Scott Hahn says not to get caught up in arguments over Mary’s Assumption, allow God to speak

Scott Hahn said in a recent article drawing from his own experience that the faithful should not worry if they are unable to answer all the questions Protestants ask them about Mary’s Assumption, saying they should instead simply ask God to help them witness to the truths of the faith.

In an Aug. 19 article for Angelus News, Hahn — a prominent Catholic convert and theologian — wrote about an experience where he tried and failed to defend the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, only to be given the answer by God on a Marian feast day after praying for help.

The story begins 40 years ago, after Hahn had converted to Catholicism from Protestantism and had started to become known for public speaking about his conversion.

“Fundamentalists and evangelicals would sometimes attend my lectures to challenge me, and I was eager to take them on,” Hahn writes in Angelus News. “I knew their arguments — I had once espoused them myself — and I knew the right biblical response. I began to look forward to these challenges, as a marksman looks forward to the next clay pigeon.”

One weekend, Hahn was visiting the area of the Protestant seminary he had attended, and a professor he had been close to invited him to stay with him and his wife. Hahn accepted, and he expected to experience pushback on Catholic doctrine, saying in Angelus News that he was “eager to be challenged.”

During the visit, both Hahn’s old professor and his wife began to question him about Catholic views on everything from the papacy and Confession to Purgatory and the Eucharist. Hahn writes that they both seemed to understand the Church’s teachings and recognize why someone would believe in them.

Late in the evening, though, Hahn’s professor brought up Mary’s Assumption, and Hahn struggled to defend it. Hahn pointed to the description of the woman clothed with the sun in Revelation 12 as scriptural proof for the dogma. His professor recognized that this was worth something, but he then asked for proof that any Christian before the sixth century had professed belief in the Assumption. Hahn had no response.

At this point, Hahn realized he had been suffering from “intellectual pride.” When he went to bed, he prayed and “apologized to Jesus for failing to defend His mother.”

The next day was the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and Hahn attended the only Mass he could find, which was in a shopping mall. There, the Carmelite priest who said the Mass “preached a stunning Marian homily,” which Hahn took as a sign. He approached the priest after Mass, and it turned out he was the author of a book on Mary’s Assumption. The priest gave Hahn a copy of the book, which Hahn then passed on to his professor.

“God had provided a word when I could not,” Hahn wrote.

LIttle did Hahn know that in the years following this interaction, non-Catholic scholars would find belief in the Assumption reaching back at least to the fourth century and likely earlier.

Hahn concluded his article by encouraging Catholics to simply witness to the Church’s teachings on Mary without worrying about whether or not they can defend them perfectly. A good day to begin, he wrote, is the upcoming feast of the Queenship of Mary on Aug. 22.

>> Pope gives Angelus address for Solemnity of the Assumption: Mary’s life was ‘a pilgrimage of hope with her Son’ <<

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