Actually God, who from all eternity regards Mary with a most favorable and unique affection, has "when the fullness of time came" put the plan of his providence into effect in such a way that all the privileges and prerogatives he had granted to her in his sovereign generosity were to shine forth in her in a kind of perfect harmony.

And, although the Church has always recognized this supreme generosity and the perfect harmony of graces and has daily studied them more and more throughout the course of the centuries, still it is in our own age that the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, has certainly shone forth more clearly.

Reflecting on the history of this belief in Catholic Christian tradition, Pope Pius XII writes that "the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church have never failed to draw enlightenment from this fact.

[7] Munificentissimus Deus cites also the teaching of previous popes and bishops and such writers as John of Damascus, Francis de Sales, Robert Bellarmine, Anthony of Padua, and Albert the Great, among others.

"[8] Written not long after the devastation of World War II, the encyclical conveys the hope that meditation on Mary’s assumption will lead the faithful to a greater awareness of our common dignity as the human family.

[10][11] Paul Tillich asked fellow Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in March 1950, about eight months before the decree was promulgated, if he expected the Pope to make the declaration about Mary's assumption ex cathedra.

Namely, Jung saw it as the manifestation of a culminating desire for completion in the Christian psyche; recognizing the feminine side of the divine would ease the inevitable incarnation of the Holy Ghost in humanity.