Posted on 08/15/2019 1:16:53 PM PDT by Antoninus
The one about THE SCIENCE OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AND ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
Originally penned and posted on August 15, ARSH 2011.
“The Assumption” is the Dogma that the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed BODY and SOUL into heaven at the end of her life. The archaeological record is one of the most compelling confirmations of this truth. The veneration of burial places, tombs and relics of dead saints is universal and consistent in the early Church and has carried right through to this day. Everyone knows where St. Peter is buried, and the relics of St. Paul and the other apostles and saints, even recent saints like St. Bernadette are venerated and in some cases spread all over the earth. Almost every Catholic Church contains the relics of multiple saints.
But one saint has NEVER had any location venerated as her permanent burial place, nor have there ever been any relics purported to be part of her body. Never. Who is this person whom everyone has always agreed has no earthly tomb and for whom there are no earthly relics? Only the second-most-important person to ever walk the earth, and THE most important person who was NOT God Incarnate: The Blessed Virgin Mary.
The reason why she has no tomb and no relics is because at the end of her life (the Church is not sure whether or not she actually died, and so that question is intentionally left open) Our Lord immediately granted to her the promise made to all Christians of the resurrection and heaven, BODY AND SOUL. So, there are exactly two physical human bodies locally present in heaven right now: Our Lord and His Mother. We don’t know exactly how to explain this, but I suspect that it has something to do with temporal or dimensional phase shifting, as Our Lord walked through walls, doors and other solid objects after the Resurrection (John 20:19). As Einstein discovered, mass and energy are equivalent, and thus can phase back and forth. We also know from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass itself, which is a bending of time such that the moment of Calvary touches today, that while we experience time in a linear continuum, God is in no way constrained by linear time, and can manipulate, bend and intersect points in time. How? Oh, no clue. There is so much about physics that we don’t understand. But hey, that’s all part of the fun of the Mystery, right?
Only after the Second Coming and the Judgment will the rest of the Church be reunited to their resurrected (for those who have died) or glorified (for those who are alive at the Second Coming and Judgment) bodies, to be united to the Trinity, dwelling inside the Beatific Vision forever. But Mary is already there. She has already been ASSUMED into heaven, and is the proof of God’s promise of what lies in store for those who die in the Church, in friendship with Christ. And today, August 15th, is the Feast of the Assumption. This is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means that all Christians are required to attend Mass just as if it was a Sunday. So, what better time to talk about and explain the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (the feast of which is December 8th, also a Holy Day of Obligation – you MUST go to Mass that day as if it was a Sunday) and the Assumption, and the science that underpins both dogmas.
First, the Immaculate Conception. This doctrine and non-negotiable tenet of Christianity teaches that Mary was, by the grace of God, prevented from carrying the stain of Original Sin from the moment of her conception. This is a deal-breaker. The logical consequences of denying the Immaculate Conception inevitably lead to denying the Incarnation and Divinity of Jesus Christ Himself. The Blessed Virgin cleared all of this up herself when she appeared to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France and told her in no uncertain terms, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Case closed. All that remained was for science to progress sufficiently to confirm this – and that has now happened.
Let me put it like this.
We all get angry when leftists write things into law that aren’t in the Constitution. Abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.
When challenged on what the Constitution actually means, we usually go and point to the writing of the people who wrote it.
When trying to determine theological truth, we go to Scripture first.
The problem with the veneration of Mary is that it came into being several centuries after Scripture was written, and we don’t see any evidence of it in the actual words of the Apostles.
"Understand?" While history and tradition and Scripture are invoked, yet for a faithful RC assurance of RC teaching is not to rest upon the weight of evidence, esp. not Scriptural substantiation (which was the basis for the NT church, in word and in power), lest the be as evangelicals.
Instead, RC assurance is to rest upon the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome (and basically in primary cults).
For Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
Thus Keating boldly states, “fundamentalists ask, where is the proof from Scripture? Strictly, there is none. It was the Catholic Church that was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” — Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
Rather, it should be seen as an explanation by Catholics of the history behind one of their doctrines to those who might be wondering.
"History?" You mean Rome can claim to "remember what history "forgot" to record.
A man by the name of Joseph Ratzinger explains:
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative... Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg¦had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the "apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared.
But...subsequent "remembering" (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously ["caught sight of?" Because there was nothing to see in the earliest period where it should have been, before a fable developed] .." (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), pp. 58-59; emp. mine).
Add to that such scholarly confessions as from Lawrence P. Everett, C.Ss.R., S.T.D. who confesses:
In the first three centuries there are absolutely no references in the authentic works of the Fathers or ecclesiastical writers to the death or bodily immortality of Mary. Nor is there any mention of a tomb of Mary in the first centuries of Christianity. The veneration of the tomb of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem began about the middle of the fifth century; and even here there is no agreement as to whether its locality was in the Garden of Olives or in the Valley of Josaphat. Nor is any mention made in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (431) of the fact that the Council, convened to defend the Divine Maternity of the Mother of God, is being held in the very city selected by God for her final resting place. Only after the Council did the tradition begin which placed her tomb in that city.
The earliest known (non-Apocryphal) mention concerning the end of Mary's life appears in the writings of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia,.. in his Panarion or Medicine Chest (of remedies for all heresies), written in c. 377: "Whether she died or was buried we know not."
...And with the exception of a so-called contemporary of Epiphanius, Timothy of Jerusalem, who said: "Wherefore the Virgin is immortal up to now, because He who dwelt in her took her to the regions of the Ascension,"9(After a very thorough and scholarly investigation the author concludes that Timothy is an unknown author who lived between the sixth and seventh centuries (p. 23). no early writer ever doubted the fact of her death....
In the Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII quotes but three Fathers of the Church, all Orientals. St. John Damascene (d. 749)...St. Germanus of Constantinople (d. 733) ...St. Modestus of Jerusalem (d. 634)...
Apart from the Apocrypha, there is no authentic witness to the Assumption among the Fathers of either the East or the West prior to the end of the fifth century.
The first remote testimony to which Pope Pius XII turns in order to indicate the fact that our present belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Mother was likewise the belief of the Church from the earliest times is the Sacred Liturgy...
...The feast of the Assumption began in the East as did many of the older Marian feasts... However, due to the fact that neither Sacred Scripture nor early Tradition speaks explicitly of the last days of our Blessed Mother on earth and of her Assumption into heaven, the liturgy of this feast did not mention them either. Later, when the apocryphal Transitus Mariae ” in which the death and Assumption of Mary are described in detail ” became popular among the faithful, the facts of her death and Assumption were inserted into the feast... - - https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=469
The eminent Mariologist, Juniper Carol, O.F.M. gives the following historical summary of the Transitus literature:
An intriguing corpus of literature on the final lot of Mary is formed by the apocryphal Transitus Mariae. The genesis of these accounts is shrouded in history's mist. They apparently originated before the close of the fifth century, perhaps in Egypt, perhaps in Syria, in consequence of the stimulus given Marian devotion by the definition of the divine Maternity at Ephesus. The period of proliferation is the sixth century. At least a score of Transitus accounts are extant, in Coptic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. Not all are prototypes, for many are simply variations on more ancient models (Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. II (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), p. 144).
More (by God's grace) on this papal presumption.
So much for the premise that this is
flame bait for those who don't care to understand where Catholic theological teachings originate. And since you chose to post provocative propaganda then do not complain about the heat.
No, it is the Mary of Catholicism who is effectively made part of the Godhead, "by grace" of course. For,
...in the supernatural and spiritual generation there is a father who is God and a mother who is Mary; she is Mother of her Creator...through Whom the Holy Trinity is sanctified; The power thus put into her (Mary’s) hands is all but unlimited; surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven; At the command of Mary all obey, even God. She is omnipotent; Virgin most powerful; the greatness of the power which she wields over one who is God cannot be conceived; all in heaven and on earth, even God himself, is subject to the Blessed Virgin...she seems to have the same power as God. Her prayers and requests are so powerful with him that he accepts them as commands in the sense that he never resists his dear mother’s prayer because it is always humble and conformed to his will; when she acts, it is also He who acts; and that if her intervention be not accepted, neither is His.... Her position as "the first of all creatures, the most acceptable child of God, the nearest and dearest to him".. through her alone does He dispense His favours and His gifts; there is no grace which Mary cannot dispose of as her own, which is not given to her for this purpose;" above the Cherubim and higher than the Seraphim, right near God Himself!; Mary has authority over the angels and the blessed in heaven...God gave her the power and the mission of assigning to saints the thrones made vacant by the apostate angels who fell away through pride....all the angels in heaven unceasingly call out to her...They greet her countless times each day with the angelic greeting, "Hail, Mary", while prostrating themselves before her, begging her as a favour to honour them with one of her requests...The whole world is filled with her glory...Whatever desires the patriarchs may have cherished, whatever entreaties the prophets and saints of the Old Law may have had for 4,000 years to obtain that treasure, it was Mary alone who merited it; sometimes salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked the name of the Lord Jesus; No one achieves salvation except through you...No one receives grace except through you; Thou are all-powerful in saving sinners; Beware, chosen soul, of thinking that it is more perfect to direct your work and intention straight to Jesus or straight to God; Lady in heaven, we have but one advocate, and that is thyself, and thou alone art truly loving and solicitous for our salvation; through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is his will, that we obtain everything through Mary; in Heaven we have but one advocate, and that is Thyself; and that Thou alone art truly loving and solicitous for our welfare; .you love us with a love that no other love can surpass. How often you appease the wrath of our Divine Judge, when He is on the point of punishing us! All the treasures of the mercy of God are in your hands; she had to suffer, as He did, all the consequences of sin. It was not only during the Passion that Jesus and Mary suffered for our sins; We were condemned through the fault of one woman; we are saved through the merits of another woman; to her, Jesus owes His Precious Blood...
Sources and more.
The Catholic Encyclopedia speculates that a further reinforcement of Marian devotion, “was derived from the cult of the angels, which, while pre-Christian in its origin, was heartily embraced by the faithful of the sub-Apostolic age. It seems to have been only as a sequel of some such development that men turned to implore the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. This at least is the common opinion among scholars, though it would perhaps be dangerous to speak too positively. Evidence regarding the popular practice of the early centuries is almost entirely lacking...,” (Catholic Encyclopedia > Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Note that many Catholic Marian attributions much parallel even that of Christ:
For in the the Catholic quest to almost deify Mary, it is taught by Catholics*,
As the the Son of God has a unique unique relationship with the Persons of the Trinity, so also Mary is said to have a unique relationship with all three Persons of the Trinity;
As Christ is the express image of God, and highly exalted above all under the Father, having the primary position among all creation, so Mary is declared to be the greatest saint of all, and the first of all creatures, and as having a certain affinity with the Father, with a pre-eminent resemblance which she bears to the Father;
As Christ was called the Son of God, indicating ontological oneness, so Mary is called the Mother of God (which naturally infers the same, and is not the language of Scripture, which even clarifies Israel birthed Christ "according to the flesh, God blessed for ever": Rm. 9:4,5);
As the the Son of God supernaturally, spiritually makes believing souls into children of God, Mary is said to be the mother of Christians in "supernatural and spiritual generation."
As Christ was sinless, so Mary was;
As the Lord remained a virgin, so also Mary;
As the Lord was bodily ascended into Heaven, so Mary also was;
As the Holy Spirit directs believers to be "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith," (Hebrews 12:2) in whom believes are accounted a holy nation, (1 Pt. 2:9) so Catholicism teaches that believers are to "turn their eyes to Mary" in whom "the Church is already the 'all-holy." (CCC 829)
As the Father made Christ Lord over all things, so Mary is said to be enthroned above all creation (all other believers have to wait for their crowns) and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things;
As Christ is given all power in heaven and in earth, so Mary is “surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven.”
As Christ is given all power on Heaven and on earth, so Mary is said to have (showing some restraint) “almost unlimited power;” and showing less restraint, to be "omnipotent" (by grace);
As God the Father made His Divine Son functionally the Lord over the universe, so Mary states, "I command what I will, and introduce whom I will."
As no man comes to the Father but through the Son, so it is taught that no one can come to the Son except through Mary in Heaven;
As no one can obtain mercy, be saved/redeemed or be delivered and know the Father but through the Son, so the same is said of Mary;
As those whom God has chosen will come to Him, so it is said that if Mary wills our salvation, and then we are sure to obtain it.
As the emphasis is upon Christ as the Creator through whom God (the Father) made all things, including Mary, so it is emphasized that uniquely “to her, Jesus owes His Precious Blood,” shed for the salvation of mankind, (the logic behind which can lead back to Eve);
As Scripture declares that Christ suffered for our sins, so Mary is said to have done so also, even all the consequences of sin;
As Christ redeemed mankind (as many as truly believe) with the Father and the Spirit, so it is said of Mary that "we might rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ."
As Christ saves us from the condemnation and death resulting from the fault of Adam, so it is taught that man was condemned through the fault of Eve, the root of death, but that we are saved through the merits of Mary; who was the source of life for everyone.
As all things come from the Father through the Son, so Mary is made to be the dispenser of all grace; that "through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation."
As believers have confidence through Christ, so Mary is extolled as being the foundation of all the believer's confidence.
As the Lord wills all souls to be saved through Christ, so it is said that it is God's will that we obtain everything through Mary.
And as the Lord called souls to come to Him to be given life and salvation, so (in misappropriation of the words of Scripture) it is said of Mary, “He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord;” “that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will, that we obtain everything through Mary.”
As Christ is the King of the saints and over all kings, (Rv. 15:3; 17:14; 19:16) so Mary is made Queen of Heaven and the greatest saint, and that “Next to God, she deserves the highest praise;”
As Christ ever liveth to make intercession for the saints, so is Mary said to be in constant intercession;
as only to God is ascribed the power and privilege of hearing prayer from all flesh, so also is Mary extolled as doing so;
as believers only address God/Christ in prayer to Heaven, including in prostration before Him, so also do Catholics pray to Mary;
as believers only pray to God to have mercy on sinners, so Catholics beseech Mary to do so.
As Catholics (adding error to error) believe Christ gave His "real" flesh and blood to be eaten, so it is emphasized that Mary gave Him this, being fashioned out of Mary's pure blood and even being “kneaded with the admixture of her virginal milk,” so that she can say, "Come and eat my bread, drink the wine I have prepared" (Prov. 9:5);
And as Christ is given many titles of honor, so Mary also is, except that she is honored by Catholics with more titles than they give to the Lord Himself!
Actually, it is distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the OT and gospels), which is Scripture, especially Acts thru Revelation.
“There are a lot of things not stated in Scripture. And?”
But EVERYTHING necessary for SALVATION and CHRISTIAN MATURITY is revealed in Scripture.
Bogus beliefs about Mary pervert what God revealed, and turn dear Mary into a demigoddess.
Indeed, meaning error begets error. Here, Catholics who are prone to argue "nothing is impossible with God" in attempting to support teachings that are not in Scripture, do a 180 and argue that it was necessary for Mary to be preserved from sin in order for Christ to conceive the sinless Christ. Yet somehow Mary's ancestors were not sinless, and God can bring forth His pure word thru sinners such as David.
Once again we have a Catholic belief which is simply not taught in Scripture on a subject that is abundantly taught on, which is that of the sinful state of morally accountable souls. While infants themselves have a sinful nature, yet are not morally accountable and thus culpable of sin, before they "know to refuse the evil, and choose the good," (Isaiah 7:16) souls such as Mary are never said to be sinless. Which is despite the Holy Spirit's characteristic recording of far less important aspects, even among less important persons.
Which includes extreme age (Methuselah), to excess size, fingers (Goliath), strength (Samson), barrenness (Hannah), a celibate marriage (David and Abishag), prolonged celibacy (Anna), ascetic diet (John the Baptist), the supernatural transport of Phillip, the singleness of Paul and Barnabas, and uncharacteristic duplicity of Peter, and the surpassing labor and suffering of Paul, birth by a virgin (Mary), to Christ being sinless, which is mentioned at least thrice.
But of course, while Catholics may attempt to actually support MICSP from Scripture, once again the fact that Rome teaches it is sppsd to be enough for a RC to believe it, channeling doctrines out of amorphous oral tradition.
Well said!
I got quite a chuckle out of this:
“(After a very thorough and scholarly investigation the author concludes that Timothy is an unknown author who lived between the sixth and seventh centuries (p. 23). no early writer ever doubted the fact of her death....”
Thank you for your work.
Didn’t Jeremiah talk about this?
I love how Catholics say science proves she was taken whole into Heaven because no body parts were taken.
As for Jesus, we know Catholics have selected tasty parts of His body, due to the Holy Forskin of Jesus, which some nuns have experienced with their mouths:
“6. Eating, or at least tasting, the Holy Foreskins was a (relatively) common pastime.
Consuming the flesh of Christ was, and remains, an important part of Catholic doctrine – the Catholic Church's position is that the wafer of the Eucharist literally becomes Jesus’s actual flesh after being eaten. But the Holy Foreskin had (allegedly) always been Jesus’s flesh, and was therefore especially holy (according to Shell), in the same way that the Grail, which had held Jesus’s blood as it dripped from him on the cross, was more holy than the Eucharist wine.
St Birgitta, a Swedish nun, had a vision in which she ate the Foreskin. “So great was the sweetness at the swallowing of this membrane that she felt a sweet transformation in all her members and the muscles of her members,” it says in her book Revelations.
More commonly, though, people tasted the alleged Holy Foreskins to verify that they were real. There was an industry, “particularly in the medieval period, throughout Europe, in the production and veneration of holy relics”, says Stavrakopoulou. “Churches could earn a lot of money from pilgrims, who would pay a lot of money to look at these things and touch them and kiss them and everything, so there was a huge industry in forgeries.”
The most accepted test of the veracity of a Foreskin was tasting. Shell says that “A properly trained physician chosen by the local priest would taste the shrivelled leather in order to determine whether it was wholly or partly human skin.” Surgeons who had thus consumed the body of Christ were known as croques-prépuces.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/how-many-foreskins-does-one-god-need
“The power thus put into her (Mary’s) hands is all but unlimited; surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven; At the command of Mary all obey,”
Wow, do Catholics really believe this?
Would you elaborate please Mark?
Wow, do Catholics really believe this?
***
Yes.
At least from what I’ve seen!
The mary of the catholic church is not the Mary of the bible.
The mary of the catholic church is not the Mary of the bible.
The mary of the catholic church is not the Mary of the bible.
I am not sure, but it appears the women deliberately did this, and hid it from their husbands. 👎
How can Scripture possibly be the only defining source of Christian doctrine and practice when it contains a passage like this that explicitly says it is NOT?
Late ping to this thread, but by viewing the majority of comments above, the protestants hatred of the veneration of the Mother of Jesus Christ is in full display again.
Pray for them.
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