A Misguided Assumption

According to the 1950 pronouncement by Pope Pius XII in Munificentissimus Deus (MD) it happened that Mary, the mother of Jesus, "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." Pius XII did not invent this doctrine, nor is it distinctive of Roman Catholicism. What the Pope did do in MD was to turn this teaching into a dogma. As the Catholic Catechism points out, a dogma goes beyond mere doctrine:

The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these. (88)

Thus the doctrine of Mary's Assumption is not just any teaching, but something a Roman Catholic must believe. Let's assume (no pun intended) for the sake of argument both that the doctrine is true and that it's historically well-founded. (I will address the issue of the historic evidence in a subsequent post.) All the same, one should wonder why this is a dogma. A Roman Catholic must accept the Assumption on pains of forfeiting salvation, but what in the name of heaven could this have to do with anyone's salvation? The Virgin Birth (better: Conception) is reasonably construed as dogma, because its denial implies that Jesus has a human father, which would violate the fundmental Christian doctrine that Jesus is the Word made flesh. And while I don't subscribe to it, the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception makes sense as a dogma, as its telos is the purity of Jesus. But by the time of the (presumed) Assumption, Jesus had not only been conceived and born, but crucified, died, buried, risen and ascended as well. We can even grant the Roman Catholic view that Mary lived a sinless life. But the doctrine of the Assumption doesn't follow from any of these, and it's extraordinarily hard to see what possible relationship it could have to any factor relevant to salvation.

So while I have no serious problem to its being a doctrine, nor any deep theological objection to the claim itself, it at least seems evident that this should not be a dogma. I'd be happy to be corrected, though.