There’s a nice “shopping list” decretal by Pope John Paul II referring to the various characteristics which Catholic Marian piety recognizes, but unfortunately I don’t have a copy or reference to it; all I recall is seeing it quoted on a Catholic forum I visited and posted at.
Let’s see if we can run through some of the Catholic Church’s beliefs about her, with how common those beliefs are in the other branches of Christianity:
1. Virgin Mother of Jesus
Distinguish this from “perpetual virginity” later in the list; what this one is saying is simply that she had not “done the dirty” with any guy when she conceived and gave birth to Jesus (that “when” covers a time period of nine months, obviously). This is specified in Scripture and in the historic Creeds. While many liberal Christians don’t see this as physiologically likely (or even possible) and prefer to read the accounts as records of legendary and symbolic events, not factual history, the longstanding tradition of virtually every branch of Christianity is to officially accept the Virgin Birth as received doctrine.
2. Theotokos
This term was applied to Mary at the 4th Ecumenical Council, in Chalcedon, as a part of Acta V. In origin, counterintuitively, it’s not focused on Mary but on Jesus – it’s a way of saying that He was God the Son as well as a human being from the moment of conception on. It translates, roughly, as “God-Bearer” in the sense that a pregnant woman is bearing a child (as opposed to “bear” in the “give birth to” meaning); Catholics and Orthodox often render it as “Mother of God,” an accurate phrasing that nonetheless gives the willies to Protestants.
Anyone who claims to hold to the traditional definitions of the early undivided church’s Ecumenical Councils, which includes Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Methodists among others, buys into this language, though you can live as a devout Methodist worshipping every week for 70 years without ever running into the fact that they subscribe to the Theotokos doctrine. Only the Nestorian “Church of the Assyrians” in Iraq officially declares against the Theotokos doctrine.
3. Mother of God
See #2. It’s in common use among Catholics and Orthodox; a few High Church Anglicans will use it. Most Protestants and related groups find it distasteful because of the Mater Deorum Magna cult against which early Christianity struggled, and most especially because it appears (incorrectly from the C/O perspective) to be setting Mary equal to or higher than God.
4. Doctrine of the Assumption/Dormition
Clearly, the B.V.M. is not still keeping house in Ephesus. That means she passed from this Earth at some point. According to the Catholics, she was assumed bodily into Heaven when her earthly time was over, à la Enoch and Elijah (we carefully don’t mention the Mohammed story ;)). According to Orthodox and Anglicans, she died peacefully (probably in the arms of her adoptive son the Apostle John) and, like all good Christians, her spirit was taken up to Heaven. The Assumption is a mandatory article of faith for Catholics; the rest of us simply think that she died and went to heaven, without requiring any special beliefs about it.
5. Perpetual Virginity
For reasons I don’t totally get, the idea that Mary never had sexual relations with Joseph, and remained a virgin all her life, is a hot-button issue with Catholics and, to a lesser extent, with the Orthodox. On religious boards, you’ll see some profound arguments about this, with Biblical exegeses and quotations from Early Church Fathers thrown back and forth with abandon. By and large, Anglicans and Protestants generally don’t hold this doctrine, though there are individuals who do.
6. Immaculate Conception
Which has nothing to do with the Virgin Birth, except in a very tenuous connection. This is the theory that, since Adam’s fall, all men and women are tainted by original sin, but it would be inappropriate to have God the Son take on human form in a sinful woman, so by a special act of grace, Mary was conceived by Anne and born free of that taint of sin, original or actual. Exclusively Roman Catholic, where it’s an article of faith.
7. Queen of Heaven
Something proclaimed by a Pope, for which I don’t have details, and AFAIK believed only by Catholics and not binding even on them.
8. Co-Redemptrix
This one is calculated to piss off any Protestant hearing it, though in fact it’s not a horrible doctrine. It sounds like they’re associating Mary in Christ’s act as Redeemer, making her equal partner with Him in that. And you can imagine what that does to those whose theology and piety is focused on the Crucifixion and Atonement.
In point of fact, what they are saying is that Mary was an essential actor in the entire Incarnation-Atonement-Resurrection scenario, in that it was her “Fiat mihi segundam verbum tuum” that permitted the whole ball of wax to begin, and she willingly gave fully of herself, sacrificing a “normal” life, to ensure that Jesus was born and raised to do the work God sent Him to do.
