Today the Catholic Church celebrates what Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches call the Dormition of the Theotokos, more commonly referred to by Roman Catholics as the Assumption—when Mary the Mother of God is said to have “fallen asleep” and was promptly assumed body and soul into heaven.
Where did we get this outlandish idea? Pope Pius XII himself, as David Mills points out, who issued this Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus in 1950 did not even give Biblical proof for this “divinely revealed dogma.” He merely stated that it “is in wonderful accord with those divine truths given us in Holy Scripture.” David goes on:
Wonderful accord with” does not mean “can be proven from,” and here much popular Catholic apologetics fails because it tries to argue the second. We have to go deeper, to a deep difference in the way Protestants and Catholics understand the Church and the way she carries God’s revelation through history. Both traditions agree that we have been given a deposit of faith, but disagree on what it contains and how it is correctly discerned.
Here the Church, the Catholic would say, has seen the truth without being able to argue for it fully. Which is why arguments for or against the dogma don’t get anyone very far.
The “Catholic conception of Church history,” he says, “recognizes that the Church has, or indeed is, a living tradition, and that she has a Magisterium that allows secure growth in our knowledge of the Truth, and allows Pius to make the declarations he does.”
Leaving aside the dogmatic debate for just a moment, what is the significance of the Assumption for Catholics? Why does it matter that this be declared a “divinely revealed dogma”?
Fr. Robert Barron offers a pretty good explanation of both how Catholics understand Mary and why the Assumption (an in fact everything fleshy) matters. Some excerpts:
Mary is for us [Catholics] like the moon, which is to say, she’s a reflected light. Mary’s light comes not from herself. It comes from Christ. But here’s the thing: it’s easier to look at the moon than at the sun. The sun is so brilliant that we can’t look directly at it. But we can see something of the sun’s light by looking at the moon. So in the great tradition.
Mary the greatest disciple of the Lord, the first disciple, the model of the Church, is therefore the one who shares first in this bodily act of resurrection.
Barron references George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic: “One of his master themes is this: for Catholics stuff matters. What he means is: the body matters, the physical matters. It’s not meant to be cast aside, left behind, but matter too will be elevated by God’s grace to a share in this new life.”
The Assumption of Mary, body and soul into heaven, matters because it gives us hope that we too might someday join in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.
August 15th, 2012 | 7:42 pm
Whatever happened to the good old days at First Things when any post about Marian devotions brought out the debaters? And this one has the added bonus issue of papal infallibility to boot.
In any case – I’m sending out a big Hail Holy Queen to all my fellow fish eaters out there.
Salve!!
August 16th, 2012 | 4:12 am
This is boldly asserting the papal right to make up historical events from whole cloth because they think it’s in “wonderful accord” with scripture, and admitting it’s impossible to argue for it.
It also makes Mary even better than the people who were assumed. Enoch and Elijah both were, but neither of them were conceived without sin. You have scriptural basis for the idea that “stuff matters” already. It only passes because even conservative Catholics like the way Mary is slowly being elevated to being the moon to Christ’s sun.
Also, why do we even need Mary’s assumption to have hope about heaven? It’s not like Paul didn’t give highly specific verses about such, involving being changed and taken up in the air to Him.
I hope this gives you your nostalgia fix, Sally. Kind of pointless to debate because to win, we’d have to demolish the basis for you to be a Catholic, and that more likely as not will hurt not help. But I can get the desire for red meat, so here you go, chew on it after the feast.
August 16th, 2012 | 10:17 am
For what it may – or may not – be worth, Martin Luther accepted the Assumption of Mary. However, he did not think it should become dogma. Apparently it was being talked about even then. On Lutheran calendars the day is marked as “Mary, Mother of our Lord.” The prayer of the day petitions that we “may share with her in the glory of [God's] eternal kingdom.” She’s there already, it seems to say, and we’re hoping to have a part in it.
Luther’s Marian piety never found a way to filter down to succeeding Lutheran generations. Pity.
August 16th, 2012 | 10:53 am
Russell, you are so correct. The Reformers had a very high “Mariology” [regard for Mary] Luther and Calvin besides obviously believing in the Virginal Conception of Christ, believed that Mary was “Ever-Virgin”. However, as a Catholic, I was absolutely stunned to find that Zwingli believed her to be Mediatrix!!!!!
As I understand it, August 15th was the original “Marian Day” [I could be wrong but that is my understanding]. All the ‘mystery of Mary’ was originally celebrated on this day. Why August 15th? Given the Patristic era Church’s grasp of all of the Mysteries of Faith (not limited to although always rooted in the historic) the whole Cosmos witnessed to the Faith. With an eye for a gentle correction to Dave Ducher, ‘viewing’ Mary as the Moon reflecting the Light of the Sun of Justice is not something new, but ancient: Patristic and monastic rooted in none other than Revelations 12 “Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet”
Again, why August 15th, however? The Cosmos enters into the celebration again. Revelations 12 says, “A sign appeared in the sky…” At this time of year, the Constellation [Sign] of Virgo [the Virgin] is prominent in the night sky. Rejecting astrology etc. the early Church saw the whole cosmos witnessing to the Mysteries of Faith, even the Person of Mary, clothed with the sun, a crown of stars and the moon under her feet (see Revelations 12)
One final comment. The great psychologist Carl Jung stated, when Pope Pius XII pronounced the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, that he had never perceived such an exaltation of Woman . Is it coincidence or something else that as Woman is exalted, the Great Dragon wages war on both the Woman and her offspring [denigration of woman, denial of femininity(gender neutrality), 'war' against her fertility (birth control), against her virginity (sexual revolution), her motherhood (abortion)]?
August 16th, 2012 | 11:10 am
Thanks Dave. It’s nice to know someone cares. (sniffle, wipes tear from eye).
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