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Roots of Mary’s Assumption Some are surprised that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption was not defined until 1950, using little biblical support. The pope decreed that all Catholics must hold and believe as divinely revealed “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” (Munificentissimus Deus44). Yet this doctrine was no twentieth-century innovation, as Tim Perry explai …

  Identifying Infallible TeachingsSometimes people ask, “Is this document infallible?”The question is problematic because the Magisterium doesn’t issue documents whose teaching is infallible from beginning to end. Instead, it issues documents that contain individual propositions that are infallible.In Ineffabilis Deus (1854) and Munificentissimus Deus (1950)—the documents that defined the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary—only a single sentence …