Mythology and Marian Dogma

Abstract

On the 1st of November, 1950, Pope Pius XII announced in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, as an indispensable part of Christian belief, revealed by God, that ‘Mary, the immaculate and perpetually virgin Mother of God, after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven’. It is difficult to know what sort of sense to give to this kind of dogmatic formulation, but it would seem that sense has to be made of it because it has been accepted by the general consensus of the Church and defined by the highest authority as being an integral part of Christian doctrine for all Roman Catholics. We have to make theological sense of it in order to be faithful to the transmission of the Marian traditions throughout the ages of the Church. This is not to suggest that we should relax our criticism of these tranditions, but I take it that we cannot be faithful to Christian tradition and at the same time adopt the liberal attitude of dispensing as irrelevant with those dogmatic traditions which do not meet our taste. Marian dogma cannot be shrugged off by Roman Catholics as being a Catholic aberration of Christian tradition; after the Papal definitions of the immaculate conception of Mary in 1854 and of her bodily assumption in 1950 the dogmas have to be taken with the utmost seriousness, and if it is found to be difficult to reconcile an easy understanding of these dogmas with more fundamental aspects of Christian doctrine then we must adopt a more broad-ranging interpretation of these beliefs. What is required in this instance is an exercise in dogmatic hermeneutics.