Australian Catholic Truth Society 1956 (No. 1120)
THE ASSUMPTION
A Dogma and Its Critics
By D. G. M. JACKSON, M.A.
"Having repeatedly raised to God prayers of urgent supplication,
and having invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth: to the glory of
Almighty God, Who has bestowed His signal favours on Mary; in honour of
His Son, the Immortal King of the Ages, the Conqueror of sin and death;
to the increase of the glory of the same August Mother; and to the joy
and exultation of the Whole Church: by the authority of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, by that of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our own
Authority, We pronounce, declare and define the dogma to he divinely
revealed; that the Immaculate Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, was,
on the completion of her earthly life, assumed body and soul into the
glory of Heaven."
Such was the solemn utterance by which the Vicar of Christ, our holy
Father Pope Pius XII, defined the dogma of the Assumption from his
throne in the Piazza of St. Peter's in Rome, on the Feast of All
Saints, 1950. The immense burst of cheering which volleyed across the
square, and the golden hymn "Te Deum" which followed were echoed
joyfully throughout the Catholic world, from whose hierarchies, clergy,
theologians, religious orders and faithful layfolk, a long train of
petitions seeking the solemn definition of Our Lady's glory had flowed
to the Holy See for over a century.
But while the faithful rejoiced, voices of criticism, unbelief and
perplexity were raised both among Christian dissidents, and from the
secular world of "modern thought." Most of these protests and comments
- many of which appeared in the daily press, both here and abroad,
serve only to illustrate the prevailing lack of comprehension of the
beliefs and practices of the Church, especially in the English-speaking
world. The most important objections may he summed up briefly as
follows:
(1)
Protestant leaders generally declared that the doctrine was
nowhere to be found in Scripture, and could not therefore be held to be
part of the "Deposit of Faith." Most of them regarded the belief of the
Church as based on legendary stories of comparatively late date, and
insisted upon the absence of any clear reference to it in the first
five centuries of Christianity.
(2)
Others - High Church Anglicans or "Orthodox Eastern" dissidents -
believed in the fact of the Assumption, but could not see how it could
well be defined as a dogma; one reason being that the "deposit of
faith" taught by the Apostles, which is the basis of doctrinal
development, was in existence and being taught long before Our Lady
died.
(3)
One of the commonest attitudes was that of the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York, who complained that by creating a pious belief
into a compulsory "new dogma" for Catholics, the Pope had widened the
divisions of the Christian world for no sound reason.
(4)
Finally, a number of modern-minded humanists pointed out
courteously, that this sort cf "challenge" to the modern mind tended to
emphasize the remoteness of the Catholic outlook from the realities of
our time, and to alienate liberal sympathies just at the moment when
"men of goodwill" were disposed to rally to the Church as a bastion of
civilized values and of the personal dignity of man.
In the past, doctrines were usually defined as the result of a
controversy which the Holy See, or a General Council, was called upon
to decide. But this doctrine of the Assumption, paradoxically enough,
aroused little, either of attack or attention, until the question of
its public definition arose. Even at the time of the English
Reformation - when the practice of honouring the Mother of God was
attacked as Protestant theology developed - the traditional Catholic
beliefs about the life and death of Mary were not subjected to any
considerable criticism. The Feast of the Assumption - made a public
holiday in England in the days of King Alfred - still appears in an
Anglican Calendar in a 1562 edition of Cranmer's Bible: and those for
whom that Bible was printed would, one supposes, have been surprised to
learn that the doctrine was "alienating" those who accepted the
Protestant teaching from the Holy See! Indeed, an article published
recently in the Vatican journal "Observatore
Romano" cited a long line
of references to the Assumption by Anglican poets and divines - and
verses honouring the doctrine can even he discovered in such unexpected
quarters as the works of Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes!
THE
RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH
I think the best way to enter upon the task of vindicating the
definition against these varied objections is to set the doctrine
itself forth more clearly against the background of Christian thought
about man's immortality, and then to show how it has developed through
a deeper understanding of Mary's place in the work of Redemption.
The Church believes that the Virgin body of Our Lady was divinely
preserved from the natural process of dissolution at her death, just as
her Divine Son's had been: and that it is now lifted up into Heaven -
just as the Risen Body of Our Lord's was at the Ascension - being
glorified with her pure soul in the full enjoyment of the Vision of
God. To make this teaching more intelligible, let us recall the
Church's teaching on the subject of the "Resurrection of the Body,"
which is asserted as a dogma in the eleventh article of the "Apostles
Creed."
Man was created by God as a "composite being" consisting of a body and
soul: and the perfection of humanity consists in the rationally ordered
harmony of these two essential elements, crowned and made complete by
the supernatural life of Grace. In virtue of this "life above nature"
our first parents were capable of a higher and holier relationship with
God than would have been possible to them through the ordinary
endowments of their nature. They were also exempted, by its possession
from the natural law of physical death - the separation of the soul
from the body, and the return of the latter, by corruption, to the
dust. Had they remained obedient, Adam and Eve would have been
uplifted, after a period of earthly life, into the glory of the Divine
Vision.
This design was frustrated by the "great refusal" of Eden, the
disobedience which led to the fall. Thereafter, man became subject to
the natural destiny of all animal life as regards his body: it was
doomed to perish. The human soul, deprived of grace, had become
incapable of entering into the joy of Heaven: and the revolt had
introduced war into the very inmost part of human nature, body warring
against spirit, spirit torn by conflict in its own powers.
The task undertaken by the Incarnate Son of God, the "Second Adam," was
that of undoing this ruin - not in part, as regards the immortal soul
only, but wholly; so that
those adhering to His "new race" by the new birth of baptism might
regain, ultimately, the integrity of glorified human nature. Indeed,
for these faithful "elect" Jesus Christ has in store a destiny far more
splendid than that forfeited by Adam and Eve. They are to possess the
beauty and vitality made manifest, prophetically, in the
Transfiguration of Our Lord on Mount Tabor, and to share in the
mysterious powers and agility of His Risen Body. "There are bodies that
belong to earth," says St. Paul, "and bodies that belong to Heaven: and
heavenly bodies have one kind of beauty, earthly bodies another . . .
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown corruptible
rises incorruptible, what is sown unhonoured arises in glory, what is
sown in weakness is raised in power, what is sown a natural body rises
a spiritual body. If there is such a thing as a natural body, there
must be a spiritual body, too. Mankind begins with the Adam who became
- as Scripture tells us - a living soul: it is fulfilled in the Adam
who has become a life giving Spirit." (1 Cor. 15; 40, 42-45).
This fulfilment awaits all the faithful children of God: but for the
general body of mankind, the consummation is delayed. They must follow
the steps of the Redeemer and embrace His Cross, so that the pattern of
His fruitful suffering may be reproduced in the Church, His Mystical
Body. And they must submit to death, and the corruption of the flesh
which is the due wage of sin, before they can arise to the triumph of
the Resurrection at the end of the ages.
WHY
THE ASSUMPTION?
Catholics believe - as do Christians generally - that while Our
Lord accepted the Passion and death of Calvary for our sins, the
corruption of the flesh was unable to touch His Divine Innocence.
"Death could not hold Him,"
as St. Peter says - there was no reason why it should and it was not
fitting that it should. Christ's appearances after
His corporal resurrection showed forth this truth, as well as the
Divine Power and Authority of the revelation given by Him to mankind.
From the truths which I have outlined the process of thought which has
culminated in the Doctrine of the Assumption is easy enough to follow.
Mary, the Virgin of Judah, was predestined in the eternal plan to be
the Mother of the Divine Redeemer. The Second Person of the Trinity was
to take human flesh wholly from her body, by the Creative power of the
Holy Spirit. This work was accomplished with her full consent: "be it
done unto me according to your word . . ." which undid the effects of
the disobedience of Eve. Hence the traditional veneration accorded to
Mary by the Church as the "Second Eve." the supreme human sharer, by
voluntary self-offering, in the work of our redemption. She is the
Mother, not only of the new Head of our race, but of "all the
living," those who become members of Christ in His Mystical Body.
The necessity of reconciling the taintless perfection required in the
Mother of the Incarnate God, with the subjection of Mary to the
universal law that "salvation comes through Jesus Christ" led to the
formulation of the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception. The soul of the Virgin, it was taught,
was saved from the least stain of original sin from the very instant of
her Conception by the saving Divine power acting by way of prevention,
even as her sacred body was held by miracle inviolate, even in the act
of child-bearing. From these conclusions the thought of the Church
moves with a kind of inevitability to that concerning the assumption of
Our Lady's Body into heaven. For, while it was fitting that the "Second
Eve" should share through her mysterious "sword of suffering" in the
expiation of the Second Adam, and follow in His footsteps through the
Valley of death, it was clearly not
fitting that the pure vessel which had borne the Divine Saviour, the
flesh which was His Flesh, should undergo the degrading penalty of
corruption in the grave. Hence a deep and growing conviction in the
Church that the Body of Mary had been lifted incorrupt into Heaven with
that of Her Son: "He has taken her to Himself," declares Modestus of
Jerusalem, [died, 634] "as He alone knows."
NOT
FOUNDED ON LEGENDS
It is important to understand clearly that the truth of the Assumption,
solemnly defined by the present [1956] Pope during the Holy Year which
has just ended, [1950] is thus enshrined in the "deposit of faith" as a
conclusion drawn from the Church's teaching about Our Lord Himself and
His relation with His Mother. It has nothing to do with any existing
record about what happened at her death, for nothing of the kind exists
which is of the least real historical worth. The classical account, set
forth in the sixth century by St. Gregory of Tours, is almost certainly
a pious legend: it tells of a gathering of the Apostolic band to the
death bed of Mary, a vision of Our Lord receiving her soul in the
company of Angels; and later, of a second appearance of Jesus, who
commands her holy body to be borne on a cloud to Paradise. In later
additions, St. Thomas plays a part which is palpably imagined as
corresponding with his role in the Gospel account of the Resurrection.
No official Church teaching could possibly be founded on a basis of
this kind: indeed, even if the historical fact of the Assumption were
as fully demonstrated as many wonders in the Church's history, this
would not make the doctrine "definable" if it were not linked with
Mary's position in the Divine plan, so that it is contained, by
implication, in the deposit of Faith itself. It is worth noticing, by
the way, that even the Gregorian legend and its developments contain no
hint of any apparitions of Our Lady like those of Jesus Christ
immediately after His Resurrection: and this gives a higher value to
the tradition out of which the story has grown.
It is important that the non-Catholic inquirer should realize that in
claiming the exceptional privilege of Bodily Assumption for the Mother
of Christ we are not exalting her as superhuman, or making her a sort
of intermediary "goddess." She has simply gone before us into a state of
glory to which all the faithful are eventually destined: we, too, shall
be "assumed" bodily into Heaven at the general resurrection, when the
work of death and physical corruption is reversed. It
is, in a sense, a violent and unnatural condition that the human soul
should be discarnate: for we
were not created for an angelic, but for a human immortality. (Mr. C. S. Lewis
has suggested cogently that the repugnance commonly felt by living
people for both corpses and "ghosts" reflects our sense that
this separation is an anomaly). Our souls are "set towards" a body -
they would always have been linked with a body if God had had His
loving way with our race from the first. With Mary He always had His
way, from first to last - so that it is difficult to see how her soul
could endure discarnate, even for a time, as ours must.
Actually, it does not seem quite certain whether Mary is unique in the
privilege of bodily assumption. What of the patriarchs whose bodies -
according to St. Matthew - were raised up and appeared in Jerusalem
after the Resurrection? What of Enoch and Elijah, of whom the
Scriptures suggest, at least, that they were rapt bodily into Heaven?
It was very commonly believed in ancient times that St. John the
Evangelist was body and soul in Paradise: and the same surmise has been
piously made concerning St. Joseph, the foster-father of Our Lord, of
whom no relics have at any time been claimed to exist.
"It's
Not in the Bible . . ."
Let us return, now, to the objections against the doctrine made by
Protestants of the more old-fashioned school. They still hold to the
traditional Reformation doctrine that all the "deposit of Faith" is
contained in the Bible - not including certain "deutero-canonical"
books which they reject. Its truths are to be drawn from the sacred
books by devout souls enlightened by the Holy Spirit. All religious
doctrine, therefore, if it is to be acceptable to them, should in
theory be justified by reference to the text of Scripture: and where -
as in the case of the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, Purgatory,
the Veneration of saints and so forth - they fail to find a Biblical
foundation for the Catholic teaching, they reject it out of hand as a
corrupt or unfounded "accretion."
As a description of the belief of the early Church concerning the
foundations of the Faith, this is historically inaccurate. The
organized Church itself existed long before the books which form our
New Testament were assembled. There is no book in the New
Testament itself which does not imply that it was written for people
already instructed in the truth. This is noticed by the eminent
Anglican scholar, Dr. B. J. Kidd, who goes on to say that "the
Christian Church might conceivably have gone on for ever without
Christian Scripture." The Gospel was received by the Apostles from the
mouth of Jesus Christ, Who left no writings of His own at all: and they
were promised that the Holy Spirit would "guide them into all truth."
Part of this truth was ultimately committed to writing under Divine
inspiration, to be added as a new "source book" to the ancient sacred
books of the Jews, which contain records of the earlier Divine
Revelation and the promise of the Messiah. The Church had the charge of
these; as the Living Voice of the Holy Spirit, she had to guard,
interpret and expound them in the light of the Divine Guidance given to
her. But the Bible is not, and never
has been, held by orthodox Christian teaching to be the sole source of
revealed truth. There was also an oral tradition handed on by
the Apostles to their successors, and later partly embodied in the
writings of the Fathers and others.
The
Development of Doctrine
The Scripture itself - constantly meditated upon by saints and sages -
was the subject of interpretation under authority. The results of this
meditation and interpretation produced a kind of science which
"developed" its implications and drew new implications from its
treasure house of wisdom, not adding
to, but deepening in
perception of the "truth once delivered to the saints."
Catholics, therefore, believe in a "progressive" revelation - not in
the sense that additional truth is given, unrelated to that which Jesus
Christ originally imparted to His disciples, but in the sense that
aspects of that revealed truth come to be perceived more clearly
through persistent contemplation, and cast more light on human life.
But if such activity is to be carried on by human minds, it is
necessary that the truth should be guarded against distortion through
false conclusions, and from eclipse in the confusion of unresolved
disagreements. Hence infallibility
is required, so that there may be an ordered movement of thought, not
an unending muddle. For, while the errors of natural science may be
cleared up, eventually, by being tested in the light of mundane
experience, this cannot be done, here below, in the case of religious
errors: for them, there is no earthly remedy unless the final teaching
authority is an effective "organ of truth" guarded against error. That
is why, outside Catholicism, a point has now been reached where
"Christians" are hardly agreed upon a single point of the Christian
revelation.
The
Church and Our Lady
Having looked at the process of theological reasoning by which the
Church has been guided to formulate and define the dogma of the
Assumption, it may be well, now, to examine the historical stages in
which this development occurred. As I have already noticed, there is no
inspired or historical record of the passing of Our Lady: and while St.
John's Vision of the Woman in the Apocalypse is frequently identified
with her in devout meditation, it may be doubted whether its symbolism
originally referred to Mary. Similarly, passages of
Scripture - both of the Old and New Testaments - are used by the
Fathers and others to illustrate Marian theology: but none has been
interpreted with authority as affording ground for the teaching
concerning her heavenly exaltation.
The truth is that in the first five centuries of Christian history the
Virgin Mother remains in comparative shadow - as she does in the New
Testament itself. There is no account of her death, as we have seen, or
of any visible miracle connected with it: the question of her
sinlessness is not raised. Her figure appeals only when reference to it
is required in order to stress some aspect of Christian doctrine
against those who challenge it. Thus, her true Motherhood is insisted upon against
the deniers of her Son's Manhood: her Virginity,
in the early creeds, in contradiction to those who might question His
Godhead. St. Justin the Martyr (died c. 163) emphasizes Mary's status
as the "second Eve" whose importance I have already shown: and he, with
St. Irenaeus and Tertullian, began the process of accentuating her
place in the work of redemption. But it was only when Nestorius'
attempt to divide "Jesus the Man" from "Christ the God" had been
condemned at the Council of Ephesus that the dignity of the Virgin of
Nazareth came to be more fully recognized: and as "Theotokos" - Mother of God - she began to assume
the Queenship over Catholic Christendom which was to he hers from
henceforth.
The
"Falling Asleep" of Mary
At the end of the fifth century the zeal aroused by the definition of
Ephesus led to the utterances of the great Eastern teachers in which we
find the embryo of the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. The liturgical feast of
the "Dormition" (falling asleep) of the Virgin begins to be observed
generally in the sixth century: and the apocryphal stories connected
with the death of Our Lady appear about the same time.
The quotation of a few eminent names, may be of interest here. St. Epiphanius (late 4th and 5th
century) argued warmly against heretics who denied Our Lady's perpetual
virginity, and uttered the speculative view that it might well be that
she had not died at all, but had been carried up to Heaven like Elijah.
[His letter written in 377.] This view is now generally held to be
unsound - for reasons which I have already discussed, connected with
Mary's place in the work of redemption. Next we may mention an unknown
writer whose works have been discovered among those of St. Augustine,
who declares that he "shudders" at the thought "that the most sacred
body, from which Christ assumed flesh . . . was given over worms," and
concludes that it is "outside the possibilities of thought" in view of
the privilege of her incomprehensible grace. According to St. John of
Damascus, [died 753] Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem told St. Pulcheria at
the time of the Council of Chalcedon [451] that Mary's sepulchre was
known there, but that an "ancient and trustworthy tradition" existed
that she was not there, having ascended into heaven - so that the
Apostles, opening the tomb after her death, had found only grave
clothes. The East Roman Emperor, Maurice, [about the year 600,]
transferred the feast of the "falling asleep" or "transition" of Our
Lady to the present date of the Assumption Feast, August 15, and it was
observed on that date at Rome in the reign of St. Gregory the Great.
[died 604.]
The "secret" prayer (that is, the prayer not said out loud, but
softly), in the Gregorian missal belonging to this period seems to
imply in its language a belief in the integral presence of Mary in
Heaven. "In accordance with the law
of flesh, she has passed hence: yet are we aware that in heavenly glory
she is interceding for us with You." For it would be superfluous
for the Church to express with such emphasis the mere belief that the
Blessed Virgin's soul was in Heaven, as thought this were something
extraordinary, instead of the common lot of the holy servants of God.
It is worth noticing, too, that in this period, notable for
relic-hunting and the veneration of holy relics - or what were held to
be such, often on somewhat flimsy evidence - there is no sign of any
appearance of physical relics of the Blessed Virgin, whether true or
false, or of any effort to discover such. If they had regarded her
sacred body as still on earth, this negligence - contrasting with the
passionate interest in the remains of the Apostles, and other saints
and martyrs of the heroic age, would be truly extraordinary.
Progress
Towards the Definition
The history of the development of this particular dogma makes it clear
that the theological process has nothing to do with the legendary tales
about Our Lady current in the sixth century, which no Catholic
theologian takes seriously. These are significant merely as providing
dramatic expression of the current belief about the end of Our Lady's
life - the deep conviction of the faithful that her passing was not
like that of others. The liturgies of East and West, however, were
purified eventually of these doubtful elements, and attention was
concentrated on the glory of Our Lady in Heaven. The Assumption Feast
became the occasion for homilies by such great preachers as St.
Germanus of Constantinople, [died about 733,] St. Andrew of Crete,
[died 740] and, above all, the heroic Eastern Catholic leaders in the
Iconoclast controversy, St. John of Damascus, and St. Theodore Studita.
[mid-8th century]
St. John tells his hearers of how "the Immaculate Virgin, defiled by no
earthly passions, nourished by heavenly thoughts, went not back into
dust, but, herself a living heaven, was gathered into the heavenly
tabernacles." "For," he cries, "how could she taste death, from whom
the true life flowed for all? Yet, she bowed to the law laid down by
Him to Whom she gave birth, and, as a child of the old Adam, underwent
the old judgement - for, indeed, her Son, Who is the very Life, did not
refuse it. Now, as the Mother of the Living God, she is fitly carried
up to Him. Eve, who yielded to the serpent's tempting, was condemned to
pain in child-bearing, received sentence of death, and was gathered
into the inner chamber of the lower regions (i.e., Limbo). But that
truly blessed one, ever attentive to God's Word, and filled with the
operation of the Holy Spirit, conceived her Son without passion or
human intercourse, at the spirit message of an Archangel, brought Him
forth with no pain and consecrated herself utterly to God. How, then,
was it possible for death to engulf her or the lower regions to receive
her? How could corruption invade that body in which the Life was
conceived? An even, straight, swift path to Heaven is prepared for her:
for if Christ, the Truth and the Life, said 'where I am, there will My
servant be,' how much more will His Mother be with Him?"
We see, here, summed up and rhetorically presented, the purely
theological argument for the assumption which I have already set forth.
The Roman Church discouraged Assumption "Apocrypha" with its
characteristic sobriety: and this even led some Western theologians to
throw doubt, for a time, on the doctrine itself - especially as the
West had come to be largely out of touch with Catholic developments in
the Byzantine East. From the tenth century on, however, the position
became clear in all its essentials, and the irrelevance of
pseudo-historical detail was apparent. Thereafter, the doctrine of the
Assumption was recognized, first as "a pious and religious belief."
then as "certain" and not to be denied without rashness, and so we pass
to the modern age, when two hundred Bishops at the Vatican Council in
1870 requested that it might be made the subject of a dogmatic
definition. Since then, the sense of the Church has endorsed their
desire with increasing urgency, while the judgement of the Catholic
episcopate was practically unanimous before the pronouncement of Pope
Pius XII asserted the Assumption as a dogma of faith, in virtue of the
teaching authority conferred upon him as the successor of St Peter.
The
Bull, "Munificentissimus Deus"
In the Bull, Munificentissimus Deus,
announcing and explaining the definition to the Christian world, it is
important to notice the theological method employed by the Pope in
treating of the doctrine. He starts, not by considering the Faith of
the early Church, but that of our own times - especially that of the
last century, since the definition of the Immaculate Conception. By
this approach, he impresses upon us the truth that the Living Voice of the Church teaches
God's truth with the same infallible authority today as at any time in
the past, and it is to this Voice that all the faithful must
listen, if they would learn it. It is not, therefore, in the beliefs of
the early centuries - frequently implicit or only half-formulated -
that we must look for enlightenment concerning the Church's present
doctrine: on the contrary, it is the teaching of today which shows what
has always been contained in the "Deposit of Faith." The position is
explained in the Encyclical, Humani
Generis, which appeared only a short time before the Bull.
Theologians, the Holy Father explains, must constantly have recourse to
the fountains of Divine Revelation, so as to show how and where the
teaching of the Living Voice is found there, explicitly or implicitly.
But this does not make theology simply one of the historical sciences.
"Side by side with these hallowed sources, God has given His Church a
living Voice; thus He would make clear to us, unravel for us, even what
was left obscure in the deposit of Faith, and only present there
implicitly." The task of interpretation has not been entrusted to
individuals - even theologians: this is the Church's teaching, which
must be decisive.
In the Bull, reference is made
to the practical unanimity of
the
Catholic episcopate and faithful in holding the bodily Assumption of
the Virgin to be definable - and this alone, it is declared, puts
beyond question the fact of the Assumption as revealed by God, when it
is considered that it is beyond human experience, so that it could not
otherwise be known. It is only after this that the history of the
doctrine in the Church is surveyed - in relation to the interpretation
of Scripture, the liturgical tradition of East and West and the
elucidations of the great Eastern Fathers, scholastics and
later Catholic theologians.
THE
MIND OF THE CHURCH
UNANIMOUS
An accurate and clear picture of the Church's mind on the Assumption
doctrine during the past century has been preserved in a collection of
the Petitions sent to the Papacy for its definition during the period
between 1849 and 1940, published in two volumes by Fr. Rudolf de Moos,
S.J., who has gathered them out of the archives with the collaboration
of his colleagues. Spontaneous requests from the Hierarchy are 2,505 in
number, from 73 per cent. of the Church's episcopal sees: and to them
must be added those from Vicars Apostolic Abbots and Prelates,
Superiors of religious orders, theological faculties and Seminaries.
They come from a long series of national, provincial, diocesan and
regional councils, as well as from Marian Congresses and similar
gatherings. When these volumes were published in 1945, the
"Assumptionist Movement" revived with new vigour - a veritable tide of
enthusiasm being shown in petitions from bishops, religious superiors
theologians, clergy and the faithful at large. The episcopates of
entire nations and regions all over the world were now demanding the
definition, as well as the pontifical and Catholic universities: the
orders and congregations were virtually unanimous. Hundreds of books,
theses and articles concluded in its favour.
Of especial interest are the figures for the Eastern "Uniate" Churches
which preserve the ancient Catholic traditions of Eastern Christendom.
When the final inquiries were made by the Holy See, fifty-three of
fifty-four replies from the Hierarchies of these Churches were
favourable. In 1946, finally, the Catholic Hierarchy of England and
Wales were unanimous in requesting the definition as opportune. Only
six residential bishops in all the world, at the final stage, had
doubts about whether the doctrine was part of Divine Revelation.
AN
ANGLICAN CRITICISM ANSWERED
Certain eminent Anglican critics appear to regard it as fatal to the
credibility of the Assumption doctrine that it cannot be confirmed by
historical and archaeological research, any more than by Scripture. But
why on earth should it be susceptible of establishment in this way?
That the Risen Body of Christ should reappear was necessary to the
fulfilment of this mission, as a vindication of the truth of His
doctrine by His victory over death. There was no such need, however, of
any such immediate manifestation on Mary's part. There was no need that
her glorified body should be seen, or even be "seeable" to earthly
eyes, and it is in keeping with all that we know of her life that the
glory of her passing, like the glory of the Annunciation, should be
hidden from all except the rejoicing angels and saints. For the rest,
the attitude of these Anglicans is surely strange, if they believe at
all in a "Church" guided by the Spirit of God. For it implies the
conclusion that all the "branches" of the Church which they recognize,
both in East and West, whether in communication with the Holy See or
not, were permitted by the Holy Ghost to remain in error, and to
establish solemn feasts and devotions in honour of a false belief during at least eight hundred years,
even if we accept no evidence for belief in the Assumption earlier than
the age of St. John of Damascus (eighth century).
Again, those who adhere to the theory of Anglican "continuity" with the
Catholic Church of old England may fittingly be reminded of the
attitude of that Church to the doctrine of the Assumption - of which
very ample and conclusive historic evidence exists.
THE
ASSUMPTION IN ENGLISH CATHOLIC TRADITION
I have already mentioned that the Feast of the Assumption was declared
a public holiday under King Alfred, but the story of the feast in
Britain begins a long time before the close of the ninth century, when
he was reigning. As early as 690 - less than a hundred years after the
first landing of St. Augustine - St. Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne,
writes of the feast as being kept in his time, in honour of our Lady's
heavenly birthday. By the eleventh century - the era of the Conquest -
the feast was well-established, as well as that of the Immaculate
Conception, which was vindicated by Osbert of Clare, the biographer of
St. Edward the Confessor. The Conqueror's Primate, Archbishop Lanfranc,
made the Assumption the principal feast of Our Lady in his calendar -
and so it remained for all Englishmen while England was still Catholic.
It was kept on August 15 as a high holiday, with Church processions,
sports and feasting in towns and villages throughout the country. Nor
were the poor forgotten in the celebrations: thus, in 1254 the Bishop
of Norwich bequeathed money to his nephew to be used to feed a hundred
poor people each year on this feast day as long as he lived. "Our Lady
of the Assumption" was adopted as patron by many city guilds, and was a
frequent subject of representations in Churches. Many of these were
destroyed during the Reformation and Civil War - especially those in
stained glass - but one example survives in a stone-carving over the
entrance to the Choir in York Cathedral - only a few yards from the
official throne of the late Anglican Archbishop, Dr. Garbett, who came
out in protest against the papal definition in 1951!
Among churches dedicated to "'Maria Assumpta" we may notice Salisbury
Cathedral consecrated in 1258, in the reign of King Henry III;
Aylesford Church, once a Carmelite mother house; and Eton College,
styled by King Henry VI: "Our Royal College of the Blessed Mary of
Eton, founded by us in honour of the Assumption of the said Most
Blessed Mary," The ancient seal of the College showed Our Lady being
uplifted by angels and crowned - and the same theme is presented in a
sculpture over the eastern gate of the College quadrangle which has
recently been restored. Norwich Cathedral has an Assumption Chapel, and
there are carved bosses of the Assumption in Abbey Dore, North Elmham,
and Old St. Helens - to mention only a few. Paintings of the subject
have also been discovered though not many have survived the storms of
the Reformation era. It seems very probable that the "Tree of Jesse" at
Dorchester Abbey was originally completed by a stained glass Assumption
which has now been destroyed. Indeed, wherever mediaeval painted glass
survives, we find fragments of Assumptions and Coronations - and two
are represented in Roodscreens in Devonshire churches, dated in the
15th century.
It was not without reason that the England of that time was named "Our
Lady's Dowry," and in protesting against the definition asserting her
heavenly honours, the Anglican Archbishops of 1950 only emphasized the discontinuity of their religion
with the "Ecclesia Anglicana" of the thousand years between St.
Augustine and Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Primate.
THE
REAL OBSTACLE TO REUNION
I have now shown that the Assumption definition of the year 1950
represents a belief which has for ages been universal among Catholics
as part of their heritage of Faith, and which was held by the English
Christians as strongly as any others at the time when Western
Christendom was undivided. It may be seen, then, that it is quite
unrealistic to speak of the definition as though it had introduced a
novelty "increasing the dogmatic differences in Christendom" in our own
time. There is, to be sure, a certain poignancy, as well as paradox, in
the fact that the heirs of the Reformation which tore Britain and the
North away from Catholic unity should now be imploring the Holy See not
to worsen the appalling rent their predecessors made.
So far as reunion is concerned, however, the mere non-definition of a
particular doctrine has no meaning one way or the other. If these
Anglicans - including those who claim to be "Anglo-Catholics" -
believed in Catholic doctrines in a Catholic way: that is, as the
teachings of a competent, Divinely-guided spiritual authority to which
they owed obedience, they would accept all the formal definitions of
our Church - including those concerning the Papacy, which involve
condemnation of the schism they have inherited. But since they do not
become "Roman Catholics," it is obvious that they do not believe in this fashion: and,
that being the case, the question of the Assumption cannot make any
difference at all. There is no use in talking about "Christian reunion"
today as though our Church and other Churches were component parts of a
single "Church" which was once universal and is now temporarily
disrupted pending the discovery of terms of reconciliation. The
Catholic view upon this subject is stated bluntly in the recent Papal
Encyclical Humani Generis, "The
Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church in Communion with Rome
are one and the same thing."
It cannot, therefore, be "reunited" with any other Christian community
in the sense they imagine.
What can happen - and, we
pray, may happen one day - is
that other Christian groups, as well as individuals, may be given the
grace to recognize the Mystical Body of Christ for what it is and
become grafted into it by accepting its principle of authority in
matters of Faith, and the laws by which it lives. It must be added -
though with regret - that this talk of the "sharpening of differences"
seems even less impressive when it is considered that certain Anglican
modernists are able to remain in full communion with their Church and
even to hold high office in it, while openly giving expression of
religious beliefs which are farther from traditional Christianity than
those of orthodox Moslems, and of moral ideas which contravene the
whole Christian concept of man's nature and destiny.
The accent placed by our Christian dissident critics on divergence upon
the Assumption serves, in fact, to give a quite false impression that
the real distinctions between Catholic and non-Catholic are not very
important, if only certain odds and ends of popular devotion could be
left as "open questions" upon which people might believe as they liked.
There is yet an other matter upon which they entertain strange
delusions, if we may judge by the trembling of the English Church Times about the possibility
of the "secession of important individuals and groups as a result of
the definition. As I have shown, the consensus of Catholic belief is
universal: the crucial question which has been discussed recently among
theologians was whether the Assumption could be defined, not whether
the belief itself was true: and upon this they have long been in all
but complete agreement. It was inconceivable that any individual or
group generally convinced of the truth of the Catholic Church and her
teaching should find any difficulty in accepting the Papal decree of
definition - and, in fact, no such difficulty has arisen anywhere.
THE
MODERN MIND AND THE SUPERNATURAL
As for the modern world, its fundamental difficulty is not concerned
with accepting this or that dogma as reasonable or historical but in
the acceptance of the whole basic Christian idea of a supernatural
order, revealed to man by a Divine Messenger. In comparison with the
tremendous miracle of the Incarnation and the Resurrection - that the
Eternal God assumed the nature of Man, was born of a woman, lived and
died on this planet and rose again alive out of the grave - the raising
of His Mother's body to Paradise becomes a small thing to accept. It is
not the last definition of the Church, in fact, which is in question,
but the opening phrases of the Creed - the affirmation of God's
creative power over nature, and His loving condescension to our human
race. It is this which we
have to restore to the world of our time, along with the hope of
immortal, joyous life for man, resting on Christ's victory over death,
with which the triumph of Mary is intimately linked.
The attitude of the "modern mind" to religion in general and
Catholicism in particular is very well expressed in some of the puzzled
protests of friendly liberal humanists in the matter of the recent
definition. For these people, the Church's really vital function in the
world of today is to provide a sort of strong central bastion of the
"common front" of Christians and freedom-loving humanists against
Marxist totalitarianism: and they expect her to show herself
accommodating towards the dissidence and doubt in the ranks of her
"fellow travellers." It is not a question - they seem to say politely -
of asking you to compromise on any of your beliefs and traditions. We
simply beg you to consider other people's feelings, and not to
emphasize the aspects of Catholicism which the modern world finds
fantastic or "challenging" lest the spirit of goodwill be weakened.
WHAT
THE CHURCH IS FOR
This argument would be a strong one if the Church were, in fact, a
"political" organization concerned primarily with the defence of
civilized life and humane social values. But the question whether the
definition of the Assumption is "opportune" or not may be answered by
saying that it is opportune precisely because the Church is not such an organization, and that
this act serves to remind worldly-minded Christians and humanists of
that great truth. The fact that Catholics have been "bearing the brunt"
in the fight against atheistic Communism, both in East Europe and in
the Asian mission field, does not mean that this temporal crisis -
grave as it is - is the main preoccupation of the Church, as the
Communists themselves suppose. No - the mind of the Church is directed
not on the temporal but the spiritual plane: she is concerned with the
natural order only because it is related to the supernatural order and
man's eternal destiny therein.
She is not, therefore, prepared to set side her Divinely-given task of
developing the Truths of Faith because the tide of persecution and
peril is rising: she is not prepared to teach the truth about Our Lady,
the Queen of Heaven, in subdued tones, for fear that by speaking out
loud and clear, she may upset people who are thereby reminded that all
their pro-Catholic sympathies and attitudes leave them still very far
from the Faith.
THE
SIGN OF CONTRADICTION
The fact is that the Church stands for a form of authoritative
discipline of the mind which the modern humanist finds highly
repugnant. She makes a unique claim to teach the truth, by Divine
Authority, about an order of reality - the spiritual - whose very
existence is denied by many, while still more hold that little or
nothing can be known certainly about it: and she insists that a clear
knowledge of this "higher reality" is of supreme importance to mankind.
No good can be served by encouraging the illusion that this "sign of
contradiction" does not still stand between Catholics and those outside
the Visible Church, which is the Fold of Christ. If Western
civilization is saved, it will not be by an alliance based on false
pretences about the depth of its divisions: and - as we see it - it is
even more necessary that Christ's Truth should he fearlessly proclaimed
than that civilization should be saved. The alienation of men from Mary
-and so from her Son - has brought about the spiritual decay which is
at the root of our "winter of discontent;" so that both our social
restoration and spiritual health depend upon the strengthening of
devotion to Our Mother in Heaven, as well as to Christ the King Whose
glory is inseparable from hers.
The Pope himself [Pius XII], in one of his recent messages, has
answered those who accuse him of flinging an untimely challenge, in the
face of the spirit of the age, and of alienating humanist friends of
the Church.
Speaking of those who teach the Faith, he says "Never let them be led
away by the false spirit of appeasement: let them not think that
disloyal and erring souls can he brought back, with happy result, into
the Church's bosom, unless the whole truth, as it finds currency in the
Church, is honestly preached to all, without disfigurement, without
diminution."
THE
PRAYER OF ST. THEODORE
So much, then, for the defence of the cause of Our Lady's Assumption
against Christian dissidents and modern secular critics. It remains for
me to end this essay, fittingly, with the words of one of the greatest
of the champions of Mary among the Eastern Fathers, the glorious St.
Theodore Studita.
"And now you, who, passing beyond the
clouds, enter Heaven and the Holy of Holies amid songs of triumph and
joy, deign, O Mother of God, to bless the whole world. Give peace to
the Church and victory to the Truth! Protect our homes against all
enemies! Be propitious to all Christian people - and pardon my
rashness, that I have dared to speak of you!"
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