17 AUGUST 1956, Page 14

DEIFICATION AND CLARIFICATION SIR,—Surely Pharos has by implication answered his

own question when he writes: 'When you make a creature a co-Redeemer with God. . . If this thought be turned into the simple Catholic phraseology that 'Both God and Our Lady can say to Christ: "My son,"' the uniqueness of Mary is at once apparent. She is more than (as Wordsworth describes her) `Our tainted nature's solitary boast': she is the one human being who shares a privilege with God alone.

This is only one way of stating part of the doctrine of the Incarnation—which is Christianity. But, in practice, though all who profess and call themselves Christian say they believe in the Incarnation, only Catholics in fact do. Thus, from time to time, it has been necessary to safeguard this central doctrine of the Faith by defining details—as the Immaculate Conception insists on Mary's free-

dom of will (and therefore possibility of choice) and the Glorious Assumption emphasises, so to speak, the 'honourableness' of God.

The doctrine of the Co-Redemptress is thus not 'something which may be defined' (though, of course, circumstances may arise which make a 'definition' necessary). It is something which has always been believed, because it is an aspect of the Incarnation.

It is all in the 'Hail, Mary'—and that, as Protestants prefer to express it, is Luke i, 28.—Yours faithfully, *