re question about virgin mary in article may athos rutgers edu a faris trl oz au aziz faris says a faris posting deleted the moderator replies i think you re talking about the assumption of the blessed virgin mary it says 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 this was defined by a papal statement in though it had certainly been believed by some before that like the immaculate conception this is primarily a roman catholic doctrine and like it it has no direct biblical support note that catholics do not believe in sola scriptura that is they do not believe that the bible is the only source of christian knowledge thus the fact that a doctrine has little biblical support is not necessarily significant to them they believe that truth can be passed on through traditions of the church and also that it can be revealed to the church i m not interested in yet another catholic protestant argument but if any catholics can tell us the basis for these beliefs i think it would be appropriate clh that is generally accuate but contains one serious error we catholics do believe that god s revealed truth that is not explicitly recorded in the bible can be and is passed on through the tradition of the church it should be noted that the tradition of the church otherwise known as sacred tradition is not the same as ordinary human traditions however we do not believe that additional truth will be revealed to the church public revelation which is the basis of catholic doctrine ended with the death of st john the last apostle nothing new can be added theologians study this revelation and can draw out implications that were not recognized previously so that the council of nicea could define statements about the theology of the trinity and the incarnation that were not explicitly stated in the bible and had been disputed before the council but there was no new revelation at nicea or at any subsequent council cardinal newman s an essay on the development of christian doctrine written while he was still an anglican is an excellent discussion of of this point it was recently reprinted as a doubleday image books paperback with some related shorter works under the title conscience consensus and the development of doctrine marty helgesen bitnet mnhcc cunyvm internet mnhcc cunyvm cuny edu what if there were no such thing as a hypothetical situation
