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1Ti 2:5-6 : 5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

No disagreement from Rome either, despite what others say of us.

Yeah, but I think that the others can be legitimately unsure of what Catholics believe based on what Catholic theologians say. For example, here is an excerpt from the article: Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces by Father William G. Most. I looked him up and he appeared to have been a well respected priest, author and professor: (all emphasis added)

To begin, we can say without doubt that the title "Mediatrix" is justified, and applies to all graces for certain, by her cooperation in acquiring all graces on Calvary. The Second Vatican Council (Lumen gentium ## 61-62), said:

... in suffering with Him as He died on the cross, she cooperated in the work of the Savior, in an altogether singular way, by obedience, faith, hope, and burning love, to restore supernatural life to souls. As a result she is our Mother in the order of grace.

This motherhood of Mary in the economy of grace lasts without interruption, from the consent which she gave in faith at the annunciation, and which she unhesitatingly bore with under the cross, even to the perpetual consummation of all the elect. For after being assumed into heaven, she has not put aside this saving function, but by her manifold intercession, she continues to win the gifts of eternal salvation for us. By her motherly love, she takes care of the brothers of her Son who are still in pilgrimage and in dangers and difficulties, until they be led through to the happy fatherland. For this reason, the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adiutrix, and Mediatrix. This however it to be so understood that it takes nothing away, or adds nothing to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator. For no creature can ever be put on the same level with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer...."

We notice that Vatican II did not add the words "of all graces." However, as many papal texts point out, Mary's role in dispensation flows logically from her role in acquiring all graces. Further, the Council itself added a note on the above passage, in which it refers us to the texts of Leo XIII, Adiutricem populi, St. Pius X, Ad diem illum, Pius XI, Miserentissimus Redemptor, and Pius XII, Radio message to Fatima.

Leo XIII, in the text referred to, spoke of her, as we saw above, as having "practically limitless power." St. Pius X said she was the "dispensatrix of all the gifts, and is the "neck" connecting the Head of the Mystical Body to the Members. But all power flows through the neck. Pius XII said "Her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion." These and many other texts speak in varied ways of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces, so often that the teaching has become infallible.

This author appears to acknowledge openly that Mary was a co-Mediator, the apparent contradiction of the Vatican II statement notwithstanding. If Mary is the "neck" and all graces go through her, then so does salvational grace. Co-Mediator. Then, Father Most goes on to address Protestant objections. This one involves our instant text:

Protestants object to this , saying that there is only one mediator: 1 Tim 2:5. We agree that there are many ways in which Christ is the only mediator between God and man. 1) There is only one mediator who is such by very nature, being both true God and true man. 2) There is only one mediator whose whose work is necessary, without whom, in God's plan, there could be no salvation. 3) There is only one mediator who depends on no one else for power.

IMO, these are extremely weak arguments. First, he parses the Biblical text into different WAYS of being a mediator. The Bible makes no such distinction. To me, the first answer above is the same as saying that Jesus is the only Mediator in that He was the only left-handed Mediator. Mary was a co-Mediator, but she was right-handed so this does not violate scripture. A similar argument wipes out numbers 2 and 3 above. Father Most makes artificial distinctions where none are present in the text. The Bible says "ONE MEDIATOR". It doesn't say one mediator who was necessary, or one mediator who doesn't depend on anyone else, etc. Those are obvious work-arounds to accommodate the Church's view of Mary.

Father Most concludes: (emphasis added)

So we answer, since Mary was associated with her Son in acquiring grace for us, she will also share with him in distributing that grace to us. This fits well with the words of the Popes, who call her the administra of grace, meaning that she administers or dispenses it. So Pope Leo XIII, Iucunda semper, said:

"... when He [the Father] has been invoked with excellent prayers, our humble voice turns to Mary; in accordance with no other law than that law of conciliation and petition which was expressed as follows by St. Bernardine of Siena : 'Every grace that is communicated to this world has a threefold course. For by excellent order, it is dispensed from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin, from the Virgin to us.'"

Without meaning to brag, it took me all of three seconds to find this article on Google. There are TONS just like it. Now what are we poor Prottys supposed to think when we see this stuff? :)

Short answer, rhetoric confrontational not for confrontation but for brevity.

We disagree about "in" (as Paul and John use the word). We disagree about the fullness of Grace and the wonder of God's promise. And maybe some other stuff.

YOU are a mediator and co-redeemer (IMHO) and on my good days so am I.

Here's how. (Just some examples) You forgive your wife, your kids, maybe your parents when she or they wrong you without insisting on being made whole. You suffer pain and sometimes financial loss that others may be assisted or helped. You pray for others. Sometimes you sit with others in their pain and because you do, you suffer some of their pain.

All this work, offered to God in Jesus, and done by one who is "in Christ" and therefore a new Creation, one who himself has died and now you live, yet not you, but Christ lives in you .... ALL this, by the Grace of Christ is incorporated into his atoning work as an avalanche grows as it races down the mountain side.

This is, I think, part of a MAJOR attitudinal difference between us feelthy Papists and you all. We contemplate that part of the shaken down, pressed together, running over always a gazillion times more than we could ever have thought Grace of God is what our Greek brothers call theosis.

But I would say that while the END (culmination, perfection, accomplishment) of theosis may be some 'better than acid' experience of union with God, God works with us and, amazingly, almost incomprehensibly, allows us to work with Him.

Your challenging me as you do is not your work, lest you should boast, but the Spirit of God in you, calling forth my best efforts to report and articulate how things look from my part of the front. You are part of God's drawing me closer to Him.

Now for some observations about Mary:

Nothing Mary has is hers. It is all (you may have heard me say this once or twice) GIFT!
Nothing Mary "currently has" will be denied all the holy redeemed. They will all be sinless; they will all be crowned, they, with her, will all be drawn ever closer to the heart of God.

Yes, Mary is, as it were, Prince, first among the redeemed. (I have said somewhere else, the Second fruits. And the difference between first and second, while it may be evanescent (analogy with limit theory), is ontologically HUGE

And I quite get that some Protestants have a rigorously egalitarian view of the bliss of the blessed, and here we will disagree. I can go only this far: Each of the redeemed will be as happy as he can be, but some have are given a greater capacity for happiness. And, of course, my "system" needs this for there to be the possibility of a "prince".

It is MY opinion (I cannot speak for the Church; I don't know enough) that we absolutely hafta gotta understand and take as overriding principles these things:

All that Mary has and is is gift and none over-rides the fundamental distinction between creator and creature, between redeemer and redeemed.
God shares, (see my Col 1:24 line) His work with the holy ones. He does it in and through them.
The Work God does in and through the holy ones, not only the "great saints" but the lady at the coffee urn who has a smile and a kind word for everyone, should by no means be undervalued. The tear of a forgiving spouse is united (By His grace) with the blood which dripped from Christ in Gethsemane and shares (by His grace) its redemptive power.
What actually happens is important.

This last is important. As I said in another post, I would not normally consider giving birth to be "dispensing", as though mothers were flesh-and blood PEZ toys. But Jesus is the sum of the Grace of God and is all our hope. And Mary, ah, dispensed Him. So, in a kind of mickey mouse way, that makes her the dispenser of all hope and grace.

But it gets less Mickey Mouse when one considers the wonder of a good relationship between mother and child.

Because the husband is Italian and wants his children to have a rich experience of Piemontese culture, a couple I know and love travel often to the husband's home. About a year ago, the wife had to come back to the US to do her work (she's a vet), and the children stayed with the husband and his massive huge populous family on their farm in in the Italian Piedmont. The husband reported that one night the son, missing his mother, fell asleep with a picture of her in his arms. And of course the mother looked at pictures of her children a lot and thought of them often.

We long for God only sporadically and our prayers are often cold, wandering, half-hearted, mechanical. Imagine if God were your son. Just imagine! What would your prayers be like then? What would your closeness, your experienced closeness to God be like then? Is it reasonable to suppose that the gift of such longing, such intimacy would not be followed with other gifts?

Sure, mere propinquity and contact with the body of Jesus is no guarantee of anything, yet even a Roman soldier first crucified Him and then acknowledged Him to be the Son of God. What can we reasonably expect to be the outcome of a normal and benign mother-Son relationship when the Son is the Son of God?

Now with respect to the language about Mary at the Cross, I ask you to go back to the beginning o this rant and to my claims about how you are involved in the mediating and redeeming work of Christ. I mention this again because this sort of tracks a part of my developing devotion to Mary. As a hospital chaplain assigned for the majority of my time in Pediatric services, I often was little more than a feckless and murmuring presence at the die of suffering Christs. (YES I know there is only only Christ, but I think I am to view His brethren and things done for them as things done for Him.) Other hospital people DO stuff. Part of the mojo (from a psychological POV) of a chaplain is that he is the one guy in the room who is not there to "Fix" anything about the patient. If the patient is happy, I am happy. If (as happened) the patient wants to watch the Watergate hearings today, I will sit with him for a while and watch the wonderful Senator Sam. If the patient weeps, well I won't splash my tears on her, but I will suffer with her. And if the patient wants to talk baby-talk and play peek-a-boo ... well, that's one of my favorite games. The only "active" thing I will do (most of the time) is offer the entire encounter to God for His work to be done in it.So I came to see my work as a kind of pantomime or shadow play of Christ's work: I entered the patient's world (his room) to be with him, to suffer with and for him. AND I came to see it also as work like Mary's, when I thought of the patient as Christ's being present to me. This just kind of "came to me", and comes to me now. It wasn't the result of some pious exercise, but just a "Oh! Mary too stood by and suffered!"

(You know, I could actually get something done in my life if you'd stop asking these exciting questions.)

I am not going to give the end of your post the attention it deserves. Let me sweep it all under this rug. Again, this is for me, I can't claim to be representative (though, of course, any Catholic of intelligence would see that I am, as usual, entirely correct.)

I think the language is scandalous and perverse UNLESS one contemplates and "hopes all things" about the glorious graces of God in Christ Jesus. It simply cannot be tolerated that Mary or any other creature be understood to have or dispense or enact ANYTHING at all unless God is at the back of it (and in the middle and at the end as well).

I am daring to guess that most theologians who talk about Mary are assuming this. In any event, I am assuming this. I cannot properly see (or speak of) Mary, or Paul, or Dominic, any of them and the angels as well UNLESS I think of them, understand them, and view them in their Context, which is (i may have already said this) the grace of God, which always exceeds or expectations.For a flat and unsatisfactory conclusion: the minute, the second what we say of her is NOT understood as depicting and astonishing array of graces, it is dreadfully and perilously misunderstood, and it sounds tawdry and sentimental.

My favorite Marian "antiphon" is (already posted somewhere)

Rejoice, Queen of Heaven, Alleluia!
Because He whom you were worthy to bear, Alleluia!
Has risen, just as HE said. Alleluia!
Pray to God for us. Alleluia!

Now if you think that we think that Mary on her own toot was worthy to bear Christ, well, we don't. We just don't.

Look for the paperback edition of this tirade in junk book stores near you!