The Church’s Marian dogmas are founded on the tradition of the Church as interpreter of God’s word
Posted on August 15th 2010 in Weekly messages
Last Sunday the Church was plunged into darkness as the electricity board renewed cables in the street. The fire-alarms were ringing away in the background, but at least one parishioner could see the bright side, when he said that this was the first time he could study the stained-glass window behind the tabernacle. This is from the original pro-Cathedral and dates from the mid-19th century, itself a copy of Titian’s famous painting of the Assumption in the Friari Church in Venice of the 16th century. The Dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady was only decreed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, but far from it being a late addition to the Catholic faith it has been held as a doctrine from the earliest centuries of the Church.
The Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption are the two teachings that cause most non-Catholic Christians serious difficulties. If these teachings are not in the Bible, they must be un-necessary accretions. This argument is founded on a mistaken understanding of the role of the Bible in the Church. During the week a rather aggressive young man came in to St Mary’s one evening to ask where is the Rosary mentioned in the Bible, and try as I might I could not convince him to say anything other than ‘it is not in the Bible’. For this young man the Bible has replaced the living person Jesus Christ as the centre of his faith. However Jesus Christ is the principle of coherence through which the Old and New Testaments are interpreted. This mandate of interpretation has been handed onto the Church as a whole, and to the Pope and Bishops in particular to continue.
The principle of coherence is different to that of content. The content of the Bible is inerrant, all the biblical writers wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Pope and Bishops cannot make the Bible say something it does not in terms of content, nor can they separate the coherence of the whole from Jesus Christ. The same Holy Spirit that animates the Church is the one that inspired the original writers. For the Catholic, content, coherence and interpretation are bound together within a living faith.
This approach is needed to understand the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Their foundations are found in the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’. The Church as a spiritual living body, has meditated on the meaning of ‘full of grace’, within the universal saving mission of Jesus Christ. All people are saved through Christ, but being ‘full of grace’ the Virgin Mary must have been saved in a manner different to sinners. She was preserved from sin rather than saved from original sin and all its consequences. The Virgin Mary still required the saving act of her Son, but in a different way to ourselves. This is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which has nothing to do with the manner of her physical birth. The dogma of the Assumption logically follows this preservation from sin. Mary did not die in the manner witnessed by common humanity with all its trauma and grief. All this is the consequence of the sin of the world, and personal sins of each of us. However even without sin the life of the Virgin Mary is of a finite duration, otherwise she would not be human. At the end of her physical life, she passed through death into heaven, body and soul, since her whole life was without any stain of sin. This Assumption, through the power of her Son was made possible by His death and Resurrection.
In these ways therefore the dogmas are an integral part of the Catholic faith, founded on the biblical encounter between the Archangel Gabriel and Mary, and cohere with the so-called ‘rule of faith’ handed to the living Church.