Question.
Since RC teaches that believing the dogma of the assumption is necessary for salvation, what do they say about the salvation of those who died before the dogma was born?
Would it be safe to say that RC teaches that only Mary is in heaven between the time of her assumption and the dogma defined?
It is necessary for salvation
now because we are now explicitly bound to believe it.
Take another example, in the early Church, it was not a sin to miss Mass on Sundays. But, early on, the Church decided that Mass was so important that we are now bound to attend and if we skip Sunday Mass (that is, without sufficient reason, of course), we have committed a mortal sin and fall from Grace. Now, this is a man-made law and not a dogma but the same principle of binding applies. Does the Church bind us to attend Sunday and Holyday Mass because they are trying to get us to fall from Grace? Of course not, but rather they are giving us an order so that we can achieve a greater portion of Grace. If a commander never gave any orders, sure no one would be punished for insubordination but neither would anything get done; we could empty the prisons by eliminating all the laws but society would be much worse off.
We define dogmas formally in order to teach the Faith and help people grow in the Faith. If people choose to rebel against the God-given Faith or against God-given authority, they are subject to the consequences of their actions.
Jn 15:22 said:
If I had not come, and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
Would it be better if Christ had never come because then people would not have sinned in rejecting Him? Of course not. The same is true with teaching the Faith, including defining dogmas -- whether it be the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, or the Assumption.
For example, St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the Immaculate Conception because he accepted the idea that conception and animation (ensoulment) occur at different times and thus she could not have been saved prior to gaining a soul. He also fell into the "one instant" camp -- that she was conceived in the state of Original Sin but was cleansed of it in the next instant of her existence after ensoulment. But no one could hold that position licitly after 1854 when her Immaculate Conception was defined and promulgated as dogma.
I believe there was a thread here a while ago (I'll let LLoJ find it -- he's good at that) that was something like "Was it a sin to not believe in the Trinity prior to Nicea?", that is, before the Trinity was proclaimed as a dogma (when Arianism ruled the Christian world).
