[small voice in the wilderness]

Isn't it interesting?

"...We wish to know if you, Venerable Brethren, with your learning and prudence consider that the bodily Assumption of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith...;_Deiparae Virginis Mariae.

1946. Pope Pius sends a letter to the bishops of the world concerning the Assumption of Mary.

In order to respond to the Pope, the bishops needed to determine the source of the belief in the Assumption of Mary. Was it just a legend, believed by a few Catholics? Or was it a part of the deposit of faith, revelation handed down from the apostles? The Church could only define it as dogma if it were the latter. SO where do the bishops search for the answer? Scripture and Tradition. Of course, Scripture had no teaching of Mary's death, burial, resurrection, or Assumption. So on to Tradition they went. And that's where they found their doctrine on the Assumption of Mary. With supporting Scripture that is NOT explicit, but IMPLICIT. And can only be understood by those who contemplate and study and ponder these things in their hearts. The faithful and their "supernatural appreciation of the faith" . the sensus fidelium, the concensus of faith. It is an "...instinctive sensitivity and discrimination which the members of the Church possess in matters of faith. In that which the faithful hold in common to be the true Catholic faith, they are infallible and "cannot err in matters of belief."

[Deo volente]

With supporting Scripture that is NOT explicit, but IMPLICIT.

And the problem with that is....what?

You've merely restated the Catholic position that doctrines of the faith can be found at least implicitly in Scripture. You've already learned that throughout this thread, which is growing to ridiculous lengths, IMO. But let's get back to the issue.

The Assumption of Mary is not explicitly defined in the Bible. So what! Everyone here agrees on that point.

[Quix]

GAG GAG GAG.

[Mad Dawg]

Nope. I did my best last night to point out the wide gap between our understandings. Evidently considering that interferes with taking potshots and making conjectures that make us look bad.

Good for you for spotting the Deipara encyclical though.

Here's KIND of an example: Do you consider Euclid's 1:47, the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, to be an invention or a discovery? I'd go with discovery. I think the proof is implicit in the very notions of line, plane, angle, parallelism, and so forth.

I think the doctrine of the Trinity is implicit in Scripture and the Christological definitions of Ephesus and Chalcedon are the same, as is the theological (as opposed to disciplinary) decision of the Council of Jerusalem.

BUT the nature of Scripture and of argument from Scripture is that sooner or later an umpire is needed.

I do not think Euclid's proof is an evolution, I think it is a development, what I am calling an "unfolding."

A lot of decisions are fundamentally Christological. You could say Nicea and Constantinople were about HOW we can say Jesus is truly God and make sense of it in the context of monotheism?

Even Jerusalem can be seen as exploring what it means to say the Jesus is THE Anointed: Are the prophecies about Gentiles clutching the robe of a Jew fulfilled in Him?

So the Marian dogmata are clearly about Mary, but -- despite what you read and hear -- Mary is about Jesus, and the dogmata are, as I dare coarsely to put it, what happens when you give yourself, your body, your life completely to Jesus and as a result conceive Him and are in the most ineffably intimate contact with Him, having already (by the grace of God) given yourself utterly to Him.

And the short answer is: wonders almost beyond imagining, and certainly beyond comprehension or expectation.

Somebody might think that was an invention or a new revelation. I think it's not so very off the wall to present it as an unfolding, a discovery of something implicit in information we already had.