Two Marian dogmas defend life.

On August 14 and 15, 2004, Pope John Paul visited the pilgrims' shrine of Lourdes, France, not to obtain healing for his illnesses, but to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception declared so by Blessed Pius IX in 1854. August 15 itself is the feast of the Assumption of Mary. It is also the day for the annual French National Pilgrimage of the sick and disabled to Lourdes. That pilgrimage gathers some 7,000 to 8,000 pilgrims in the first few days until it reaches 30,000 to 40,000 on the feast day itself. This year with the 84-year-old Pope in attendance, 300,000 people were present.

Two dogmas: but why?

The assumption of Mary into heaven was declared a dogma in 1950, after waiting 1200 years since the Synod of Salzburg appointed it a feast in 800. Both dogmas, the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption in 1950, were said to widen the divisions between Catholics and Protestants. The Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York said so in 1950, and even called them blasphemous. Anglicans--and Protestants in general--reject both dogmas because they cannot be verified by Scripture. The Greek Orthodox Church accepts belief in the two doctrines, but does not hold that they should be required teaching.

Why did these two popes go ahead and make these two doctrines obligatory teaching after centuries of simply celebrating them? The Church does not provide an official answer to this question other than the belief that it was done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This still leaves some freedom for further respectful reflection. Let us add that Mary's role in the Church (and therefore in the world) is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it (Catechism, #964).

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by growing attacks on the dignity of the individual, in the midst of a liberal philosophy emphasizing individualism. The 1789 French Revolution under the slogan of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity led straight to the totalitarianism of 1791--1792, to be succeeded by the dictatorship of Napoleon. It was accompanied and followed by an industrial revolution which so demeaned the working man and woman that it took a hundred years of battling savage capitalism before some order was restored through unionism and electoral reform. But false "isms" led to further catastrophes: nationalism to violent unrest everywhere and then to World War I in which millions of soldiers were sacrificed as cannon fodder; state socialism to fascism; "scientific socialism" to the totalitarian horrors of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Ze Dong (Mao Tse Tung), et al.; and totalitarian race socialism under Hitler to genocide and the bloodletting of World War II. Hundreds of millions of people died throughout the world in a cauldron of insane violence during these two centuries.

Today nations everywhere are crowning this disrespect for human life and dignity with the genocide of preborn babies, as a "right" of "free choice." Canada alone, with its small population, has extinguished three million human lives since 1969 in the name of this satanic "right."

The Catholic Church is the only enduring force which has systematically defied these insanities. For this she incurs the wrath, and contempt of all the devotees of the "isms" everywhere.

When King Ahab of Judah was full of fear about his enemies gathering to destroy him, a sign was given him of a woman and her child to be called Immanuel (Isaiah 7:1-17). When a century full of revolutions and scientific hubris threatened the world, a sign was given that life begins at conception. When a world of violence gave way to a world of affluence, the denial of humanity changed course from one kind of killing to a new kind, but a sign was given that reaffirmed man's destiny for everlasting life.

The two Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, it seems to me, have played a crucial role in strengthening the Church in her resistance. With them the Holy Spirit has thrown up a wall protecting the belief in the Incarnation of the God-man Jesus and, therefore, of the Christian's true otherworldly vocation. History shows that attacks on Mary as Mother of Christ and especially as Mother of God (Council of Ephesus, 431) lead to denunciations of Christ himself.

Even in the cultural sense then, the Church's devotion to the Mother of God provides a protective womb surrounding the Incarnate Son of God. Conceived without sin and, therefore, not subject to the effects of sin's punishment, death, Mary is the concrete example of a human being taken body and soul into heaven. In her assumption, she is the first fruit of Christ's redemption and the model of all believers.

Thus she stands as a bulwark against the Nihilism and the individualism of our times. Against the denial of human worth, she emphasizes the sublime calling and worth of everyone, including the tiniest human being and the poorest of the poor.