S1R.—Sir Henry Bashford asks in what sense Catholics believe Our
Lady to be in heaven. We believe that her glorified body is in heaven in the same sense as Our Lord's glorified body is in heaven. He will find that sense aptly defined in the fourth Article of Religion of the Church of England: "Christ . . . took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man's nature ; wherewith He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth. . . ." We believe that Mary also enjoys " the perfection of Man's nature" in heaven. As regards glorified bodies " having weight and occupying space," not Sir Henry Bashford using these terms in a nineteenth-century s.21u!? We live in a " mysterious universe "; and will not lightly answer questions about the weight that is merging into mass-energy, in the ?-tzc that may be multi-dimensional, or the matter that seems akin to
ratli)tion. We do not believe that the soul merely " inhabits " the body. The body " appertains to the perfection of Man's nature." Soul and body are parted at death, and each lacks perfection until their re-uniting at the general resurrection, when, I hope, Sir Henry Bashford, F.R.C.P., will rejoice to find that those human bodies, which he has tended so devotedly on earth, have an eternal significance of which he has now no
conception.—Yours faithfully, I DDESLEIGH. Parfilts House, Eversley Cross, Hampshire.
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