Gaude, Maria Virgo, cunctas hæreses sola interemisti in universo mundo!
The Church proclaims the resurrection of the body, and there is no such thing as a "spiritual body". It is impossible to sustain out of Scripture the view according to which newly disembodied souls entered immediately into their final, but incorporeal, bliss or torment.
Serious Protestant theologians do not hold it, although that does leave them with only the original Protestant position that until the General Resurrection, souls were effectively as dead as their bodies. But Catholics cannot hold it, since the Assumption is the standing contradiction of it.
Of your charity, pray for my erstwhile Confirmation sponsor, Seán Power, who was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood by Cardinal Nichols in Westminster Cathedral on 28 June, and who may be heard here preaching the great truth of bodily resurrection, although sphericism was anathematised by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Alas, considering the decades that some of us have spent anticipating it. Ad multos annos, Father.
The Reformers believed in the Assumption.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the Perpetual Virginity.
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