The Assumption Of Mary

[Aloysius]

[quote]The doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was officially declared to be a dogma of the Roman Catholic faith on November 1, 1950. This means that every Roman Catholic is required to believe this doctrine without questioning it. However, as we will see, the teaching of the Assumption of Mary originated with heretical writings which were officially condemned by the early Church.[/quote]
well, we'll just see. I know it is found in many writings which were declared NOT PART OF INSPIRED SCRIPTURE, but i've never seen the claim that the writings were declared HERETICAL
[quote]In 495 A.D., Pope Gelasius issued a decree which rejected this teaching as heresy and its proponents as heretics. [/quote]
The only heresies I see Pope Gelasius had to actively fight was the ones that attempted to deny the pre-eminence of the Chair of Peter in Rome. He was active in fighting off Eastern Bishops who attempted to deny that. He clearly asserted his authority as Pope in letters to the Eastern Bishop, and in a decretal on the canonical and apocryphal books. All he did was declare these books were not part of scripture, he never claimed that what was contained within them was heresy, ONLY that it was not Inspired Scripture.
[quote]In the sixth century, Pope Hormisdas also condemned as heretics those authors who taught the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. Here we have "infallible" popes declaring a doctrine to be a heresy. [/quote]
Pope Hormisdas's reign is marked only by the ending of schisms that denied papal authority, and nowhere do i see mention in any credible source that he condemned anyone as heretics. he demanded some people reject certain heresies and was successful, but these heresies had to do with the nature of Our Lord and the Father, not Mary nor her assumption. The only source your artical gives for this is some random protestant book. I look forward to seeing a credible quote from Pope Hormisdas which shows him condemning the Assumption of Mary as a heresy (for I see no mention of it in authentic records of his papacy)
[quote]Then on November 1, 1950, we have Pope Pius XII (another "infallible" pope) declaring the same doctrine to be official Roman Catholic doctrine, which all Catholics are required to believe. [Note 3][/quote]
okidokee, Pope Pius XII declares this doctrine making it required belief by all Catholics, when before it was a pius belief amoung many Catholics and I have yet to see proof it was ever condemned before this.
[quote]So before November 1, 1950, any Catholic who believed in the Assumption of Mary was a heretic (because of "infallible" declarations of popes). But after November 1, 1950, any Catholic who failed to believe in the Assumption of Mary was a heretic (because of the "infallible" declaration of Pope Pius XII).[/quote]Nope, before November 1, 1950, any Catholic who believed in the Assumption of Mary was a faithful Catholic with a deep devotion to the Mother of Our Lord, and after November 1, 1950, any Catholic who failed to believe this was a heretic.

[Aloysius]

Bump, dairygirl, you put up an artical claiming people used to be called heretics if they believed the assumption of Mary. Here I claim that they were not. are you prepared to defend your artical?

[Guest JeffCR07]

Moreover, it is remarkably easy for a catholic to find teachings to the contrary. The Eastern Rites have rich tradition dealing with the "Dormition of Mary" and this universal tradition simply took the shape of an ex cathedra decree in 1950.

[Justified Saint]

Something easily ignored in anti-Catholic circles - Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas condemned apocryphal literature, not the docrtines contained therein.

One of many clever anti-Catholic misdirections.

[Aloysius]

ahh, so Pope Hormisdas did condemn apocryphal writings? i couldn't even find mention of that. well there you have it: the source of the misunderstanding. Both popes said apocryphal writings were not part of the canon of scripture, and that is true for they are not the inspired word of God. now can the assertion that Hormisdas called the assumption of Mary a heresy be defended? well, that's up to dairygirl, i can't find anything from him that condemns it.

[dairygirl4u2c]

This of course has biases in it. But it does have some good citations and is good for further information.

[url="http://www.christiantruth.com/assumption.html"]http://www.christiantruth.com/assumption.html[/url]


[quote]Something easily ignored in anti-Catholic circles - Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas condemned apocryphal literature, not the docrtines contained therein.[/quote]

Good point. Next we should look into what these popes said in to base condemning the literature.

[dairygirl4u2c]

This of course has biases in it. But it does have some good citations and is good for further information.

[url="http://www.christiantruth.com/assumption.html"]http://www.christiantruth.com/assumption.html[/url]

"Objectively", speaking, it would appear that the assumption of Mary was not taught by patrisitic fathers and in fact the only thing taught was "don't know". The doctrine only came from Gnostics. But of course it is possible that the truth was not known to the fathers and the Gnostics held to that truth. Or if the writings were never shown in the early century, perhaps the Catholic Church was inspired to come across it without patristic evidence. You'd have to have faith in that.

So to seeing if that faith is warranted.

[quote]Something easily ignored in anti-Catholic circles - Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas condemned apocryphal literature, not the docrtines contained therein.[/quote]

Good point. Next we should look into what these popes said to base condemning the literature. You'd probably say because the ECF's did not say anything on the subject, and the pope so condemns it, doesn't mean the doctrines aren't true. But still we should look more.


And I'll be looking into the other examples too.

Edited August 9, 2004 by dairygirl4u2c

[Aloysius]

[quote]These and the like, what Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus and Bonosus, who suffered from similar error, also Montanus with his detestable followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus the Manichaean, Faustus the African, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Novatus, Sabbatius, Calistus, Donatus, Eustasius, Iovianus, Pelagius, Iulianus of ERclanum, Caelestius, Maximian, Priscillian from Spain, Nestorius of Constantinople, Maximus the Cynic, Lampetius,Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and the other Peter, of whom one besmirched Alexandria and the other Antioch, Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and what also all disciples of heresy and of the heretics and schismatics, whose names we have scarcely preserved, have taught or compiled, we acknowledge is to be not merely rejected but excluded from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and with its authors and the adherents of its authors to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever[/quote]

Pope Gelasius here bans the writings and calls it heresy to accept them as Divinely Inspired. he labels all those people as heretics, and rightly so, not because they believed Mary was assumed into heaven: but because of various other things which they believed and their forgeries.

I read that document you provided. All it shows is silence on the part of the Church Fathers, meaning they don't say Mary was or was not assumed into heaven. The quote I like most that they provided was Epiphanius who said:

[quote]But if some think us mistaken, let them search the Scriptures. They will not find Mary’s death; they will not find whether she died or did not die; they will not find whether she was buried or was not buried ... Scripture is absolutely silent [on the end of Mary] ... For my own part, I do not dare to speak, but I keep my own thoughts and I practice silence ... The fact is, Scripture has outstripped the human mind and left [this matter] uncertain ... Did she die, we do not know ... Either the holy Virgin died and was buried ... Or she was killed ... [b]Or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God and He can do whatever He desires[/b]; for her end no-one knows.’[/quote]

Epiphanius leaves the question open, as do all the Church Fathers. Therefore it is perfect fertile ground from which can spring the developement of doctrine: the Church says "we donno yet"

Thus, Catholics held that any of those possibilities could have happened: "Either the holy Virgin died and was buried ... Or she was killed ... Or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God and He can do whatever He desires"
Popular Devotion leaned towards the last possibility. Some people who were Catholic and held to this popular devotion went further than that and became heretics. they did not formulate the doctrine that Mary was assumed to heaven, it was first proposed by Epiphanius as a possibility and after the Council of Ephesus was a very popular belief, these heretical groups also believed it but that was not why they were heretics.

these which are listed by Pope, some are the people who different heretical sects were named after and those sects accepted apocryphal books (some believed assumption, some did not, the assumption beleif was believed by many Catholics and heretics alike at this time)

[quote] Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus and Bonosus, who suffered from similar error, also Montanus with his detestable followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus the Manichaean, Faustus the African, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Novatus, Sabbatius, Calistus, Donatus, Eustasius, Iovianus, Pelagius, Iulianus of ERclanum, Caelestius, Maximian, Priscillian from Spain, Nestorius of Constantinople, Maximus the Cynic, Lampetius,Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and the other Peter, of whom one besmirched Alexandria and the other Antioch, Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and what also all disciples of heresy and of the heretics and schismatics, whose names we have scarcely preserved[/quote]
if you wanna know why these people were heretics:
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13797b.htm"]Simon Magus[/url]
[quote]A brother heretic emerged in Nicolaus. He was one of the seven deacons who were appointed in the Acts of the Apostles. He affirms that Darkness was seized with a concupiscence--and, indeed, a foul and obscene one--after Light: out of this permixture it is a shame to say what fetid and unclean (combinations arose). The rest (of his tenets), too, are obscene. For he tells of certain Aeons, sons of turpitude, and of conjunctions of execrable and obscene embraces and per-mixtures, and certain yet baser outcomes of these.

He teaches that there were born, moreover, daemons, and gods, and spirits seven, and other things sufficiently sacrilegious. alike and foul, which we blush to recount, and at once pass them by. Enough it is for us that this heresy of the Nicolaitans has been condemned by the Apocalypse of the Lord with the weightiest authority attaching to a sentence, in saying "Because this thou holdest, thou hatest the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which I too hate."
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0319.htm"]Earliest heretics: Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Nicolaus.[/url]
[/quote]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03539a.htm"]Cerinthus[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09645c.htm"]Marcion[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02326a.htm"]Basilides[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05242c.htm"]Ebion[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11589a.htm"]Paul of Samosata[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12043a.htm"]Photinus[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02677b.htm"]Bonosus[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10521a.htm"]Montanus[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01615b.htm"]Apollinaris[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15256a.htm"]Valentinus[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01718a.htm"]Arius[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12174a.htm"]Macedonius[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05605a.htm"]Eunomius[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11138a.htm"]Novatus[/url]
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05121a.htm"]Donatus[/url]

as you can see, all of these people and groups were heretics in their own right. one part of the heresy they held to was that they held apocryphal writings to be valid and inspired parts of scripture, while that is wrong. they were not condemned for holding to the assumption, that was a belief that Epiphanius proposed as a possibility and that possibility was favored especially after the Council of Ephesus affirmed Marian Devotion.

The heresy of the gnostics was to claim that the Apostles had left a secret truth that was passed down seperate from the Apostolic Tradition of the Bishops of the Catholic Church. This was condemned. The idea was condemned that a secret truth about the assumption of Mary had been passed down to the gnostics where the Bishops of the Catholic Church had received no such Apostolic Truth. The assumption itself, however, was allowed to be believed and not condemned as heresy so long as no one held that they had received a secret truth passed from the Apostles and hidden from the rest of the Church.

Edited August 9, 2004 by Aloysius

[Aloysius]

[color=blue][b]Bump. Can you proove to me that these Popes condemned the Assumption as a heresy? I provided you the reason these popes declared those people heretics, and it had nothing to do with believing in the Assumption of Mary. There was already, in fact, a popular devotion that held that Mary was assumed into heaven.[/b][/color]

[dairygirl4u2c]

I agree that infalliblity was not necessarily contradicted. I would make all the notes of caution I did earlier however.

[phatcatholic]

dairygirl,

the Assumption of Mary was only beleived by gnostics and heretics? if that be the case, what do you make of these people and their testimony?

"If therefore it might come to pass before the power of your grace, it has appeared right to us your servants that, as you, having overcome death does reign in glory, so you should raise up the body of your mother and take her with you, rejoicing into heaven. Then said the Savior [Jesus]: 'Be it done according to your will" (Pseudo-Melito The Passing of the Virgin 16:2-17; 300 AD).

"If the Holy Virgin had died and was buried, her falling asleep would have been surrounded with honour, death would have found her pure, and her crown would have been a virginal one...Had she been martyred according to what is written: 'Thine own soul a sword shall pierce', then she would shine gloriously among the martyrs, and her holy body would have been declared blessed; for by her, did light come to the world." (Epiphanius Panarion 78:23; 377 AD)

"Therefore the Virgin is immortal to this day, seeing that he who had dwelt in her transported her to the regions of her assumption" (Timothy of Jerusalem Homily on Simeon and Anna; 400 AD).

"And from that time forth all knew that the spotless and precious body had been transferred to paradise" (John the Theologian, The Falling Asleep of Mary; 400 AD)

"The Apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoinedd to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord's chosen ones..." (Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles, 1:4; 575-593 AD)

"As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Savior and God and the giver of life and immortality, has been endowed with life by him, she has received an eternal incorruptibility of the body together with him who has raised her up from the tomb and has taken her up to himself in a way known only to him." (Modestus of Jerusalem, Encomium in dormitionnem Sanctissimae Dominae nostrae Deiparae semperque Virginis Mariae, PG 86-II,3306; ante 634 AD)

"It was fitting...that the most holy-body of Mary, God-bearing body, receptacle of God, divinized, incorruptible, illuminated by divine grace and full glory...should be entrusted to the earth for a little while and raised up to heaven in glory, with her soul pleasing to God." (Theoteknos of Livias, Homily on the Assumption; ante 650 AD)

"You are she who, as it is written, appears in beauty, and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, entirely the dewlling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissoultion into dust. Though still human, it is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged and sharing in perfect life." (Germanus of Constantinople, Sermon I, PG 98,346; ante 733 AD)

"It was fitting that the she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped when giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father, It was fitting that God's Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God" (John of Damascene, Dormition of Mary, PG 96,741; ante 749 AD)

" 'St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.' " (John of Damascene, PG 96:1; 747-751 AD)

"Venerable to us, O Lord, is the festivity of this day on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death, who has begotten Thy Son our Lord incarnate from herself." (Gregorian Sacramentary, Veneranda; ante 795 AD)

"[A]n effable mystery all the more worthy of praise as the Virgin's Assumption is something unique among men." (Gallican Sacramentary, from Munificentis simus Deus)

"God, the King of the universe, has granted you favors that surpass nature. As he kept you virgin in childbirth, thus he kept your body incorrupt in the tomb and has glorified it by his divine act of transferring it from the tomb." (Byzantine Liturgy, from Munificentis simus Deus)

"[T]he virgin is up to now immortal, as He who lived, translated her into the place of reception" (Timotheus of Jerusalem; 6th-8th century, in OTT,208 )



i don't see any of these christians on the list of heretics provided. their testimony would likewise bring to question the claim that the church didn't know if they believed in the Assumption or not.

pax christi,
phatcatholic

[Aloysius]

Epiphanius actually said they didn't know for certain. Many believed it, but it was not de fide and many also did not. It was popular belief that was not formally taught by the Church nor formally condemned by the Church. The Church supported and allowed it, and it was eventually officially defined as a de fide DOGMA. The point is that it was a popular belief from very early on in the Church and now it is a required beleif of the Catholic Faith.

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='Aug 10 2004, 01:18 AM'] Epiphanius actually said they didn't know for certain. Many believed it, but it was not de fide and many also did not. It was popular belief that was not formally taught by the Church nor formally condemned by the Church. The Church supported and allowed it, and it was eventually officially defined as a de fide DOGMA. The point is that it was a popular belief from very early on in the Church and now it is a required beleif of the Catholic Faith. [/quote]
the point of my post was merely to show that many Christians did believe in the Assumption and that these Christians were neither gnostics nor heretics.

[Aloysius]

yeah, ok cool, that was my post anyway.

there's no one left to argue against it as dairygirl admitted that the artical she posted was wrong on this point

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='Aug 10 2004, 01:26 AM'] yeah, ok cool, that was my post anyway.

there's no one left to argue against it as dairygirl admitted that the artical she posted was wrong on this point [/quote]
ohhh, my bad. i didn't see her concession before i posted my material.