Understanding the four Marian dogmas

In the month of May, Catholics honor the Blessed Mother and acknowledge her key role in our spiritual lives. Over the centuries, the Church has defined four great Marian dogmas that can help us understand her better and grow in our relationship with her.

These four dogmas — that Mary is the Mother of God, that she remained a virgin all her life, that she was conceived without original sin, and that she was assumed into heaven — should not be considered separate “privileges” of Mary, according to Fr. Hugh Barbour, a Norbertine priest and regular chaplainpresenter on the program Catholic Answers Live, “as though they did not form a unified whole of connecting mysteries.”

Instead, they are like “threads of a tapestry, which, when woven together, present a coherent picture, and when unraveled come completely apart.” They “flow from and connect to each other,” he said.

Just as the Church grappled with understanding Jesus Christ in both His humanity and His divinity and took centuries of debate to define its teachings officially, so too did its understanding of Mary and her role in salvation history.

Theotokos, Mother of God

Early Marian devotion considered Mary the Theotokos (“God-bearer”), or Mother of God. As the Church came to understand Christ as fully human and fully divine, this view of Mary as Theotokos was challenged by those who said Mary gave birth to the human Jesus but not to His divinity. In the fifth century, Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, said Mary should be called Christotokos (“Christ-bearer”) but not Theotokos.

The debate led to the Council of Ephesus, which in 431 proclaimed that Mary was indeed the Mother of God. The council further explained that Christ’s divine and human nature were united in one person, not two separate persons as Nestorius asserted, and so it is correct to say that Mary gave birth to the person who was God.

This mystery is the foundation of all the other dogmas, said Fr. Barbour.

“This mystery establishes that the Eternal Son of God has one sonship since He is one person,” he said. “Even though He has two births, one eternally of the Father as God, and the other as man in time of His Mother, He is still one son, just as any son is the son of both his father and his mother, not having two sonships, one of his father and the other from his mother.”

Perpetual virginity

Mary’s virginal conception and birth of Jesus were never in question due to the clarity of Scripture, but even her perpetual virginity — that she remained a virgin her entire life — was held by many of the early Church Fathers as well. It also was generally accepted by the faithful. In 553, the Second Council of Constantinople gave Mary the title “ever-virgin”; in 649, Pope Martin I convened a council at which he declared dogmatically that “ever-virgin” meant that Mary indeed retained her virginity perpetually.

There is a very early tradition, expressed in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, that Mary had vowed a life of perpetual virginity as a young girl and was betrothed to Joseph so he could serve as her guardian and protector in a celibate marriage, as was the practice in such instances.

Although the Gospels refer in places to the “brethren” or “brothers” of Jesus, the term translated as “brothers” (adelphos in the Greek) could also refer to other male relatives such as cousins or uncles, to spiritual “brothers,” or even men from the same tribe. It is sometimes speculated that these “brothers” were actually stepbrothers, sons of Joseph from a previous marriage. Such views are compatible with Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Speaking at a conference in Capua in 1992, Pope St. John Paul II related Mary’s perpetual virginity to her virgin birth.

“She gave birth to Jesus, truly and in a virginal way; that is why she remained virgin after giving birth, according to the holy Fathers and the councils who have expressly treated the question. The same is true about her bodily integrity,” the pope said. “She lived, after Jesus’ birth, in total and perpetual virginity; and together with St. Joseph, who was himself called to play a predominant role in the events of our salvation, she dedicated herself to the service of the person and work of Jesus.”

Immaculate conception

Mary’s Immaculate Conception means that Mary was conceived by her parents but was miraculously kept free from original sin. This was a special grace to prepare her for becoming the Mother of God, since she was chosen by God Himself for this role. The belief was widely accepted by the time Pope Pius IX, In his 1854 apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, proclaimed the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, teaching that from the moment of her conception, by a special “grace and privilege” from God, she “was kept free from every stain of original sin.”

It is sometimes confused with Mary’s miraculous conception of Jesus, which it is not.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that after they committed the first sin, “Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness” (399). Original sin is passed on to Adam’s posterity, the Catechism continues. “By one man’s disobedience many [that is, all men] were made sinners,” writes St. Paul (Rom 5:12). While baptism takes away original sin, the Catechism states, human nature is still “weakened in its powers; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the domination of death; and inclined to sin (This inclination is called ‘concupiscence’)” (418).

“As the Mother of the Incarnate Son of God and Redeemer, then, Mary must be utterly free from all sin or state of sin, original or personal,” Father Barbour explained. “This means she is created in the fullness of grace, immaculately conceived in her holy parents’ natural union, untouched by the fall of our first ancestors, fit to be a Second Eve for the Second Adam, truly the ‘Mother of all the living’ by grace and charity.”

Assumption into heaven

The Assumption is the doctrine that says that Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul, at the end of her life by an act of God. The Church does not suggest whether she died before she was assumed. Belief in the Assumption of Mary is recorded as early as the second or third century, so it is a longheld tradition. The Eastern Orthodox tradition refers to the “Dormition of the Theotokos,” which commemorates the painless, peaceful death of Mary and her subsequent “taking up” into heaven.

Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption in 1950 in his encyclical Munificentissimus Deus: “[W]e 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.”

The Assumption, states the Catechism, “is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians” (966).

Father Barbour noted that Mary’s Assumption means she is “enjoying the glory that will be ours if we cling to her Son and to her as we pass from this life into the world to come.”

JIM GRAVES is a Legatus magazine contributing writer.

Think of Mary, pure and lowly

Father Kevin Kennedy, spiritual director at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, CA, encourages Catholics to understand and reflect on Marian dogmas.

For Catholics, prayer is offered to God through Christ and the power of His spirit, and is therefore Christ-centered. Yet “how does Christ come to us but through His mother?” he asked.

The Incarnation of Christ is a central fact of our faith, “and an incarnation needs Mary,” Fr. Kennedy pointed out. “She is the means through which God plans for us to get closer to His Son.”

Father Quan Tran, a priest of the Diocese of Orange and author of the 2020 book The Imitation of Mary, said that Mary “has an important role to play in God’s plan for salvation and the Church. She is our mother and our model.” 

Father Kennedy recommends Catholics “talk to Mary in the most simple and ordinary and natural ways, as if they were speaking to their own mothers … it is the most natural thing to pray to Our Lady. When you pray the ‘Hail, Mary,’ think of yourself sitting in front of your best friend, because that is what she is.”

The month of May “is an ideal time for heart-to-heart conversations with Mary, praying the rosary and entrusting your heart and life to her heart,” he suggested. “When you do that, bring everyone you know and love into that act of consecration or entrustment.”