Religion: The Assumption of Mary

Many Protestants are unaware of it, but the infallibility of the Pope has never once been officially exercised since the doctrine was defined by the Vatican Council in 1870.* This week, the vast machinery of the Roman Catholic Church seemed almost ready to proclaim, by papal infallibility, a new dogma which all true Catholics would be required to believe: that upon the death of the Virgin, her body was taken up directly into Heaven.

“Glorious Mystery.” Belief in the “Assumption,” as it is called, can be traced back into the earliest records of Christianity, but no reference to it appears in canonical scripture. Accepting the apocryphal account of the event as genuine, Gregory of Tours (538-593) tells that, as the apostles were watching round the dying Mary, Jesus appeared with angels and committed the soul of His mother to the Archangel Michael. Next day, as the body was being carried to the grave, He appeared again and carried it in a cloud to Heaven.

Although the Feast of the Assumption has been celebrated in the Church at least since the 7th Century, and the Assumption is one of the “glorious mysteries” on which Catholics meditate while saying the Rosary, this belief has never been pronounced a dogma. Informed sources now predict that Pius XII will do so next April 2—the 50th anniversary of his ordination.

The machinery of such solemn decisions grinds slow and small. Some 200 years ago, a monk wrote to Pope Clement XIII begging him to define the bodily Assumption of Mary as “a most certain dogma of faith.” Clement passed the matter on to the Holy Office. In 1863, Spain’s Queen Elizabeth made the same request. Pius IX, though recognizing the Queen’s good intentions, was somewhat annoyed at a temporal sovereign’s interference in sacred matters. He replied: “I am not worthy to publish such a dogma. The wishes of Your Majesty, the holy wishes of Your Majesty, will no doubt some day be satisfied if the large body of the humble faithful persevere in prayer to this end.”

The Faithful Persevere. A few years later, a Benedictine monk named Luigi Vaccari organized a popular movement, still continuing, to bring pressure on the Pope. Dom Luigi persuaded a layman to travel the world collecting signatures to a petition. Some 25,000 signatures came from Mexico alone. The Holy Office forbade Vaccari to continue his activities, but the “humble faithful persevered in prayer,” and so many petitions were flooding in upon the Vatican that finally Pius XI gave the movement his official blessing. In 1946, the present Pope sent a circular letter to all the bishops of his Church:

“. . . Is it permitted [liceat], is it convenient [deceat], is it opportune [expediat to adhere to these requests [for the dogmatic definition of the Assumption]?” The letter explicitly asked the “Venerable Brothers” if, “according to your wisdom and prudence, you believe that the Bodily Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin be established and defined as a dogma of faith and if this would be in accord with the wishes of your clergy and people.” The Pope is reported to have said that the “answers, in their great majority, are favorable.”

Students at New York City’s Roman Catholic Fordham University last fortnight had the opportunity to study a little-known painting of the Assumption, Botticini’s Vision of St. Thomas*, lent to the University by Princess

Caralli of Leuchtenberg. During the coming year such pictures of the hovering Virgin, the angels and vacant tomb will be increasingly exhibited. When Pius XII finally proclaims the new dogma from the altar of the Cathedra, in St. Peter’s, Roman Catholic Christendom will be waiting.

* In 1854, Pius IX defined as dogma the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary—the belief that Mary was preserved from all sin from the moment her soul was created and infused into her body. But his infallibility had not at that time been officially recognized as dogma.

* According to legend, St. Thomas was not present with the other apostles at the burial of Mary, and doubted her ascension till the Virgin threw down to him her cincture as tangible proof.