The Tomb of Mary

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Fair enough. But either way, even if it’s not dogmatic, the Dormition has “roots” in the West too. Just visit St Mary’s Major.
 
I’m not arguing with you that it has a tradition in the West too. There is old Western religious art depicting it, as well as the story of St. Thomas being away when she died and missing everything as usual so she left him her belt or something.

Like I said, I find it a moot point. I would have liked to see the Church of the Dormition though and will definitely be stopping there when/if I ever get back to the Holy Land.
 
Is this the house that was flown from Jerusalem to Ephesus by angels or am I confusing
this house with another one?

@Dan_Defender
 
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The Dormition of the Virgin is recorded in many traditions, and written of by a number of Saints and early writers. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (Orthodox Religion) has a excellent book on these traditions.

On the Dormition of Mary
 
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Thank you @Serpent_of_Paradise for your
recommended links.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Dormition in Latin Catholic Church is one of those things like whether Mary had a painless childbirth.
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Our Lady NEVER suffered labor pains but She had more pain at the foot of the Cross than all the martyrs combined.
 
Our Lady could not die because She had no original sin. She fell asleep and was assumed body and soul into Heaven.
 
The Blessed Virgin Mary, it is taught infallibly, was assumed ‘body and soul’ into heaven.

The plain meaning is that this took place at one time and that body and soul remained together.

If she did not die, that makes perfect sense.

If she did die it does not appear to me to make sense since the soul and the body after death are not together. This is what happened to Christ’s body and soul after his death.

So it seems to me that in order to believe that Mary died, it is necessary to believe that she was then resurrected so that she could be received ‘body and soul’ into heaven. If she was resurrected, where was her soul during the period between that event and death. In Jesus’ case we no he went to preach to the spirits. Where was his mother?
 
The opinions you’re expressing on here are theologically permissible in the Western Church, in other words we are free to believe what you said, that Mary didn’t die before the Assumption.

However, they are not official Church teaching. The Catechism is silent on the issue of whether Mary died prior to the Assumption or not. So we are also free to believe that she did indeed die before the Assumption.
 
FiveLinden said:
If she did die it does not appear to me to make sense since the soul and the body after death are not together. This is what happened to Christ’s body and soul after his death.
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There is a school of thought, reflected in a popular prayer that I happen to be saying this week, that Christ took Mary’s body and soul to Heaven simultaneously but separately, and once her body and soul were there infused her soul back into her body, so it could indeed make sense that she died and her soul left her body, went to Heaven while Christ was also taking her body to Heaven.

Also remember, nothing is impossible with God. There is no requirement that God has to assume Mary into heaven as an intact unit of body and soul, rather than taking the body and soul to Heaven simultaneously but separately and putting her soul back into her body once she arrives, which presumably would be an instantaneous arrival anyway since God’s time is not our time and Mary would not have required “transit time”.

Be careful about imagining spiritual occurrences in earthly physical limited ways.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
The opinions you’re expressing on here are theologically permissible in the Western Church, in other words we are free to believe what you said, that Mary didn’t die before the Assumption.

However, they are not official Church teaching. The Catechism is silent on the issue of whether Mary died prior to the Assumption or not. So we are also free to believe that she did indeed die before the Assumption.
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Not true.

This is definitely a doctrine of the Latin Church that Mary died, in complete unison with the Eastern Church.

The “problem” or “option” of believing Mary did not die emerged when the Dogma of MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS was solemnly declared. In that Dogma, the wording is
“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 it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”
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Legalistic Latin minds immediately concluded that therefore Mary must not have died! However they ignore the frequent, repeated mentions of Mary’s death throughout the Dogma earlier.

St. Pope John Paul II ALSO commented on this error by saying:
As to the cause of Mary’s death, the opinions that wish to exclude her from death by natural causes seem groundless. It is more important to look for the Blessed Virgin’s spiritual attitude at the moment of her departure from this world. In this regard, St Francis de Sales maintains that Mary’s death was due to a transport of love. He speaks of a dying “in love, from love and through love”, going so far as to say that the Mother of God died of love for her Son Jesus ( Treatise on the Love of God , bk. 7, ch. XIII-XIV).

Whatever from the physical point of view was the organic, biological cause of the end of her bodily life, it can be said that for Mary the passage from this life to the next was the full development of grace in glory, so that no death can ever be so fittingly described as a “dormition” as hers.
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Full text here: 25. Juni 1997 | John Paul II
 
Kindly explain then why the Catechism does not state that Mary died.

That is what I use as my guidebook for “What I as a Catholic Must Believe.”

“Completed the course of her earthly life” seems to be rather a waste of words if they’d simply meant to say “died”.

I have also heard more than one priest state that she never died.
 
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The Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC has a chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Ta Pinu. Wikipedia: Blessed Virgin of Ta' Pinu - Wikipedia Where the Virgin Mother of God appeared to a poor woman and told her:
“recite three Hail Mary’s in honour of the three days that my body rested in the tomb.”
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Being a Catholic is not about figuring out the very least we MUST believe… (IMHO)
 
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