Our Worldview challenged by Dogma

Today, August 15th, is a special day for the Catholic Church. The Celebration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Heaven. This dogma of faith states that Mary, mother of Jesus, at the end of her life, is elevated to Heaven in body-soul. What does it mean?

Catholics believe her body was not buried, but elevated to the "glory of eternal life, in full and perfect communion with God" (from the Homily of Benedict XVI, 15.08.2010). I guess this is similar to what happened to Jesus in Resurrection.

Science and faith depend on a continuous revelation. Revelations begin with enigmas permeating the cosmos, followed by Mysteries demanding of us a welcoming of faith as a gift, that only makes sense when incarnated in everyday life. Every time a step forward is given in science, new questions arise, and every time we read a dogma in light of new scientific developments, a deeper interpretation is necessary, which is why dogmas have a history.

The Dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is definitely a challenge to science and faith.

Can this dogma imply a violation or suspension of natural laws?

If Mary's body was not buried, where is it?

As a scientist and with a religious background, I think miracles do not violate or suspend natural laws. It makes little sense.

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Miracles challenge, in a deeper sense,

our worldview, proposing a culture of life

instead of a culture of death.

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In this sense, the challenge is still how to relate the truth in a dogma with our life experience, and the corresponding implications.

My first question is: what do we mean by Dogma?

Karl Rahner in an article about "The Christian of the Future" reflects on "the mutable element in the doctrine of faith" and states

"Such a dogma of the Church is truly unchangeable, i.e., it can never cease, even by an act of the Church, to be binding on the conscience of the Catholic. Only journalists very badly instructed in theology could therefore suppose that Vatican II might... revoke the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (...) But the immutability of the Church’s dogma does not exclude, on the contrary it implies, that there is a history of dogmas. Such a history does not only exist because a very great deal of time and theological development and clarification was needed..."

So, what does a history of dogmas means if these are "unchangeable"?

According to Rahner, the answer is in the meaning of dogma implying an improvement in the way we think about it, with greater clarity, and free from misunderstandings spontaneously accompanying it, which we weren't aware of, connecting with other truths of faith more explicit.

A dogma with history moves us toward fullness of meaning and unity with a fulness of faith rooted in the Ultimate Ground which is God.

So, what is the core of faith in this dogma?

Mary is preserved from the corruption of a burial, just as it happened with Jesus. This means Mary is in the glory of a full communion with God in body-soul as one indivisible unity.

The primacy of the dogma is the Resurrection of Christ.

Whatever happened with Jesus, also happened with Mary.

From Benedict XVI I've understood that Saint Paul's thinking of the first human (Adam), and the new Adam, shows in the first case the following intuition: we are biologically incorporated in a world that eventually dies, and regenerates when it dies (this is evolution). But we also learn another intuition: in the Resurrection (whatever that is in Reality) we are incorporated in a life of full communion with God. This passage from biological incorporation to incorporation in full communion with God is a radical transformation of our worldview.

And this is why it is so hard to accept.

Not because it is false (we’re unable to make that judgement), but instead, it touches deep into the our conception of the world in an age of science.

The spiritualized corporeality and a corporeal spirit, underlying our understanding of the body after Resurrection, without division or separation, requires transforming a culture of death to a culture of life.

This dogma is an eschatological experience, a kind of "now, but not yet".

But there is something else.

Mary went to Heaven.

What is Heaven?

I think Heaven is not a known place in the universe, or multiverse (if it exists), or unknown. It is a dimension of reality beyond materiality, transcending it. Although not in its mathematical sense, it is similar do Abbot's FLATLAND. If we're able to conceive the possibility of other spatial dimensions we do not have access to, because our world is 3D, we shouldn't exclude the possibility of dimensions beyond space and time.

But we haven't reach the core of the challenge in science and faith, as it is understood by a non-believer, or ex-believer, relative to this dogma.

Where is the real difficulty?

It is not in the Dogma itself.

It is in the difference between a view of the world, and what the Dogma expresses.

A view of the world known as humanist naturalism, or scientific humanism.

This view only accepts as real what can be investigated by natural sciences. Wilhem Dilthey argued on a paper entitled "The Atheist Surge", published on Theology & Science Journal (issue 8, 2010), that a view of the world cannot be proved or refuted since that view is the ground of such proof or refutation.

The expectation of an atheist thinking about this dogma (Mary elevated to Heaven), according to his/her worldview, is to find a sense and meaning in the natural world, explained by natural sciences. But Heaven is not expected to be a place anywhere in the known and unknown universe. It is beyond space and time, in a different dimension of Reality. So... it makes little sense to search for a justification to believe in the dogma within the scientific method.

If we do, we're missing the point.

Here, we have to go back to Resurrection because that's the essence of this dogma.

What is a resurrected body?

In part, I explore this in my short book. But the honest answer is "I don't know". After the Resurrection, everything changes and if we already realized it fully, this dogma wouldn't be a problem.

Thus, how do we move from here?

How do we find the answers to these Mysteries?

Keep searching.