Infallible statements - Immaculate Conception and Assumption

[pecatholic]

Where those infallible statements made because it was a response to what was going on at that time? If so, what was going on?

 

[EphelDuath]

I believe that there was a hint of Protestant influence on the Church at the time, and some mislead Catholics were crying to put emphasis off of St. Mary. The Church only infallibly affirms doctrines being denied, so the Pope decided to cement these beliefs.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

 

[Mannyfit75]

These statements were made because the people of our faith request that they be defined. I think this was more so with the Assumption of Mary than the Immaculate Conception. I’ll have to double check on it.

 

[Verbum]

Hi Pecatholic,

In both cases, they were decisions whose time had come. There was a great desire, from both the people in general and the hierarchy in particular for the proclamation of these dogmas. The statements from Pius IX, in Ineffabilis Deus and Pius XII, in Munificentissimus Deus, are remarkably similar :

No wonder, then, that the Pastors of the Church and the faithful gloried daily more and more in professing with so much piety, religion, and love this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God, which, as the Fathers discerned, was recorded i the Divine Scriptures; which was handed down in so many of their most important writings; which was expressed and celebrated in so many illustrious monuments of venerable antiquity; which was proposed and confirmed by the official and authoritative teaching of the Church.

Hence, nothing was dearer, nothing more pleasing to these pastors than to venerate, invoke, and proclaim with most ardent affection the Virgin Mother of God conceived without original stain. Accordingly, from ancient times the bishops of the Church, ecclesiastics, religious orders, and even emperors and kings, have earnestly petitioned this Apostolic See to define a dogma of the Catholic Faith the Immaculate Conception of the most holy Mother of God.

These petitions were renewed in these our own times; they were especially brought to the attention of Gregory XVI, our predecessor of happy memory, and to ourselves, not only by bishops, but by the secular clergy and religious orders, by sovereign rulers and by the faithful.

(Ineffabilis Deus :
papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9ineff.htm

7

. Actually it was seen that not only individual Catholics, but also those who could speak for nations or ecclesiastical provinces, and even a considerable number of the Fathers of the Vatican Council, urgently petitioned the Apostolic See to this effect.
8. During the course of time such postulations and petitions did not decrease but rather grew continually in number and in urgency. In this cause there were pious crusades of prayer.

Many outstanding theologians eagerly and zealously carried out investigations on this subject either privately or in public ecclesiastical institutions and in other schools where the sacred disciplines are taught. Marian Congresses, both national and international in scope, have been held in many parts of the Catholic world.

These studies and investigations have brought out into even clearer light the fact that the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption into heaven is contained in the deposit of Christian faith entrusted to the Church. They have resulted in many more petitions, begging and urging the Apostolic See that this truth be solemnly defined.

Munificentissimus Deus:

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12MUNIF.HTM

Verbum