New Mary Dogma

The "Personal Corporeal Presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Heaven" is the name of a new dogma which, it is confidently said, and equally confidently denied, Pope Pius XI will promulgate this year. This dogma would raise the Blessed Virgin to an even higher place in Catholic thought than she now occupies. According to one view, it will establish her on the throne of Heaven equal with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

World-wide opposition is expected. Half the cardinals are opposed to the promulgation of the dogma, as are the majority of prelates in England, Germany, France, America.

The Pope, cognizant of the opposition, is said to be convinced of the fundamental truth of the doctrine and to consider that Leo XIII and Pius X shelved it only through lack of courage.

Certainly the doctrine is understood to be part of Pope Pius IX's plan in 1854, when he proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (i.e., that the Virgin Mary, as well as Jesus, was not conceived as other mortals).

Farly in the 12th Century St. Bernard roundly rebuked the Church of Lyons for attempting to celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the doctrine, as did also St. Bonaventura. However, John Duns Scotus, a celebrated Franciscan who died in 1308, argued in favor of the Immaculate Conception, in 1387 the University of Paris adopted it, in 1483 Pope Sixtus IV condemned those who denied it, and in 1854 Pope Pius IX promulgated it as dogma.

The New Testament makes no allusion to the time or place of Mary's death or of her bodily assumption into heaven. Certain apocryphal documents containing stories of her death, condemned by Pope Gelasius in the 4th Century, became the foundation in the 9th Century of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. The doctrine of the bodily assumption is now extensively believed, and it is this doctrine which Pope Pius XI may promulgate in definite terms.