I hate to sound flippant, having shot off my mouth badly on the net
before, but I'm afraid that much of this material only adds to my
feeling that "the assumption of Mary" would be better phrased "our
assumptions _about_ Mary."  In all the time I've been reading about
Mary on this group, I can not recall reading much about Mary that
did not sound like wishful veneration with scant, if any, Scriptural
foundation.  

I find in the New Testament a very real portrait of Christ's parents
as compellingly human persons; to be honored and admired for their
humility and submission to God's working, beyond doubt.  But the almalga-
mation of theories and dogma that has accreted around them gives me
an image of alien and inhuman creatures, untouched by sin or human
desire.  Only Christ himself was so truly sanctified, and even He knew
temptation, albeit without submitting to it.

I also don't see the _necessity_ of saying the Holy Parents were some-
how sanctified beyond normal humanity: it sounds like our own inability
to grasp the immensity of God's grace in being incarnated through an or-
dinary human being.  

I won't start yelling about how people are "worshipping" Mary, etc.,
since folks have told me otherwise about that, but I do think we
lose part of the wonder of God's Incarnation in Christ when we make
his parents out to be sinless, sexless, deathless, otherworldly beings.
  