I regard modern Catholic theology with considerable awe. While I'd have to agree that their doctrine is full of holes, I have to admire their constant attempts to revise their understanding of medieval concepts to fit into the modern world. They're making the best of a bad situation, seems to me.
But to answer your question, it's all pretty ridiculous.
True to who? We each can get something different from each passage. A second reading may shed more light, or sometimes you see something not noticed before. The value of any religious experience is personal. This writing is not intended to be taken as scientific fact, as a whole. The value that comes from a GOOD religion, happens within.
We are also dealing with the SPIRIT REALM, DREAM PROPHECIES, and the like. So, the value you seek through just a reading for an intellectual understanding, is NATURALLY LESS than the value of these SAME passages, when taken in for their spiritual value. Does not really matter in the grand scheme of things to you, really if she was or was not actually a virgin, as we think of it today? The message to a follower is more like, Mary was unspoiled and the baby conceived in God, or in Love. To translate the mere words, you don't really get MUCH VALUE at all. What you lack in understanding of any if these specific religious theories, can be gained merely by attending the house of faith in question, and one by one, to see HOW this church or that actually APPLIES said theory. This is a MAJOR flaw, in these writings, and there are several major flaws. The flaws that the non-believer wants to HARP UPON, is just a matter of semantics to the believer.
In short, standing outside the gate trying to unravel the secrets within, will simply not work.
So yes, there is truth. Take care of your family. Take care of your life. Some directives on how to take best possible care. The truth that MOST intrigues me is, that the Catholics DO have a REAL HANDLE on dealings with Satan, and his minions. What they've been doing for years and years, actually works, when faced with this type of um mm issue. Give credit where credit is due, see?
You want to get a handle on LIVING, and the living world, use the SGI Buddhism. Easy to understand, apply, and grow from their teachings. They've made it all so easy, that you don't have to understand anything, how it works, why it works, Don't have to believe, or even have the best attitude--it always produces positives in human LIFE, period.
Spirit concerns, salvation and the like, I'm tempted to advise all to play it safe, and just DO the CHRISTIAN rituals for ensuring your own salvation. Feeling something GOOD, will not mess with your mind beyond your ability to reason it all out for yourself. Feeling the "touch" of a LOVING Spirit, is not a thing ANY person SHOULD MISS, and it can be gotten in the Church, we all want to condemn, criticize, and question from afar, as far as possible, AND STILL achieve the understanding of a MASTER of the Faith. Can Not Be done, not to the conclusions you ALL SEEM TO WANT.
Catholics believe in the assumption of the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven after her death.
John 19:26-27 states:
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple (John) took her into his home.
The minutes of the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 C.E. indicate that four or six years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, John and the Virgin Mary came together to Ephesus, and for a short time stayed in the building, a section of which is now under Church of the Virgin Mary today.
Later John moved the Virgin Mary to a house he had prepared for her on Bulbul Dagi (Bulbul Hill). She lived there until the end of her earthly life.
St. John of Damascus (P. G., I, 96) later wrote:
St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria 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.
This ancient belief was just formalized by the Pope in 1950.
Is any part of the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, or any other Christian church,
