any separation of the two masters that depends upon some larger narrative of Scotus’s supposed place in the history of philosophy or upon pragmatic considerations of what might or might not offend our partners in ecumenical dialogue. Such concerns, for Fr. Peter, are extrinsic to the meaning of the texts of these masters and cannot be used to determine what they say a priori, especially when it can be shown that Scotus is developing some particular aspect of St. Bonaventure’s thought.

In addition to these two historiographical principles, Fr. Peter has two additional, more systematic, concerns. Fr. Peter believes the coredemption to be historically and theologically prior to the Immaculate Conception. For Fr. Peter, St. Bonaventure’s understanding of Mary’s coredemption is the foundation of the later Franciscan Mariological tradition. Duns Scotus presumes, develops, and perfects the Seraphic Doctor’s insights in this regard, even using them as the principles that guide his own, better-known contribution to the tradition. Conversely, Fr. Peter thinks arguments and methods pioneered by Scotus in his defense of the Immaculate Conception provide probative force for the definition of the dogma of the coredemption. In other words, for Fr. Peter, Scotus’s methodological innovations lead to the formulation of the overarching ‘thesis’ that defines the Franciscan school as such. Indeed, the absolute primacy and predestination of Christ and Mary provides the vantage from which one will be able to see all aspects of theology anew.

Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner and Co-redemption in St. Bonaventure

It is supremely fitting that this collection begin with Fr. Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M.: His Mariology and Scholarly Achievement (1992). With his teacher, the estimable Carolus Balić (1899–1977), Carol made many of the most important contributions to the Franciscan Mariological tradition in the twentieth century.⁶ Fr. Peter epitomizes Carol, a master of some of the most technically challenging issues in Scotus’s Christology and Mariology, by situating him in the development of Franciscan Mariology between the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the debate between so-called maximalists and minimalists at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Fr. Peter provides a masterful summary of Carol’s work, noting especially his theology of Mary’s coredemption and his bibliographical studies of the absolute primacy and predestination of Christ and Mary.⁷ If Fr. Peter praises Carol’s soul as an anima naturaliter franciscana, still he does not hesitate to address weaknesses in Carol’s arguments or to note differences between Carol and Balić.⁸ His assessment, in short, is appreciative, but critical. The overall impression upon reading Fr. Peter’s criticism is one of unflinching honesty. Fr. Peter’s critical spirit is most apparent when he addresses the problem that in many respects will define his contribution to the larger Franciscan Mariological tradition: the inconsistency in St. Bonaventure’s simultaneous affirmation of Mary’s coredemption and denial of her Immaculate Conception. In fact, in Fr. Peter’s estimation, Carol’s chief failures were to neglect the apparent ambivalence of St. Bonaventure on the problem of Mary’s coredemption and the speculative contributions to Franciscan theology of St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894–1941). As it so happens, Fr. Peter’s contributions to the Franciscan Mariological tradition advance on exactly these two fronts. In this first essay, then, we see nothing less than the rationes seminales of Fr. Peter’s contributions to the Franciscan Mariological tradition as a whole.

Fr. Peter laid the foundation for these contributions in The Mystery of Co-redemption according to the Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure (1999). This massive, highly technical article tackles the theological status of coredemption or—to be more precise—the problem of whether the doctrine is proxime definibilis. As Fr. Peter reminds us, three things are necessary for a doctrine to be defined as dogma. The doctrine in question must: (1) pertain to the deposit of faith transmitted to the church by the apostles and preserved by their successors; (2) be capable of clear designation and precise formulation in theological terms; and (3) be defined at a time that is opportune for the church.⁹ On Fr. Peter’s reading, the Seraphic Doctor expressly treats Mary’s coredemption and provides the basic form in which it is still treated by Catholic theologians. Perhaps more surprisingly, Fr. Peter argues that Duns Scotus presupposes Bonaventure’s teaching in his own defense of the Immaculate Conception. In other words, Fr. Peter maintains that the Subtle Doctor’s conception of a perfect mediator includes and depends upon the Seraphic Doctor’s understanding of coredemption as a fitting, if not necessary, consequence of perfect mediation. The Subtle Doctor’s defense of Immaculate Conception then supplies the ontological basis for coredemption and the point of departure for resolving objections to the definition of the dogma. As we shall see, this insight will prove especially fruitful in Fr. Peter’s theological and Mariological synthesis.

Fr. Peter’s point of departure in The Mystery of Co-redemption is the classic study on coredemption in Bonaventure written by the Conventual Franciscan Lorenzo DiFonzo (1914–2011).¹⁰ Critics of DiFonzo argued that any support for the doctrine in St. Bonaventure’s sermons was mitigated, if not entirely annulled, by the saint’s failure to address coredemption in his scholastic writings. Once the Seraphic Doctor’s scholastic works were prioritized, DiFonzo’s critics reasoned, the basis for affirming the Virgin’s active involvement in the sacrificial offering of Christ was largely negated. In short, the critics argued, if only a divine person could make condign satisfaction for an infinite offense, then the Blessed Virgin certainly could not do so, because St. Bonaventure explicitly denied that Mary was not conceived immaculately. The lines of the controversy between DiFonzo and his critics thus drawn were textual, historical, and methodological. To shore up their distinction between the Seraphic Doctor’s scholastic works and spiritual writings, DiFonzo’s critics had argued that the discussion of Mary’s coredemption in the Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti was not a genuine collation at all, but merely a misplaced sermon. To the extent that one could find a proper Mariology in Bonaventure, they maintained, it had to be radically separated from the Mariology of Duns Scotus and the later Franciscan tradition. The critics’ reason for this methodological separation is telling. They thought the Immaculate Conception and the larger Scotist tradition would be offensive to pious Protestant ears!

Fr. Peter’s defense of DiFonzo is a model of Fr. Peter’s general theological method. He begins by acknowledging St. Bonaventure’s ambivalence and inconsistency directly. Still, Fr. Peter maintains that the overall thrust of the Seraphic Doctor’s Mariology converges on the doctrine of coredemption. Nor can one dismiss Bonaventure’s treatment of the doctrine in the sixth of his Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti is ex professo. It amounts to a formal statement of the status quaestionis. In fact, once the Immaculate Conception is presumed, the major objections to the definition of the dogma of coredemption can be answered using principles derived entirely from St. Bonaventure’s writings. After all, St. Bonaventure explicitly defines redemption or ransom as one’s own condign payment of the price required of one’s own to free someone of debt (pro re empta dare pretium). As the debt owed to the Father is infinite, no one but his Son can pay it. However, as the Mother of God brought the price of our redemption into the world, she also paid the price, cooperating by her consent and compassion in the sacrificial act consummated on the cross. Because Mary’s participation in her Son’s sacrificial act is unique, she receives its fruits and distributes them to the children she gains in giving her Son on the cross. However, DiFonzo reasons, as Bonaventure did not believe that Mary was conceived free of original sin and its stain, she cannot pay the price for original sin condignly. Her merit-satisfaction is not de condigno, but neither is it de congruo. Mary’s merit-satisfaction is rather uniquely de digno. As a result, to the degree that she merits de digno, Mary may rightly be called the cause of our justification by merit, exemplar, and stimulus (merito, exemplo, forma seu signo) It is therefore appropriate to bestow the titles of coredemptrix and distributrix on the Blessed Virgin.

If Bonaventure neither assigns these titles to the Blessed Virgin nor discusses her merit in this way, Fr. Peter reasons, one may appeal to him for support of the doctrine of the Virgin’s coredemption in a general sense, but any more technical discussion must proceed by way of the principles found explicitly in his writings. For Fr. Peter, then, it is not necessary that St. Bonaventure explicitly used the title coredemptrix or claimed that the Virgin merited de condigno to establish that St. Bonaventure taught the doctrine. Rather, it is sufficient that the Seraphic Doctor notes the theological affinity of his presentation of Mary’s unique sanctity and the titles later bestowed upon her by tradition. Nor must we accept the hermeneutic priority of Bonaventure’s scholastic and allegedly more scientific works, as the saint explicitly identifies the symbolic, scholastic, and mystical as the three modes of theology. Indeed, when one turns to Bonaventure’s own principles, we find he has ample resources to support Mary’s coredemption in the strict sense, specifically in Bonaventure’s understanding of Mary’s perfect maternity, her maternal sacrifice, and the joint predestination of Christ and Mary. For the Seraphic Doctor, the Blessed Virgin is predestined to be the Mother of God totally, that is, in the total mystery of her being from her Immaculate Conception to her coronation as Queen of Heaven. Mary’s maternity, then, is first and foremost—in the order of intention—the divine maternity. Mary is not freed from sin and so reconciled, but rather pre-purified and united with Christ so that she can assist in the process of reconciliation. St. Bonaventure’s formulation of the Marian character of the economy of salvation therefore abolishes the distinction between mediate and immediate coredemption. The Blessed Virgin is actively involved in the work of redemption in its beginning at Christ’s nativity, in its middle at the sacrifice of the cross, and in its end with the distribution of graces to the church. If Christ alone is Redeemer sensu stricto, Mary’s oblation, immolation, and communion are wholly united to and determined by those same redemptive acts of her Son. In meriting de digno, however, Mary’s maternity is coredemptive sensu proprio and not merely sensu lato with respect to the church. As Jesus Christ and Mary are predestined jointly in a single decree, Mary’s predestination is neither separate nor adventitious. Indeed, we see that the Blessed Virgin—for Bonaventure, Expugnatrix, Consolatrix, Liberatrix, Reparatrix, Emprix, and Restauratrix—is at the center of salvation with her Son. In fact, the Mariology of Scotus and the Subtle Doctor’s defense of the Immaculate Conception are logical consequences of Bonaventure’s larger understanding of the Mother of God’s unique coredemptive mediation. The economy of salvation is built around the perfect mediator and the perfect act of mediation. And—this is Fr. Peter’s great contribution to the Franciscan Mariological tradition—this insight holds not merely for the proper understanding of St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus, but for theology as a whole. In fact, theology as such is Christocentric and Marian in character.

It is impossible to summarize the riches found in this essay. I have here sketched merely its opening section. Suffice it to say that it is among Fr. Peter’s most cherished masterpieces. It draws on the full range of Bonaventure’s works, drawing on his biblical commentaries, spiritual writings, sermons, and professional scholastic writings, which are amply quoted and closely read. One sees the biblical dimension of the saint’s scholastic writings, but one also sees how closely reasoned Bonaventure’s sermons and spiritual writings really are. The next essay, The Sense of Marian Co-Redemption in St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus (2000), expands Fr. Peter’s understanding of the influence of St. Bonaventure on Bl. John Duns Scotus. Fr. Peter uses a lighter touch in this article, but the result is no less significant. On the one hand, Fr. Peter underscores the origin of the Franciscan Mariological tradition in St. Francis, for whom the Blessed Virgin is the first-born daughter of the Father, Mother of his only-begotten Son, and bride of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, Fr. Peter expands his arguments and states them more forcefully. Scotus’s notion of a perfect redemption, Fr. Peter argues, requires both a perfect redeemer (the God-man) and a perfect redeemed (the Blessed Virgin Mary). Note here the unstated but highly fruitful premise: a perfect redeemer does not merely redeem perfectly but redeems perfectly precisely by perfecting the one redeemed. An act of perfect redemption requires the perfection of the one redeemed as a necessary consequence. In this regard, the Immaculate Conception must be postulated on the basis of Mary’s coredemption. And, given the dogmatic certainty of the Immaculate Conception, the certainty of Mary’s active coredemption follows necessarily. On Fr. Peter’s reading, Scotus simply sees this inconsistency in St. Bonaventure’s reasoning and applies the appropriate solution from the Seraphic Doctor’s own notion of perfect redemption from Breviloquium 4, cc. 2–4. Even more, Scotus’s elaboration of the Immaculate Conception assumes and depends upon an awareness of the mystery of coredemption exactly as St. Francis had presented in the Marian antiphon for his Office of the Passion.

Fr. Peter continues the development of these insights in The Marian Discourses of St. Bonaventure (2004). To this point, Fr. Peter had ranged over the entirety of Bonaventure’s writings, an approach that had been necessitated by controversy over DiFonzo’s monograph on Mary’s coredemption. Having sufficiently demonstrated the artificiality of the distinction between Bonaventure’s scientific and spiritual writings, Fr. Peter returns in this article to the Marian discourses of St. Bonaventure, especially the saint’s twenty-four sermons on the mysteries of the Blessed Virgin. These Marian discourses, which had been published in 1901, were the subject of great scholarly scrutiny during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Until the end of the 1950s, the authenticity of these twenty-four sermons was largely assumed. From the 1960s, however, scholars began to question the authenticity of several of the discourses and by the 1980s the critics’ fervor had increased significantly. Although the authenticity of one or more of the sermons might be debated—Fr. Peter is reluctant to accept a negative judgment on any except the sixth sermon on the Assumption—the crucial issue for Fr. Peter is that the importance of the Marian discourses as a whole cannot be denied. For Fr. Peter, the attempt to deny the theological value of St. Bonaventure’s Marian discourses as doctrinal loci is misguided on two points. First, the majority of critics were not so scientifically disinterested as they pretended, being chiefly concerned to minimize any dogmatic claims they felt might compromise their ecumenical aims—especially the Immaculate Conception. Second, the critics’ method, while claiming the mantle of scientific objectivity, committed the basic historiographical error of projecting their own concerns upon St. Bonaventure. As Fr. Peter notes, the Seraphic Doctor himself never reduced theology to merely academic or scholastic concerns. Quite the opposite in fact. For Bonaventure, and indeed for the Franciscan Mariological tradition in general, Mary is the primary witness of the faith who conceives in her mind first what she later conceives in her womb. Mary is for St. Bonaventure the Magistra Apostolorum, the Illuminatrix Apostolorum, even the Doctrix Apostolorum. No one can teach theology effectively without first being an attentive student of the Blessed Virgin. This contemplative or Marianized theology precedes its scholastic systematization. Although Fr. Peter does not put it quite so boldly, one might even say that Mary is indeed the source and unity of the deposit of faith. If anything, the saint’s supposedly more scientific scholastic writings would depend upon his Marian discourses. From this properly Franciscan and Catholic perspective, the attempt to drive a wedge between St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus is based on nothing more than the critics’ own prejudices.

Fr. Peter’s next article, Mary and the Eucharist in St. Bonaventure (2005) takes the next logical step in this development. If a theology perfected by contemplation is fully Marianized, it is can only be practiced and prolonged in the Holy Eucharist. The thread that passes through St. Francis, through St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus, and finally to St. Maximilian Kolbe, is sustained by Christ truly present with us and for us on the altar. For Fr. Peter, a proper understanding of the relation of Mary to the Eucharist will reveal precisely that she is Mother of the Church and mediatrix of all graces. Aware of the most ancient traditions on the relation of Mary to the Eucharist, St. Bonaventure argued that the Blessed Virgin is offered with Christ intrinsically and inseparably when He is offered as victim. In three sermons on the Sacrament, the devotional work De Praeparatione ad Missam, and the Commentary on the Lombard’s Sentences IV, d. 10, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2, Bonaventure ties the power to confect Christ on the altar via transubstantiation to the power to conceive Christ. His conclusion, however, might be rather shocking. The power to conceive Christ includes the power to confect him on the altar inasmuch as the latter presupposes and depends upon the former. Every priest not only receives his stole from Mary the Virgin priest but is assisted by her in confecting and offering Christ. Similarly, when he offers the Son as a fitting sacrifice for sin, he offers the Blessed Virgin united with him. The Marian mode of the incarnation continues in the Mass, and transubstantiation itself occurs in a Marian mode.

One sees a clear plan emerge in these first five articles. The opening article supplies the historical frame in which Fr. Peter’s contributions to our understanding of Marian coredemption will advance. The second lays the technical theological foundation for the definition of the dogma based on St. Bonaventure’s insights. The third popularizes the Seraphic Doctor’s insights for a more general audience, while the fourth secures the foundation of the doctrine by widening its bibliographic base to include St. Bonaventure’s Marian discourses. The fifth and final article in this sequence then applies and strengthens the doctrine by tracing the connections between Mary’s coredemption and the Holy Eucharist. With this, the first movement of Fr. Peter’s contribution to the Franciscan Mariological tradition is complete. In the second movement, Fr. Peter will integrate the Seraphic Doctor’s understanding of Mary’s coredemption into the larger Franciscan tradition of Duns Scotus and his followers. What is more, we shall see the arguments and methods pioneered by Scotus in his defense of the Immaculate Conception can shed light on several other aspects of theology.

Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner and Speculative Development of the Immaculate Conception

The second group of articles in this collection recapitulates the themes of the first, but with Bl. John Duns Scotus as its focus. In light of Fr. Peter’s commitment to the continuity of the larger Franciscan tradition, the articles published between 2008 and 2013 expand and deepen his earlier insights rather than break with them. They also cover much the same ground. In The Franciscan Mariological School and the Co-redemptive Movement (2008), Fr. Peter sketches the major features of Franciscan Mariology beginning with St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, and Bl. John Duns Scotus—leading once again to the giants Carolus Balić and Juniper Carol. Special attention is paid to the description of St. Francis’s Marian devotion in the writings of Thomas of Celano and the Legenda maior. Each of the founder’s three main titles of the Virgin—Mater Dei, Virgo Ecclesia facta, and Sponsa Spiritus Sancti—are analyzed in greater depth, and St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus are placed in the larger tradition that includes St. Antony of Padua (1195–1231), Conrad of Saxony (d. 1279), James of Milan (fl. 1280s), John Peckham (c. 1230–92), Peter of John Olivi (1248–98), and Jacopone da Todi (c. 1230–1306). Two developments in this article are especially noteworthy. First, as in his previous reading of St. Bonaventure, Fr. Peter positions himself as the patient recipient of the tradition of Scotus scholarship in dialogue with contemporary Scotists such as Ruggero Rosini (1913–98) and Stefano Cecchin.¹¹ Second, Fr. Peter provides a history of Franciscan theology between Bl. John Duns Scotus and the crusades that followed in the wake of the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception. This history, which is lacking most recent academic treatments of the history of Mariology, sketches the contributions of Peter Auriol (c. 1280–1322), Bartholomew of Pisa (d. 1401), St. Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), Pope Sixtus IV (1411–84), Cornelius Musso (1511–74) and the Franciscan periti at the Council of Trent, and the development of Mariology in the Golden Age of Scotism starting with Angelo Volpi, Carlos del Moral, and the great Franciscan and Jesuit Mariologists of the seventeenth century.¹² The co-redemptive school arises from this Scotist tradition in Mariology, and in the articles that follow Fr. Peter develops the distinctive themes and arguments of the tradition. Recall that for Fr. Peter, the Scotist defense of the Immaculate Conception provides the ontological basis for coredemption and the point of departure for resolving objections to the definition of the dogma. The Scotistic understanding of the absolute predestination of Christ and Mary and Mary’s debitum justitiae—speculative developments that clarified the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception—are here marshaled to the cause.

The Concept of Redemption in the Franciscan-Scotistic School: Salvation, Redemption, and the Primacy of Christ (2008) takes up the absolute primacy and predestination of Christ and Mary in the Franciscan tradition. Here, the ordering of the issues is classically Scotist, and St. Bonaventure is integrated into the larger emphasis on Franciscan tradition. In the Franciscan-Scotistic School, the joint predestination in a single divine decree of the Word Incarnate and his Virgin Mother is prior to any consideration of creation or redemption, not consequent upon them.¹³ Or—to be more precise—considered as an act of God or as its effect, creation cannot be thought apart from the predestination of Christ and Mary, who jointly serve as the universal efficacious, exemplary, and final secondary cause of creation itself. In this respect, Mary’s so-called preservative redemption is not a special case of the more general redemption in which we are liberated from sin, but rather part of the foundation for our liberation in the actual economy of salvation. The Blessed Virgin belongs to the hypostatic order, above both Adam and the angels; in fact, Mary’s perfect, preservative redemption is redemption in the true sense, whereas mere liberation from sin is redemption secundum quid.

The Franciscan thesis has important ramifications for soteriology. According to Fr. Peter, the genius of Scotus in this regard is that he rightly distinguished Christ’s single work of redemption as liberation from sin and the satisfaction offered to and accepted by God.¹⁴ Scotus therefore differs from both St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure on the interpretation of St. Anselm, who insist that only a divine person can make condign satisfaction for sin as a necessary consequence of their conviction that the primary purpose of the incarnation is liberation from sin. Scotus, however, has a wider notion of both incarnation and redemption. On Scotus’s model, the singularity of Christ’s mediation cannot be threatened by other lovers. The absolute primacy of Christ and the perfect preservative redemption consequent upon it allows vicarious satisfaction to include a coredemptrix. Christ’s threefold Messianic dignity as priest, prophet, and king is shared in the hypostatic order by the Blessed Virgin, who confects Christ in her womb and offers him on Calvary, who teaches the apostles, and who is crowned Queen of Heaven. Scotus also differs from St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure on whether the offense against God by sin is quasi-infinite. For Scotus, sin cannot be equal to God in any sense. Sin, after all, is a mere privation, having neither magnitude nor quasi-magnitude except by a cunning of reason. Sanctity is always greater than sin and possesses the power to undo it radically. And it is the divine sanctity truly communicated to the humanity of Christ, to his blessed Mother, and to the church as his mystical body that makes redemption possible both as the satisfaction of justice and as the liberation from sin. The Franciscan notion of redemption in the Marian mode, we might say, clarifies the very notion of redemption itself.

The essays that follow develop and apply particular aspects of this Franciscan-Scotistic notion of redemption. In his Appendix to Ruggero Rosini’s Mariology of the Blessed John Duns Scotus (2008), Fr. Peter weighs in on the question of Mary’s so-called debitum peccati.¹⁵ Fr. Peter’s contribution to this famous debate makes use of Scotus’s understanding of justice. For the Subtle Doctor, the primary and most perfect form of justice is neither commutative nor retributive. God’s own justice, and justice in God, cannot be defined in relation to some debt he owes to anyone or anything other than himself. Nor can God’s justice be defined over an against some mercy in relation to his pardoning, release from, triumph over, or destruction of sin. Rather, justice is for Duns Scotus simply that quality of the divine being and the divine will wherein God is good, generous, and loving, and indeed incapable of sin, selfishness, or indulgence. Likewise, in creatures, justice is that quality whereby persons are capable of wisdom, holiness, and blessedness. Justice is, in sum, that quality of the soul that makes it beautiful in God’s eyes, acceptable to him, and loved by him. In this respect, Scotus never mentions a debitum peccati. To the degree that he admits a debitum in Adam and his offspring, he mentions only a debitum justitiae, that is, an obligation to preserve and to persevere in original justice.¹⁶ The degree to which a person might pursue holiness and participate in blessedness depends on the perfection of this original justice, and freedom of the will is nothing other than the power of the will to preserve and to persevere in this justice. In the most basic sense, then, justice is nothing more than the necessary obligation to do good and to avoid evil, an inclination that remains even when one deliberately chooses to act maliciously. This basic metaphysical inclination is what Scotus calls the affectus justitiae in distinction to the affectus commodi, the affection for what is merely advantageous or useful, which is the basis for modern notions of commutative justice.

Here, though, the Franciscan theologian must make a distinction. In creating, God ordered humanity and indeed creation itself to a supernatural end, namely, partaking in the glory to which Christ was predestined. God therefore bestowed upon Adam and Eve an original justice comprising both an internal tranquility of order and an absence of concupiscence, the loss of which causes Adam and his descendants to fall. The Blessed Virgin, however, was not created in a state in which this original justice had been restored. For Scotus, Mary was conceived in a state of still higher justice constituted by the fullness of sanctifying grace which is itself the basis upon which we attain the more perfect justice of baptism. To illustrate the relation of Mary’s preservative redemption to original justice, Fr. Peter points to the redemption of the angels in the Scotist tradition. Neither the redemption of the Blessed Virgin nor the redemption of the angels who did not fall is based on a debt to sin or to contract sin. Indeed, no such obligation could exist under God’s justice, properly understood. Had Adam not sinned, Christ would have still been our salvation in much the same way that he is the salvation of the Blessed Virgin and the angels who did not fall. His salvation would have been necessary to prevent our fall and to preserve us in God’s justice for the simple reason that the created will, however innocent, is not naturally impeccable.

Fr. Peter’s next contribution, Sources of Scotus’s Mariology in Tradition (2009), is nothing less than a Scotist theology of tradition itself. Here we see Fr. Peter reaping the entire history of modern Franciscan Mariology, but with a twist. In this article, Mariology is not simply an arrangement of Scotus’s thoughts on Mary or even an arrangement of the Franciscan Mariological tradition. Fr. Peter instead envisions Mariology as the consistent organization of Scotus’s Marian convictions in terms of his entire theology, with the mystery of the absolute primacy of Christ and Mary serving as the keystone for a genuinely theological understanding of tradition. For Scotus, tradition allows the theologian to draw or deduce from Scripture the central meaning of salvation by the full range of rational argumentation, including aesthetic arguments ex convenientia in addition to the more strictly logical conclusions of deductive reasoning. The governing methodological principle of tradition in this sense is nothing other than Scotus’s maximalism. Provided a particular theologoumenon is not contrary to Scripture or magisterial teaching, whatever is most excellent should be ascribed to Christ and Mary. On this reading, tradition does not supply the factual matter of theology so much as it provides the dynamic key to its understanding. Not to put too fine a point on it, the absolute primacy of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary is the organizing principle, indeed the very meaning, of Scripture and tradition. Scotus—not Thomas—provides the via media between fideism and rationalism.

The second part of Sources of Scotus’s Mariology in Tradition (2009) is in many respects Fr. Peter’s crowning achievement—at least in this particular aspect of his multi-faceted scholarship. Taking the Immaculate Conception not merely as a datum of revelation but as the principle of tradition, Fr. Peter unfolds the full theological and metaphysical fecundity of the mystery. I can only sketch his conclusions. The debitum peccati originalis, Fr. Peter argues, is a fiction. In all men and women, the debitum justitiae is the necessary condition for the infusion of sanctifying grace, whether it is present in a state of preservative redemption or original justice. The former, of course, the Blessed Virgin owes to Christ. The latter, to the degree that we possess it, we owe to Christ through Mary. For this reason, in virtue of her Immaculate Conception, Mary is not under the headship of Adam, but rather Adam and his descendants are debtors to Christ through Mary. Christ’s preservation of the Blessed Virgin is the true form of redemption, into which we are liberated upon the destruction of sin through her meditation. In fact, the main features of Scotus’s metaphysics—the univocal concept of being, the distinction between infinite and finite modes of being, the definition of personhood as uncommunicable—are seen to derive from this Marian method and illuminate it. Were this not enough, the third part of Sources of Scotus’s Mariology in Tradition provides a history of Scotism from the French Revolution to the revival of Scotism in the early twentieth century—a history largely unknown to most theologians, Catholic or Protestant.

This second set of essays concludes with another long, technical piece, Coredemption and Assumption in the Franciscan School of Mariology: The ‘Franciscan Thesis’ as Key (2013). As one might expect, Fr. Peter covers much of the ground he demarcated in the previous essays. He outlines the implications of Christ’s absolute primacy for soteriology and Mariology, and he explains how Bonaventure’s understanding of Mary’s coredemption and Scotus’s understanding of God’s justice and satisfaction are mutually illuminating. Here, Fr. Peter’s treatment of Scotus’s position in the history of soteriology and his criticism of St. Anselm reach their systematic heights, and the themes common to Scotus and the larger Franciscan Mariological tradition are knit together with such skill that they form a tapestry of great beauty and strength. As Fr. Peter retraces his steps, however, his orbit becomes more inclusive. Here, he turns to St. Bonaventure’s understanding of the Assumption to shed light on Bl. Duns Scotus’s understanding of the sacrifice of the cross. The result is a modern Scotist ecclesiology in which the church is animated by the Holy Spirit via the instrumentality of Mary.

The importance of a Marian-Scotist ecclesiology cannot be overstated. Too often histories of Mariology at the Second Vatican Council are told as the triumph of enlightened supporters of an ecclesiotypical faction led by Yves Congar (1904–95) over the clownish supporters of a Christotypical faction led by Carolus Balić.¹⁷ As Fr. Peter notes, the great problem with this narrative is that it assumes these two visions to be in conflict, when in fact any genuinely ecclesiotypical view of the Blessed Virgin would not exclude, but of course depend upon the Christotypology assumed and indeed defined as dogma by Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus. On Fr. Peter’s reading, this unity and inclusion are guaranteed by the Assumption. The triumph of Mary the Immaculate Mother and coredemptrix includes the fulness of Pentecost. Just as the sixth collation on the gifts of the Holy Spirit constitutes the first systematic exposition of Mary’s coredemption, so St. Bonaventure’s six sermons on the Assumption are the first systematic treatment of Mary’s Assumption, which is quite simply the end and prolongation of the Blessed Virgin’s existence as the Immaculate and her mediation as coredemptrix. Marian ecclesiology in turn is but the end and prolongation of Marian soteriology, above all the sanctification and glorification of the church as the mystical body of Christ.

Coda: The Spiritual Dimension of the Franciscan Mariological Tradition

The final essay in this collection, Fr. Peter’s Total Consecration to the Immaculate Heart and the Mariology of St. Bonaventure (2013) is a fitting coda to the forgoing exposition and development of his contribution to the Franciscan Mariological tradition. Here, Fr. Peter reviews the major texts of St. Bonaventure on the mystery of Mary’s Immaculate Heart and concludes that the Seraphic Doctor was familiar with previous traditions of devotion to Mary’s heart and anticipated the modern understanding of total consecration as hyperdulia. For Fr. Peter, total consecration to Mary’s Immaculate Heart is the highest form of devotion precisely because it presupposes the participation in and identification with Mary’s own consecration. In other words, devotion to Mary the maternal mediatrix and coredemptrix leads naturally to total consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Nor is the triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart merely an eschatological reality, as if it were confined to paradise and hidden from believers. Any genuine triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart must advance from the church triumphant to the church militant. With the refinements made possible by Scotus’ arguments for the Immaculate Conception, one can discern a more definitive formulation for devotion to the two hearts initiated by St. John Eudes (1601–80). One can, in short, ground the theoretical and the practical, indeed all three forms of theology—symbolic, scholastic, and contemplative—in the absolute primacy of Christ and Mary. Total consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is where the theologian passes into the mystic and learning is put finally at the service of devotion.

***

This introduction cannot do justice to the learning that radiates from the essays that follow, nor can it do justice to the priest who wrote them. Perhaps the highest compliment that can be given to Fr. Peter—or perhaps the highest compliment his modesty would have allowed—is the same that he gave to Fr. Juniper Carol. Fr. Peter’s was an anima naturaliter franciscana, a mind predisposed, even enflamed, with admiration for the great Franciscan masters. He was a scholar at ease in the vast depths of his tradition and a metaphysician of the highest rank. Johannes Tauler tells us that the depth of the Virgin’s soul and her interior life were so godlike that were one to gaze into her heart, he would see God in all clarity, even the generation of the Son and procession of the Holy Spirit. I am confident that he would also see Fr. Peter, her champion and servant. In any event, he should surely see Fr. Peter’s influence on the Franciscan Mariological tradition and—if one may so hope—eventually on the doctrine of the church itself.

1

. Six additional pieces are included at the end of this volume as appendices. These showcase the breadth and depth of Fr. Peter’s knowledge of the wider Franciscan tradition and provide windows into the development of his thought that reaches maturity in his later essays. —Ed.

2

. Angelo Volpi, O.F.M. Conv., Sacrae theologiae summa Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilissimi,

12

vols. (

1642

–

46

).

3

. Bartolomeo Mastri, O.F.M.Conv., Disputationes Theologicae in Tertium Librum Sententiarum (

1661

); Lorenzo Brancati de Laurea, O.F.M.Conv., Commentaria in III Librum Sententiarum,

2

vols. (

1682

); Carolus del Moral, O.F.M., Fons illimis theologicae Scoticae Marianae,

2

vols. (

1730

). Other important representatives of this tradition are Tomás Francés Urrutigoyti, O.F.M. and Salvator Montalbanus de Sambuca, O.F.M.Cap, both of whom were revived in the twentieth century. Compare Tomás Francés Urrutigoyti, O.F.M., Certamen scholasticum expositivum argumentum pro Deipara ejusque Immaculata Conceptione,

2

vols. (

1660

); Salvator Montalbanus de Sambuca, O.F.M.Cap., Opus theologicum tribus disinctum tomis in quibus efficacissime ostenditur Immaculatam Dei Genitricem utpote praeservative redemptam, fuisse prorsus immune ab omni debito tum contrahendi originale peccatum, tum ipsius fomitem incurrendi,

3

vols. (

1723

).

4

. Consider, as an example, the proceedings of the First International Mariological Congress in

1950, Alma Socia Christi,

13

vols. in

15

toms. (

1951

–

53

). Compare then the proceedings of the Mariological Congress convened to celebrate the centennial of the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception, Virgo Immaculata: Acta Congressus Mariologici-Mariani Romae Anno MCMLIV Celebrati,

18

vols. in

22

tomes. (

1955

–

58

).

5

. For contemporary studies on Volpi, see Conti, La predestinazione; Conti, L’assunzione di Maria; Monda, L’Immacolata,

241

–

73

. On Urrutigoyti, see Martínez, La redención de María,

47

–

84

; and De Pijoan, La Inmaculada Concepción,

182

–

208

. On Montalbanus, see De Nava, La redención de María,

255

–

79

. On Carolus del Moral, see De Guerra Lazpiur, Integralis conceptus; De Guerra Lazpiur, La gracia inicial, 203

–

29

; De Guerra Lazpiur, La Virgen Santísima,

231

–

58

; De Guerra Lazpiur, El débito de pecado,

137

–

88

.

6

. It is impossible to summarize the contribution of Balić, first president of the International Scotistic Commission, founder of the Pontifical Marian Academy, and organizer of countless international congresses devoted to the Virgin Mary and the dogma of the Assumption. Fr. Peter also provides a summary below. For a biographical recollection of Balić, see De Aldama, Carlos Balić,

702

–

7

.

7

. For Carol’s writings, see Fr. Peter’s essay.

8

. Fr. Peter’s modesty in this respect is noteworthy. The differences Fr. Peter notes concern the Carol’s interpretations of Mary’s exemption from the debitum peccati and the Marian character of Genesis

3

:

15

, two issues of tremendous importance in the Franciscan Mariological tradition. We shall see Fr. Peter’s treatment of the debitum peccati below. For debates on the Marian character of the so-called First Gospel, see Roschini, Sull’interpretazione patristica,

76

–

96

; Lennerz, Consensus Patrum,

300

–

18

; Gallus, Interpretatio Mariologica; Gallus, Interpretatio Mariologica Protoevangelii,

2

vols.; Bonnefoy, Le Mystère de Marie; Unger, The First Gospel.

9

. It might be remembered here that several opponents of the definition of papal infallibility before the First Vatican Council (

1869

–

70

) did not object to the doctrine as such, but merely to the timing of the definition.

10

. DiFonzo, Doctrina Sancti Bonaventurae. For background, see Baraúna, De natura corredemptionis.

11

. Rosini, Il Cristocentrismo; Rosini, Cristo nella Bibbia; Rosini, Mariologica; Rosini, Maternità spirituale di Maria,

177

–

95

; Cecchin, Maria Signora Santa; Cecchin, ed., Scuola Francescana e l’Immacolata.

12

. See the sources listed above.

13

. It is impossible to summarize the vast literature on the so-called motive of the incarnation. To understand Fr. Peter’s immediate context, see Unger, Franciscan Christology,

428

–

74

; Carol, Why Jesus Christ.

14

. Compare Carol, Reflections on the Problem,

19

–

88

.

15

. Here, too, the literature is vast. For the immediate context of Fr. Peter’s reflections on the Blessed Virgin’s exemption from the debitum peccati, see Carol, History of the Controversy. For the larger revival, see Del Sdo. Corazón, La Inmaculada,

513

–

64

; De Villalmonte, La Inmaculada,

49

–

111

; Bonnefoy, Quelques théories modernes,

269

–

331

; Bonnefoy, La negación,

102

–

71

; Casado, La Inmaculada Concepción,

5

–

96

; Casado, Mariología clásica española,

2

vols.; Delgado Varela, Exención de débito,

501

–

26

; Ocerin-Jáuregui, Exención del débito,

419

–

51

.

16

. Compare the similar approach taken by Wolter, Theology of the Immaculate,

19

–

72

.

17

. For a survey sympathetic to Balić rather than Congar, see De Mattei, Concilio Vaticano II,

314

–

24

.

part one

Development of the Co-redemption in St. Bonaventure and Johns Duns Scotus

1

The Herald of the Immaculate

Fr. Juniper B. Carol: His Mariology and Scholarly Achievement

I am sure that, were any of us here present asked to indicate one theologian to whom the cultivation of Mariology in the United States is primarily indebted, we would not hesitate to name the late Fr. Juniper Carol, O.F.M., founder, first president and long-time secretary of the Mariological Society of America.

Last year, on behalf of the Society, Fr. James McCurry rendered a personal salute to Fr. Juniper; and, in a forthcoming issue of Marianum, a memorial by Fr. Theodore Koehler, his successor as Secretary of our Society, together with a bibliography prepared by Fr. Luigi Gambero, will appear. In this study I propose to describe and assess the scholarly achievement of Fr. Juniper, i.e., his contribution to Mariology, for, in fact, his scholarly work is almost exclusively Marian in character.¹⁸

Introduction

In the preface to his opus magnum on the coredemption, Fr. Juniper records that iam ab incoepto theologicae disciplinae studio (1931) in votis nobis fuerat documenta omnium retro aetatum hac de re in unum redigere eaque opportuno tempore tamquam thesim ad lauream consequendam Pontificio Athenaeo Antoniano de Urbe submittere.¹⁹ He was, in 1931, twenty years old, a newly professed novice just beginning his formal theological study at Holy Name College in Washington, D.C., and would not begin his doctoral studies at the Antonianum until 1937. It is remarkable that he should have had so early so clear a vision of the scholarly work he wished to accomplish as a theologian devoted to the Virgin Mother of God.

Undoubtedly, Marian devotion within his family, his early education in his native Cuba-in particular at St. Charles College and Seminary in Havana (1924–30), the distinctive accents of Franciscan Marian piety and thought so much in evidence within the Order at that time, and the then general interest throughout the church in the theme of Our Lady’s mediation (not only her role in the distribution of graces, but also her sharing in their acquisition as coredemptrix) played a part. Yet, it is difficult to explain this quite exceptional choice without suspecting the special intervention of Mary herself in guiding the intellectual development of so gifted a servant. Whatever, until Fr. Juniper’s first encounter (epistolary), in 1935, with Fr. Charles Balić, the future moderator of his doctoral studies in Rome, there does not appear to have been any professor or scholar who could be described as the major or a major influence in his scholarly formation.

We might say that Fr. Juniper’s was an anima naturaliter Franciscana, a mind predisposed to admire and follow the great Franciscan masters, especially Bl. John Duns Scotus, to appreciate the intimate connection between the subtle metaphysics of Scotus—revolving about the christo­centrism of St. Francis (the primacy of Christ the king and conformity to Christ crucified) and Mariology in a Franciscan key (centered on the Immaculate Conception)—even if he was rather disinclined personally toward the intricacies of Scotistic metaphysics.

His superiors recognized his exceptional ability. After priestly ordination in 1935 and a year teaching Spanish at St. Bonaventure University, he was sent to Quaracchi where, from 1936 to 1937, he spent five to six hours a day laboring over medieval manuscripts. The next three years, until 1940—when Italy’s entrance into World War II forced his return to the USA, he pursued doctoral studies in theology under the direction of Fr. Charles Balić. Not until 1948 was he able to return to defend his dissertation and obtain the doctorate in sacred theology.²⁰ Only a part of his original 1931 project, that dealing with the coredemption as expounded by seventeenth-century theologians, was in fact defended. The rest was published in 1950 by the Vatican Press as a substantial 639-page volume with the title: De Corredemptione Beatae Virginis Mariae. Disquisitio positiva, and as no. 2 in the Theology Series of the Franciscan Institute Publications. This study, together with his numerous scholarly essays related to the general theme of the coredemption published in European and American journals (around thirty articles between 1936 and 1953), established his reputation as a first-rate Mariologist, in the words of Fr. Cyril Vollert, S.J., the most prominent in North America at the time.²¹

Late in 1949, just before the publication of his opus magnum, Fr. Juniper launched the Mariological Society of America with one hundred and thirty-five members.²² Its first convention was held in Washington, DC, in January, 1950; it has met annually ever since, issuing promptly a volume with the studies read at the convention. Founder and first president of the society, Fr. Juniper was subsequently its longtime secretary and the editor of Marian Studies until he was succeeded by Fr. Theodore A. Koehler, S.M., in 1979.²³ The high level of scholarship evidenced in the work of the society and the respect quickly won by Marian Studies among the learned in no small measure can be accredited to Fr. Juniper’s leadership.²⁴

The success of this venture greatly facilitated the realization of another work first projected by Fr. Juniper in 1938, but temporarily abandoned at the outbreak of World War II, viz., the publication of a comprehensive collection of essays treating every aspect of Mariology and of Marian devotion. The three volumes of Mariology edited by Fr. Juniper, to which he contributed the important essay on the coredemption, were published by Bruce of Milwaukee between 1955 and 1961.²⁵ Like similar works published during the same period in Europe (e.g., Straeter, Du Manoir),²⁶ it served as a kind of encyclopedia or source work for serious students of Mariology. In 1964, a Spanish translation of the first two volumes, those dealing with Mariology (sources and doctrine), appeared together with a new introduction by N. Garcia Garcés.²⁷ Together with Marian Studies, this three-volume set constitutes Fr. Juniper’s second major contribution to scholarly reflection on the mystery of Mary.

His third and last major contribution, Why Jesus Christ?, a massive annotated bibliography dealing with the primacy of Jesus and Mary and preceded by several essays and shorter book-length studies touching aspects of that theme, appeared in 1986 and was the fruit of his retirement.²⁸ Separated by a quarter century from his other works, nonetheless, it is so linked to these, methodologically as well as thematically, as to illustrate that Franciscan-inspired vision of the Virgin Mother reflected in all Fr. Juniper’s study.

Fr. Carol’s Intellectual and Scholarly Formation: The Impact of Charles Balić

But before examining these contributions of Fr. Juniper to Mariology more in detail, it is necessary to say something about the thought and work of Fr. Balić, his mentor while a doctoral student in Rome and, thereafter, his lifelong friend.

Fr. Juniper describes him as a towering figure, not only in Scotistic and Mariological studies in general, but in his own life as well. My greatest indebtedness to Fr. Balić, he writes, "is due to the tremendous assistance he gave me in my Mariological studies. As moderator of my doctoral dissertation, he was most generous with his time and advice—although he was also extremely demanding regarding scholarly precision. It was Fr. Balić who got me interested in the question of the so-called debitum peccati in Mariology, and he often encouraged me to continue his own anti-debitist crusade. . . ."²⁹ The indebtedness to which Fr. Juniper refers involved not only scholarly method and in part selection of major areas of research, but also the articulation of a vision of Mariology within which the particular specializations, both in regard to theme and argumentation, can be understood and assessed.

When the history of Catholic theology in the twentieth century is dispassionately written, without doubt, the name of Charles Balić will figure in a significant way.³⁰ Although his scholarly work in theology was multifaceted, his enduring fame rests on two particular achievements: his contributions to the revival of Scotistic studies within the last seventy years and to the progress of Mariology. From the 1920s—when Balić, as a doctoral student at Louvain, wrote a dissertation on the Marian doctrine of the Subtle Doctor and successfully pioneered the method eventually used in the difficult task of editing a critical text of the writings of John Duns Scotus—these two fields of research were inseparably linked in his work.

Fr. Balić’s contribution to Mariology is, therefore, unabashedly Franciscan in inspiration.³¹ It takes its cue from the so-called Franciscan thesis: the absolute primacy of the Word Incarnate (kingship of Christ) and his Blessed Mother’s association uno eodemque decreta in that primacy (qua Immaculate Queen of Heaven and Earth), an association particularly evident at three points in the life of the Virgin: her conception, her cooperation in the work of salvation, her triumph in heaven, or put doctrinally: the Immaculate Conception; the universal, maternal mediation of Mary; and her glorious Assumption and coronation in heaven as queen of the universe. Fr. Balić, with his genius for organization, gave effective expression to this point of view in the titles of three scholarly monograph series he founded to treat of the privileges of Mary most holy: Bibliotheca Immaculatae Conceptionis; Bibliotheca Mediationis B. V. Mariae, and Bibliotheca Assumptionis.³² Within this overall perspective the crusades to which Fr. Juniper refers—anti-debitist, coredemptive, assumptionist—are but code words identifying the points where the distinctive implications of the thesis on absolute primacy are tested speculatively.

The impact of Fr. Balić’s work, his own and that of the Mariologists he formed over a long teaching career, was significant, not only in the cultivation of Mariology and the organization of the international Mariological-Marian congresses, but also in the formulation of the church’s doctrine, as can be seen from his contributions to the preparation for the definition of the Assumption, proclaimed in the bull Munificentissimus Deus, and to the eighth chapter of the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium, of Vatican II.³³

There is one other fact of considerable interest in assessing the background and influences which shaped the theological and scholarly vision of Fr. Juniper. Fr. Balić began his scholarly work at Louvain in the years immediately following the great Mariological Congress