St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

From the Pocket Catholic Catechism by Fr. John Hardon:

…In 1946, Pope Pius XII addressed an official query to all the Catholic bishops in the Church. “Do you,” he asked them, “in view of the wisdom and prudence that is yours, judge that the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith; and do you, along with your clergy and faithful, desire it?”

Within months, the pope received an almost unanimous reply in the affirmative. Consequently, on November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII issued the solemn definition which stated:

By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our Own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define as divinely revealed dogma: The Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed body and soul to the glory of heaven.

The grounds for defining Mary’s assumption as a dogma, or revealed doctrine, were Sacred Tradition as a co-equal source of divine revelation, along with Sacred Scripture. One reason for the definition was expressed by the pope when he spoke to the assembled four hundred bishops the day after the definition. He expressed the hope that this new honor to Mary would introduce “a spirit of penance to replace the prevalent love of pleasure, and a renewal of family life stabilized where divorce was common, and made fruitful where birth control was practiced.”

Our Lady’s bodily assumption should be a powerful motive for control of our bodily passions. Why? Because after the last day, we are due to be rewarded with a glorified body for the merit we have gained during our life on earth in sacrificing sinful pleasures of the senses in obedience to the will of God.

It is said that the primary purpose of the Church’s Marian doctrines are to safeguard the more important dogmas of the faith than the dogmas of the Blessed Virgin Mary herself.

The doctrine of Mary’s divine motherhood — as well as her perpetual virginity– safeguards the full divinity of her Son, Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception safeguards the holiness of the Church.

The doctrine of Mary as Co-Redemptix and Co- Mediatrix safeguards the fact that through Baptism all Christians participates in the redemption of Christ and the mediation of all graces through our own prayers, sufferings, and acts of reparation.

And here we see that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven also safeguards an important truth.

Normally, we would think that Mary’s bodily assumption reminds us of the resurrection of our own bodies and their participation in our eternal reward (or damnation). But Pope Pius XII had another idea in mind as well — namely, he hoped that Mary’s bodily assumption would remind us that we need to serve God with our bodies as well as with our minds and souls through acts of self-denial and mortification.

Once we understand the Pope’s rationale, we see why the Holy Spirit moved him to proclaim Mary’s bodily assumption a dogma of the Church in 1950. As John Paul II pointed out on a number of occasions, on of the defining characteristics of our age is a neo-gnosticism. Whereas the old gnosticism of antiquity denied the goodness of the body and thus subjected the body to harsh treatment, the neo-gnosticism of our age sees the body and bodily pleasure as the greatest goods we possess and therefore hardly ever denies the body any of its wants.

Because it is very difficult for anyone to escape the age in which he lives, we must be vigilant in not succumbing to the neo-gnosticism of our age through daily acts of self-denial.

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