Commenting on the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Bodily
Assumption of Mary, dogmatized in 1854 and 1950, respectively, Catholic scholar
Francis A. Sullivan wrote:
No one nowadays claims that these doctrines have always been explicit
objects of Christian faith. They are not clearly taught in Scripture, nor is it
easy to show that the necessarily follow from the scriptural evidence. It is
highly unlikely, indeed, extremely improbable, that there was any explicit oral
tradition about either of these doctrines during the first centuries of the
Christian era . . .It can hardly be doubted that in 1854 and 1950,
when these dogmas were defined, the firm belief of the whole body of the
Catholic faithful was taken as sufficient evidence that these doctrines must be
contained in divine revelation. The ‘body of the faithful as a whole’ which ‘cannot
err in matters of belief’ was simply understood to be the body of the Catholic
faithful, and this is not surprising, since the official Catholic teaching at
that time was that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ .
. . We have
already spoken of the kind of insight by which the Catholic faithful came to
see the consequences for Mary of her unique relationship with the Son of God. No mere exegesis or theological reasoning
could have arrived at the certitude of faith in her Immaculate Conception or
Assumption. This certitude is the fruit of insight guided by the
supernatural sense of faith. We can invoke here St Thomas’s idea of a king of ‘connaturality’,
by which a person deeply committed to a virtue will almost instinctively tend
to make right judgements in matters that pertain to that virtue. (Francis A.
Sullivan,S.J. Magisterium: Teaching
Authority in the Catholic Church [New York: Paulist Press, 1983], 17, 19, 22,
emphasis added)
In other words,
Pius IX who, in, stated that belief in Ineffabilis Deus, was simply wrong when he
stated:
[The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception]
always existed in the Church as a doctrine that has been received from our
ancestors, and that has been stamped with the character of revealed
doctrine"
Furthermore,
it is because of the sensus fidelium,
not exegesis of the Bible or the patristic literature, nor even theology, that
results in belief in these doctrines as being definitional of Christianity
(i.e., dogmas).
Of course, I
happen to agree, and have written an entire book that spends three chapters
addressing these two dogmas, but it is always refreshing to see an informed Catholic
scholar admit to such.
For more, see my book:
