SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
From left, Dormition/Assumption of Mary: by Della Gatta, 1475; by El Greco, 1577; in a Coptic icon; in a Byzantine icon; by Titian, 1516, and by Rubens, 1577.
The celebration of the Assumption of Mary (Dormition, as the Orthodox prefer to call it) started in the sixth century and was widespread throughout the Eastern, Western,
Coptic and Oriental churches by the late seventh century. Declaration of the Assumption as dogma was requested by the Fathers of the First Vatican Council in the mid-20th
century. In 1950, after consulting all the bishops of the world - as Pius IX did when he declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1850 - Pius XII declared
the dogma of the Assumption:
Contrary to what some of the more vociferous 'traditionalist' bloggers appear to believe about Pius XII, it turns out that he was rather pro-active
in 'amending' some specific aspects of Tradition, as he did with his thorough changes in the Holy Week liturgical practices, and now from Fr. H's
piece today, about having 'diluted' millennial Catholic tradition about the Assumption, paradoxically, in his formal proclamation of the dogma
of the Assumption.
If there was no worldwide hue and cry over these audacious innovations at the time, consider that they came long before Church affairs and what
the pope does had become the stuff of 'news and current events, 24/7', and the lag time between a papal action and its actual trickledown to
the level of the individual parishioner, or even to his parish priest, was months, if not years.
This was pre-Vatican-II. Yet it now seems more apparent why, after the Bible, Pius XII was the most frequently cited authority in the Vatican-II documents.
And we have since been informed that Pius XII himself had been thinking of convoking an ecumenical council.
I can just imagine how the ferociously pro-P12/anti-B16 bloggers today would have sought to pulverize B16 if he had attempted a fraction of the changes
made by Pius XII - as they have already anathematized him and scoffed at him for upholding Vatican-II in the hermeneutic of continuity. ('No such thing',
they claim, even if eminences like Cardinals Burke and Caffarra now admonish us that the way to interpret anything ambiguous in a papal statement is
to interpret it in continuity with what went before (no matter how clear the ultimate end is of the deliberately ambiguous statements in AL).
None of this detracts from Pius XII's personal holiness, of course, and I continue to think he ought to have been beatified and canonized long before now....
Pius XII and the Assumption
Aufust 15, 2016
The notion that the Definition of 1950 regarding the Assumption of our Lady somehow constituted the 'imposition' of a 'new' dogma is quite the opposite of the truth. Put crudely, rather than being Doctrinal Augmentationism,
that Definition constituted Doctrinal Reductionism.
The first millennium texts common to Rome and Canterbury expressed a belief common also to the East: that Mary 'underwent temporal death'; that nevertheless she 'could not be held down by the bonds of death' and that the precise reason why God 'translated her from this age' was that 'she might faithfully intercede for our sins'.
This is the Ancient Common Tradition of East and West. It is, in fact, expressed clearly in much of the liturgical and patristic evidence which Pius XII cited as evidence for the dogma in
Munificentissimus Deus.
One suspects that this is because the Pope would have been much shorter of evidence if he had omitted this material.
But it is left out of the definition. Which means that it has de facto disappeared from the consciousness of Latin Christendom.
And in the subsequent liturgical changes, our Lady's death and resurrection were censored out of the Divine Office.
Yet the old beliefs were good enough for the pages of the Altar Missal of the Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of Canterbury (the 'Leofric Missal'), the faith of S Odo, S Dunstan, S Aelfheah, S Aethelnoth, S Eadsige and very probably of so many other archbishops of Canterbury stretching beyond Plegmund to S Augustine.
They were good enough for the Breviary lections during the Octave. Blessed John Henry Newman's justly celebrated sermon on the Assumption makes the same point. She died and was resurrected. Authoritative, surely?
Yet this is not what Pius XII defined.
His 1950 definition, as the ARCIC document on Mary accurately reminds us, does not 'use about her the language of death and resurrection, but celebrates the action of God in her.' [A very strange 'but'!]
The Apostolic Constitution defining the Dogma of the Assumption may be found here in English:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html
In other words, Pius XII took a machete and slashed ruthlessly at the Common Ancient Tradition about our Lady's end, not simply by ignoring the apocryphal stories about how the Apostles gathered and what they found in the tomb and how S Thomas arrived late and all the rest of it; but also by pruning away even the bare structural bones of what Christians Eastern and Western had harmoniously thought they knew: that she died and was resurrected.
The 1950 decree was not the imposition of some new dogma but
the elimination of 99% of what the Common Ancient Tradition had for centuries comfortably shared.
Those whose instinctive disposition is to avoid speculation about our Lady's End ought to applaud Pius XII and the radical austerity, the innovative agnosticism, of his definition. He went almost all the way to meet them.
Speaking of tradition, JMB/PF appears to have completely abandoned the practice of the Popes since Paul VI to celebrate the Mass of the Assumption at the parish church of Santo Tomas Villanova in Castel Gandolfo. He followed it in 2013, the first year of his pontificate, on what was also his second and last visit to Castel Gandolfo as pope (the first had been to meet with Benedict XVI on March 21, 2013), but not again.
One gets the impression JMB does not wish to the associated with the papal estate in Castel Gandolfo, as if it was somehow a mark of shame (i.e., in his mind, popes have no business having a 'summer residence' at all - how scandalous to even think of residing elsewhere than the Vatican during the summer!) But, c'mon, one day during the year to celebrate the Mass of the Assumption in Castel Gandolfo cannot possibly be scandalous!
One shouldn't care about the relatively minor idiosyncracies of this pope, but think of what his absence over the past three years must have done to the economy of Castel Gandolfo which thrived on the summer months when a pope was in residence and the faithful came to see and hear him on Wednesdays and Sundays... Not to mention the slight to the people of Castel Gandolfo who had become habituated since the time of Pius XII to a pope in residence among them in the summer months.
On a Marian feast, perhaps it is worth the effort to check out this account of Marian apparitions in Argentina since 1983 to a lady who also claims that Jesus has appeared to her.
http://www.english.santisimavirgen.com.ar/historia_de_maria_del_rosario_eng.htm
It has always amazed me that Catholic journalists do not flock to check out stories like this (though on Medjugorje, many have tried to do so but are far from unanimous in accepting the reported apparitions). Moreover, the accounts tend to end up like this one, which is not exactly systematic nor comprehensive, and which raises more questions than it answers.
8/16/16
P.S. Fr H has further thoughts today about the Assumption:
Assumption collects
August 16, 2016
Forgive, O Lord the offenses of thy servants, that we who by our own deeds are not able to be pleasing unto thee, may by the intercession of the Mother of thy Son our Lord [God] be saved.
Thus, a literal translation of the Collect which,
until Pius XII, was said on Assumption day. After the 1950 proclamation of the dogma of our Lady's Corporal Assumption, it was replaced by a collect more explicitly asserting the corporality of her Assumption.
Incidentally, the word [God] appears in earlier texts and I think it ought to be restored because in this age of weakened faith we ought to lose no opportunity of hammering home the Godness, which is not a misprint for goodness, complete and unambiguous, of the rabbi from Nazareth.
This old collect, by the way, survives as one among the options in the new rites for the Common of our Lady, and for use on Saturdays, and for August 5, now seen as the commemoration of the Ephesian definition of Theotokos.
Another reason why this Collect might give pause for thought is its apparent assertion that we are 'saved' by the intercession of our Lady. A trifle (as some Anglicans might put it) 'extreme'?
I do think this needs unpacking. And so I would make two points.
(1) Earlier tradition asks the question "why was she assumed?", and gives an answer quite different from that offered by some modern theologians (i.e. that being immaculate she was not subject to death). She was assumed that she might intercede for us. You will find this in a sermon of the great hesychast Father S Gregory Palamas.
This Eastern idea appears also in Western texts such as the Gregorian Sacramentary: "Great, O Lord, in the sight of thy loving kindness is the prayer of the Mother of God, whom thou didst translate from this present age for this reason, that (
idcirco ut) she might effectually intercede for our sins before thee".
"Let the help, O Lord, of the prayer of the Mother of God come to the aid of thy people; although we know that after the condition of the flesh she left this world, may we know that she prays for us before thee in heavenly glory".
And, (2), I feel we should give a broad sense to the word intercession. Yes, it means that she prays for us. But it also means that Mary came between (
cessit inter) God and Man when by her fiat she gave birth to the Divine Redeemer.
And, in Mary, function and ontology merge; she is eternally what she was in the mystery of the Incarnation.What she did at Nazareth and Bethlehem is what in the Father's eternal creative utterance she is. And so these two senses of 'intercession' are really one.
That is, surely, the root of the dogma of our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces.
8/17/16
Fr. H has another Assumption post-script:
Why was she assumed?
A patrimonial answer
August 17, 2016
Christians have sometimes based a belief in our Lady's Assumption upon her perpetual virginity; or her freedom from actual sin; or her freedom from original sin; or the inseparable physical bond between her and the Son who shared her flesh and blood, her DNA; or the unbreakable bond of love that must exist between Mother and Son. All this I agree with.
But as I observed yesterday, the reason most consonant with the liturgical traditions of East and West is that she was assumed so that she could be our Intercessor. Sometimes it is considered that the concept of our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces is somehow "extreme" and is a horribly divisive extravagance that any sensible ecumenist (oxymoron?) dreads being defined ex cathedra by some maximalising pope. I disagree.
I will make the point by giving a translation of a Secret which was often used in many parts of Europe during this season - including England.
O Lord, may the prayer of the Mother of God commend our offerings before thy merciful kindness; for thou didst translate her from this present Age for this purpose, that (idcirco ... ut) she might confidently (fiducialiter) intercede before thee for our sins.
A considerable Russian theologian, Vladimir Lossky, explained that
"freed from the limitations of time, Mary can be the cause of that which is before her; can preside over that which comes after her. She obtains eternal benefits. It is through her that men and angels receive grace.
No gift is received in the Church without the assistance of the Mother of God, who is herself the first-fruits of the glorified Church. Thus, having attained to the limits of becoming, she necessarily watches over the destinies of the Church and of the universe".
Our Lady was assumed that she might be the treasury of God's grace, the Mediatrix of All Graces, the mother whose hands stretch out to bestow. In Newman's majestic words, written while he was still an Anglican:
There was a wonder in heaven; a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypical; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal Throne; robes as pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all ... The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
A well-known Roman Catholic (traditionalist) scholar once said to me that he felt Newman wrote better when he was an Anglican than when he was a Roman Catholic. This passage could stand as evidence. When Newman was beatified, the author of his Anglican writings was beatified too. Nobody is more Patrimonial than Newman.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/08/2016 15:38]