The Starting-Point of Marian Doctrine

It cannot be said that English Catholicism has entered with mind and heart into the stream of doctrinal development which is so noticeable a feature of the Marian movement in the Church today. Any attempt to dismiss this movement and the doctrinal development within it as a Continental exaggeration runs the risk of so emphasizing the Englishness of our Catholicism as to compromise its Catholicism. The needs of apologetics in England are sometimes urged in favour of a minimalistic approach to Marian doctrine. There is one decisive answer to this suggestion : the only truth which we as Catholics must proclaim is the whole truth. Our duty as Catholics is not to minimize Marian doctrine but to present it as an integral part of the totality of saving truth which it is the Church's office to preach to the world.It is in view of this unsatisfactory situation in England that, so it seems clear to me, the central problem to be examined is the point of departure of the development of Marian doctrine. What I feel is most needed is not a more or less academic study of explicit Mariological structures, the technical elaborations of doctrine, but a disclosure of the motive force and impetus of the development, so that by renewing our living contact in faith and love with our Lady we may be able actively to contribute to the development, this active engagement being the essential precondition of any more objective theological assessment of the sense of that development

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