Next to Her Son

Leader: A development received? (Church Times)

ALL GENERATIONS shall call her blessed. The festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary this Sunday is one that has usually been associated with the ending of her earthly life. This event is, as it must be for all saints, a joyful one, meriting a celebration. The Eastern Church calls it her dormition, or falling asleep. There is little to object to in that, even though it is not recorded in scripture. To speak of her “assumption”, as the Western Church did without defining it as bodily, or as an article of faith, until 60 years ago, was to say a little more — but not necessarily much more than many Christians say of their own mothers who, they hope, have “gone to heaven”. John Brown’s body, after all, lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul is marching on. And yet not all of today’s theologians who live in “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life” are happy with later words in the 1662 burial service: “Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful . . . are in joy and felicity. . .” Our Lady’s body is not John Brown’s body: it had a higher vocation; there is no tradition, as there is with other saints, of relics: what happened? Historians have little to go on. But on 1 November 1950, Pope Pius XII declared it a matter of divine revelation that Mary “having completed her earthly course was in body and soul assumed into heavenly glory”. Thomas Ken had written: “Next to his throne her Son his Mother placed.” But this was not a dogma. Such a definition would be an ecumenical mistake, argued two Roman Catholics, Victor Bennett and Raymond Winch, while they were still free to say so (The Assumption of Our Lady and Catholic Theology, SPCK, 1950). Since Vatican II, it has proved a lesser obstacle than expected. True, Barthians do not like it. But John Macquarrie’s Mary for All Christians (1991) gave a positive C of E critique; and the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, in 2005, affirmed “the teaching that God has taken the Blessed Virgin Mary in the fullness of her person into his glory as consonant with Scripture, and only to be understood in the light of Scripture”. When Anglicans speak of unwarranted developments these days, they are more likely to be talking about disputes among themselves. Indeed, the charge of setting the bar too high for communion, levelled against Rome in 1950, has a topical ring to it. The question of reception is on the table again. Are Anglicans still willing to take their stand on the principle that there are developments, however reasonable to those who ad vance them, that cannot be deemed final and binding upon all?