The Marian Dogmas

Traditional Anglo-Catholics of the Tractarian mould, like myself, deny the dogmatic and salvific necessity of the novel RC doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Our Lady, and maintain that they are theologumena, theological beliefs or pious opinions which may be personally held but do not comprise part of the Apostolic Tradition or the Deposit of Faith given by Our Lord to the Apostles. They are not de fide tenanda, to be held as part of the Catholic Faith, and must not be taught as such. We reject the Papal Dogma of the Assumption by Pope Pius XII in 1950, as we equally reject the Papal Dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854.

Many traditional Anglo-Catholics also distinguish these two Marian beliefs, as do I personally. I do not at all believe in the Immaculate Conception, a doctrine lately introduced into Western Christendom and having no basis in Scripture and primitive Tradition. Saints Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux expressly condemned the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as contrary to the received doctrine of the Western Church. The Eastern Churches have never known or embraced the doctrine. The Immaculate Conception is a doctrine more about the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin than about the Blessed Mother. Saint Augustine's view of 'original guilt' and of ancestral sin transmitted genetically from generation to generation necessitated, in the mind of medieval theologians, the need to explain how Our Lady might be exempted from Original Sin, and thus, primarily Franciscan theologians such as Saint Bonaventure and Duns Scotus developed the doctrine in the Middle Ages as a matter of 'fittingness' for the dignity and prerogatives of the Mother of God. But the Immaculate Conception is completely novel and was never taught by any Council or Father, Eastern or Western, during the first nine centuries of the Church.

On the basis of Tradition, I accept the theological belief of the Dormition as a private opinion, but I am compelled to deny the Immaculate Conception, instead affirming the Orthodox doctrine that Our Lady was purified and cleansed from sin at the Annunciation, when the Holy Ghost overshadowed her and caused Our Lord to be conceived in her immaculate womb. The Orthodox call this purification and sanctification of Our Lady by the Holy Ghost the Katharsis. At the moment she became the Temple of the Holy Ghost and the Mother of God the Word, she was made all-holy, panagia, freed from the power and consequences of sin. In essence, Mary received at the Annunciation the effect of Christian Baptism.

The Assumption (assumptio) or Dormition (koimesis - Falling Asleep) of Our Lady is very different in nature and authority. Although it is not a dogmatic revelation, but a doxological mystery, expressed liturgically in prayer and intended only for those who have been initiated into the Christian verity and who live in the heart of the Church, the bodily death and glorification of the Holy Virgin is an ancient component of Catholic doctrine and teaching and has been universally held as true by both the Eastern and Western Churches since the sixth century - it is undoubtedly possessive of Catholic consensus. For example, Saint Germanus of Constantinople and Saint John Damascene, the Seal of the Fathers and the great synthesiser and expositor of patristic tradition, preach beautiful homilies affirming the death and resurrection of the Mother of God.

All Catholic Christians have believed in the Assumption in one form or another since the patristic age, a belief reinforced by the lack of relics of the Holy Virgin and the veneration of the place of her repose and glorification going back to the beginnings of church-building and public liturgies after Roman persecution. I do believe that Our Lady died and was physically raised and glorified after death, as a sign and promise of our own resurrection and glorification on the Last Day. Mary's Assumption is a foretaste of the assumption of the whole Church. This is because Our Lady is the icon and type of the Church, the prototypical Christian, whose passage through death, judgement and glorification anticipates the future glory of the Church as Christ's Body and Bride. Our Lord did not wish to see the one from whom He assumed His human nature corrupted by death, nor His flesh found in His own Mother subject to destruction, and so the Church has ever taught in her ancient Tradition.

Although the Assumption or Dormition is a consentient and universal part of ancient Tradition, it does not stand on the same level as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virginal Conception and Birth of Our Lord, or the Resurrection of Christ, and thus it is not acknowledged either by Anglicans or Orthodox as an essential article of the Catholic Faith and Creeds. Neither Anglicans nor Eastern Orthodox desire to dogmatise the mysteries of Our Lord's Mother, which are not part of the Church's public profession of faith or kerygma, the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore we not recognise the necessity of believing in this doctrine for eternal salvation and it is not accounted a dogma, or revealed truth necessary for salvation, of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith.

An Anglican is free to believe or not believe in Our Lady's corporeal Assumption, but all agree she died and went to Heaven!

These words of Father Vladimir Lossky, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, are very helpful indeed:

'The feast of the Dormtion of the Mother of God, known in the West under the name of the Assumption, comprises two distinct but inseparable moments for the faith of the Church: firstly, the Death and Burial, and second, the Resurrection and Ascension of the Mother of God. The Orthodox East has known how to respect the mysterious character of this event, which, unlike the Resurrection of Christ, was not made a subject of apostolic preaching. In fact, there is here a mystery, not destined for the ears of "those without", but revealed to the inner consciousness of the Church. For those who are affirmed in faith in the Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord, it is evident that, if the Son of God assumed His human nature in the womb of the Virgin, she who served the Incarnation had in her turn to be assumed into the glory of her Son risen and ascended into Heaven....

The glory of the age to come, the last end of man, is already realised, not only in a Divine Hypostasis made flesh, but also in a human person made God (theosis). This passage from death to life, from time to eternity, from terrestrial condition to celestial beatitude establishes the Mother of God beyond the General Resurrection and the Last Judgement, beyond the Second Coming which will end the history of the world. The feast of August 15th is a second mysterious Easter, since the Church therein celebrates, before the end of time, the secret first-fruits of its eschatological consummation...'