SIR,—It would seem possible that what is puzzling so many
Christians about the new dogma may be due to a misunderstanding about the sense in which the word " body " is being used. Thus Father Russell, in your issue of September 8th, refers to Mary's " sinless body." But surely, in the usual sense of the word body, it is not the body that sins but the person inhabiting it—the whatever it is that departs from it at death. Does the new dogma mean that it has now become necessary for all Roman Catholic Christians to believe that the physical body of the mother of Our Lord, with its heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen—having weight and occupying space—is still somewhere intact, and, if so, where ! Or is the word " body " being used in some other.sense ? A clarifica- tion of this might make the dogma more easily understandable.—Yours,
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