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As a former professing Catholic for almost 20 years one of the most difficulties I encountered was the doctrines around Mary. I grew up reciting the rosary and kneeling before a statue of Mary. She was given so much significance as a powerful icon in the church. I accepted everything I was taught. As I got older I began to question these things about my faith and why I did the things I did. This is natural for all Christians. I began to study scriptures more to find answers but instead stumbled upon more questions than answers. I had to press the “I believe” button and remove my questioning attitude because the thinking was already thought for us by bishops and popes deceased for thousands of years. So I began to earnestly seek other Catholics with the hopes that they may provide direction and revelation to the dogmas of Mary. Many of them have cleared a lot of misconceptions but for the most part were either unable to sufficiently answer or remained avoiding the main concern about the assumption and coronation of Mary.

My question was “how do we know that Mary assumed into heaven and was crowned as a queen?”

First and foremost, Catholics will often say that Elijah, Enoch, and Jesus ascended into Heaven so why is it impossible for Mary to? My answer to that is simple. I am not denying that an assumption is impossible but there are no evidences for Mary’s. God’s Word tells us that these men ascended into Heaven and they also had witnesses as evidence. Unfortunately that cannot be the same case for Mary. I honestly don’t have a difficult time believing that Mary assumed into heaven if I have sound evidence for it. So where is the evidence?

A lot of Catholic will have the tendency to recite “tradition, tradition, tradition and not just “sola scriptura”. So I was enticed to study extensively for hours and trace back where this doctrine originated from. Did someone witness her assumption? Was this a revelation? I wanted to start from Scriptures and found information that was inconclusive or no mentions of her assumption or coronation. “Maybe it wasn’t mentioned there for some strange reason even though Elijah’s, Enoch’s and Jesus’ were and for the most part they had witnesses”, I thought to myself. So I took the next step and bought several books from the writings of the early Church fathers such as St Clement, St Ignatius, St Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Irenaeus, and Polycarp to start at the roots of the infant church. After all, John the apostle was entrusted by Jesus to take care of his mother, Mary and through apostolic succession, it makes sense that he would pass down everything he knew about Mary to Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Ignatius right? Well that wasn’t the case. I was quite surprised when I found no mentions of a coronation or an assumption for the first 400 years. I mean, these were supernatural, rare events that give Mary a more definitive role as a sinless queen so it should have been worth recording. Catholics then say that not everything was recorded but the fact remains that Mary, although not really emphasized from these early church fathers, was already written about. So what did these Church fathers say then?
In the year 130 Irenaeus wrote about her. He was familiar with those who had been close both to Peter and to Paul and who “had still the preaching of the blessed Apostles ringing in their ears” He said:

“As Eve was seduced by the speech of an angel, so as to flee God in transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by means of the angel’s speech, so as to be God within her, being obedient to this word. And though the one had disobeyed God, yet the other was drawn to obey him; that of the virgin Eve, the virgin Mary might become the advocate and as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being preserved- a virgin’s disobedience by a virgin’ obedience.” (Against Heresies, 3, 19) (130 A.D.)

St. Justin in 110-165 A.D. writes:

For whereas Eve, yet a virgin and undefiled, through conceiving the word that came from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, when the Angel told her the good tidings that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadow her, and therefore the Holy One to be born of her should be the Son of God, answered, Be it done to me according to thy word. And so by means of her was he born, concerning whom we have shown so many Scriptures were spoken; through whom God overthrows the serpent, and those angels and men who have become like to it, and on the other hand, works deliverance from death for such as repent of their evil doings and believe in him (Dialogue with Trypho, 100 A.D.)

Eve was called the mother of the living …after the fall this title was given to her. True it is…the whole race of man upon earth was born from Eve; but in reality it is from Mary the Life was truly born to the world. So that by giving birth to the Living One, Mary became the mother of all living (St. Epiphanius, Against Eighty Heresies, 78,9)

And, moreover, the ark made of imperishable wood was the Saviour Himself. For by this was signified the imperishable and incorruptible tabernacle of (the Lord) Himself, which gendered no corruption of sin. For the sinner, indeed, makes this confession: “My wounds stank, and were corrupt, because of my foolishness.” [1207] But the Lord was without sin, made of imperishable wood, as regards His humanity; that is, of the virgin and the Holy Ghost inwardly, and outwardly of the word of God, like an ark overlaid with purest gold. (On Psalm XXII. Or XXIII. From the Commentary by the Holy Bishop and Martyr Hippolytus, on “The Lord is My Shepherd.”)

In summary they believed that:
-Mary existed
-Mary was a woman
-Mary was a holy virgin who gave birth (The apostles creed, #3, Marcellus/ Nicene creed/ Greogary of Nazianzus An examination of Appolinarianism/ the Anathemas of Cyril of Alexandria)
-Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Son of God, God of the living (Ignatius, Ad Trall, ix, x/ tome of Leo ep xxviii
-Unlike Eve, Mary was obedient and righteous
-Mary was a practicing Jews and married to Joseph

Doesn’t this already sound like what the Bible already claims about Mary? Yet it’s a bit odd that these church fathers couldn’t even spend an additional 10 seconds to write about her coronation or assumption if it was such an undeniable absolute truth? This leaves us with 3 conclusions: They either didn’t believe it, weren’t familiar with it because it didn’t happened, or were suppressing the truth. Was there a reasonable explanation that this information was withheld? Some Catholics will state that they didn’t write about her because she was still alive and didn’t ascend yet. Well the problem with that is she couldn’t have lived any longer than 100AD in which was the earliest time frame that the church fathers wrote. That argument is invalid. Imagine if every biographer of Abraham Lincoln wrote only about his birth but all failed to record his death, legacy, and presidency. Those are some of the most important events and the pinnacles of his life which are definitely worth recording. That is the same case with every single early church father for the first 400 years. They all left out the assumption, a miraculous and rare event but took the effort to state that she was sinless, an obedient Jewish woman, and servant of God who gave the human birth to our Lord and Savior. Once again did they all conspire to leave that out or did they leave it out because it never happened? So where does this dogma originate from? We first see this belief in 400AD.

St. John of Damascus (P.G., I, 96) thus formulates the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem:

St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; where from the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.

At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when bishops from throughout the Mediterranean world gathered in Constantinople, Emperor Marcian asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to bring the relics of Mary to Constantinople to be enshrined in the capitol. The patriarch explained to the emperor that there were no relics of Mary in Jerusalem, that “Mary had died in the presence of the apostles; but her tomb, when opened later . . . was found empty and so the apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven.”
(Catholic Encyclopedia)

The earliest account of a Church Father speaking of the Assumption of Mary was Epiphanus who stated:

“If the Holy Virgin had died and was buried, her falling asleep would have been surrounded with honour, death would have found her pure, and her crown would have been a virginal one…Had she been martyred according to what is written: ‘Thine own soul a sword shall pierce’, then she would shine gloriously among the martyrs, and her holy body would have been declared blessed; for by her, did light come to the world.” Epiphanius,Panarion,78:23(A.D. 377),in PG 42:737

Epiphanius said in A.D. 377, “Let them search the scriptures. They will not find Mary’s death; they will not find whether she died or did not die; they will not find whether she was buried or was not buried. More than that: John journeyed to Asia, yet nowhere do we read that he took the holy Virgin with him. Rather, Scripture is absolutely silent [on Mary's earthly end] because of the extraordinary nature of the prodigy, in order not to shock the minds of men. . . . Neither do I maintain stoutly that she died. . . .

“Did she die? We do not know. At all events, if she was buried, she had no carnal intercourse. . . . Or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God and he can do whatever he desires” (Panarion, haer. 78, nn. 10-11,23: G.C.S., 37, 461-462; 474).

Another Father, Gregory of Tours, narrates the event of her death and Assumption:
“[T]he Apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord’s chosen ones…” Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles,1:4(inter A.D. 575-593),in JUR,III:306

So this belief was entirely based on speculation and not actual facts with eye witnesses as was Jesus and Elijah’s. But yet there are still more problems with that.

The first church author to speak on the assumption, Gregory of Tours, based his teaching on the Transitus, perhaps because he accepted it as genuine. In 495 A.D., Pope Gelasius issued a decree which rejected the book which taught the assumption of Mary as heresy, labeling those who put forward the idea as heretics (see Liber qui appellatur Transitus, id est Assumptio sanctae Mariae, apocryphus under books to not be received. In 520 AD, Pope Hormisdas issued his own decree reaffirming the one put forth by Gelasius also condemning the book which taught the the assumption of Mary and its authors as heretical
The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book De Transitu Virginis, falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite” (Catholic Encyclopedia).

The major problem with this was it was written almost 4 centuries later. Too late to be accurate and plenty of room for myth and legend to creep in.
But Catholics will contend that her unknown burial location or the fact that her death was unknown was evidence that she was assumed. Lack of evidence are not facts.
Well, there are no mentions of Joseph either, does that mean he assumed into heaven?
There are no mentions of Zachariah’s and Elizabeth’s (who were perfect candidates of assumption by being righteous and filled with the holy spirit) ever dying so should we automatically conclude that they went into heaven?

John Chrysostom commenting:

“Tell me, are not the bones of Moses himself laid in a strange land? And those of Aaron, of Daniel, of Jeremiah? And as to those of the Apostles we do not know where those of most of them are laid. For of Peter indeed, and Paul, and John, and Thomas, the sepulchers are well known; but those of the rest, being so many, have nowhere become known. Let us not therefore lament at all about this, nor be so little-minded. For where-ever we may be buried, ‘the earth is the Lord’s and all that therein is.’ (Ps. xxiv. 1.)” (Homilies on Hebrews, 26:2, v. 22)

Some Catholics contend that she assumed body and soul. On the contrary many Christians especially in the east believed that she actually died a natural death and was buried and celebrate that day because of it. So what is the point of a tomb if there was no body and death? The Dormition of the Theotokos (Greek: Κοίμησις Koímēsis, often anglicized as Kimisis) is a Great Feast of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches which commemorates the “falling asleep” or death of the Theotokos. Now this adds to more complicated questions.
So did she die or not or did she assume before death or after? Who are we to believe and what good evidence do they have for us to believe them?
If she did die before assuming, there would be even further complications of her burial site. Some Christians believe she died in Llanerchymedd, others in Ephesus, Turkey or Jehosophar in Jerusalem. So which tomb was supposedly empty to conclude that she assumed into Heaven? No one can agree but for some reason without explanation or evidence, Catholics seem to have it accurately figured out. If these churches and denominations are in disagreement as to whether Mary died or not then why should we believe them if they state that Mary assumed?

But then Catholics will also argue with the following:

By becoming man, Jesus was born under the law (Gal. 4:4) and was bound to obey the commandment to honor his mother. The Hebrew word for “honor” does not imply mere courtesy, but the bestowal of honor and glory. By preserving Mary’s body from corruption, Jesus fulfills the command to honor his mother in a way that only a divine Son could. What person, if he had the power to prevent the corruption of his mother’s body, would not do so? The love of Jesus for his mother seems to be the strongest argument for her Assumption. (Catholic.forum. how to argue for Mary’s Assumption)

“Since our Redeemer is the Son of Mary, he could not fail her, being the most perfect observer of the divine law, to honour, besides his Eternal Father, His most beloved Mother. In fact, since He was able to do her great honour as to keep her safe from corruption of the tomb, we must believe that He actually did so…
- (Pius IX), INEFFABILIS DEUS

Not necessarily, that is a theological assumption from men not based on any concrete facts. The fact is that Christ also said in Matthew 22

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36″Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

We find many references to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in the book of John (John 13:23, John 19:26, John 20:2 and John 21:7, John 21:20).
Does this mean that because Jesus had to fulfill the greatest commandment of loving his neighbors, he exemplified this law by assuming every person into heaven especially the disciple he loved most? That’s not true at all and the biblical facts show it. I find it interesting how Catholics say one of their strongest evidence is some analogous thinking like this: Since Mary was sinless and Jesus was to honor his mother, what better way to assume her to Heaven and not leave her for corruption? That’s understandable and the theological implications make perfect sense. However, according to Catholics, man cannot properly interpret the Bible himself without the assistance of the Catholic Church, so Catholics must then prove that the early church father’s shared that same idea and it was traditionally passed on. Do they have writings to back up that assertion? If so, where is the evidence that the early church fathers shared that idea and passed it on? I cannot find a single source of evidence for the first 400 years. I challenge Catholics do the same.

Catholics will go on to say that a skeptic who denies Christ’s Resurrection should be asked to find evidence of the remains of Christ, and the same challenge can be extended to whoever denies Mary’s Assumption. (Catholic forum: how to argue for Mary’s assumption)

This is a self defeating statement because the resurrected Christ actually had witnesses by the hundreds and was around for 150 days eating, drinking, and associating with the apostles after his crucifixion. In fact, the Bible records Jesus ascension and the witnesses. Even the angels in his tomb clearly stated that he has risen. That was not the same case for Mary- no witnesses at all.

On one case a Catholic told me that it is an infallible truth that Mary did die because Pope Pius seems to be favoring it. However, why didn’t he include that in the dogma but instead left it open ended. Still, why are Catholics in disagreement today? If Catholics claim that Mary’s dormition and the assumption from her dormition was passed down from tradition then what exact burial place did she assume? What official document says that?

Catholics are also notorious for keeping accurate records of their saints. In Foxx’s Box of Martyrs, Catholics can accurately account on what happened to almost every single Saint. However, the most important Saint, Mary, has no mentions about her death or assumption at all. How is that even the most relatively insignificant saints are properly accounted for but the greatest of them all has no single slot in this book?

Many Catholics aren’t even aware of the real reason how that dogma became instituted. Here is what TIME magazine reported:

Some 200 years ago, a monk wrote to Pope Clement XIII begging him to define the bodily Assumption of Mary as “a most certain dogma of faith.” Clement passed the matter on to the Holy Office. In 1863, Spain’s Queen Elizabeth made the same request. Pius IX, though recognizing the Queen’s good intentions, was somewhat annoyed at a temporal sovereign’s interference in sacred matters. He replied: “I am not worthy to publish such a dogma. The wishes of Your Majesty, the holy wishes of Your Majesty, will no doubt some day be satisfied if the large body of the humble faithful persevere in prayer to this end.”

The Faithful Persevere. A few years later, a Benedictine monk named Luigi Vaccari organized a popular movement, still continuing, to bring pressure on the Pope. Dom Luigi persuaded a layman to travel the world collecting signatures to a petition. Some 25,000 signatures came from Mexico alone. The Holy Office forbade Vaccari to continue his activities, but the “humble faithful persevered in prayer,” and so many petitions were flooding in upon the Vatican that finally Pius XI gave the movement his official blessing. In 1946, the present Pope sent a circular letter to all the bishops of his Church:

“. . . Is it permitted [liceat], is it convenient [deceat], is it opportune [expediat to adhere to these requests [for the dogmatic definition of the Assumption]?” The letter explicitly asked the “Venerable Brothers” if, “according to your wisdom and prudence, you believe that the Bodily Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin be established and defined as a dogma of faith and if this would be in accord with the wishes of your clergy and people.” The Pope is reported to have said that the “answers, in their great majority, are favorable.” -Time Magazine

After reading this blog please understand that I am not condemning or judging Catholics as a whole. If it wasn’t for Catholicism then I probably would of never been introduced to Jesus. My belief is against the dogmas of Mary. This is my original work from my months of investigation and I also used credible references. I do come in a humble spirit to stand to any corrections of errors that I may have made. However, my heavy research has lead me to conclude that Mary’s assumption is a theological opinion from fallible men with no evidence at all. Catholics are banking their entire faith on the theology of a few men.

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