Friday, October 2, 2020

Peter Hebblethwaite on Pius XII's Definition of the Bodily Assumption of Mary

 

 

The definition was controversial for a number of reasons. It raised the question of the relationship between the magisterium and history, and of tradition and scripture. It was the first (and possibly last) exercise of infallibility as defined by Vatican I, and even then did not meet the Council’s implicit conditions: whereas Vatican I thought that a definition could be used to put an end to controversy and crisis in the church, in this instance bishops from all over the world were said to be ‘almost unanimous’ (D-S, 3902), which made the definition redundant. It set up an additional barrier to ecumenism. It was an act of defiance of the world. This last aspect was well brought out by Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, who was close enough to Pius XII to be considered his dauphin. Siri explained that the definition of the Assumption ‘was an act of courage because Pius XII challenged directly with an infallible definition a world that did not like teachers’ (Siri, on the 25th anniversary of Pius XII’s death, October 8, 1983, p. 4). This made it wound like an act of ecclesiastical machismo. French theologians, still reeling from Humani Generis, saw it as a loyalty test. (Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Council [London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1984], 230)

 

Further Reading

 

Chapter 5: The Bodily Assumption of Mary, pp. 139-56 of Behold the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology (2017)