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Dead?

Oh, she is not.

And neither are the other blessed who are in heaven.

Matthew 22:31-33
"But regarding the resurrection of the dead,
have you not read
what was spoken to you by God:
'I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM,
AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB '?
He is not the God of the dead
but of the living."
When the crowds heard this,
they were astonished at His teaching."

It is perfectly valid to believe and accept that she is dead as we normally define death. To the best of my knowledge, even the assumption dogma allows that she died before the assumption. That she is thought to have transitioned body and soul into Heaven after that death amounts to an argument for her early resurrection, but such accounts as argue for this are not God-breathed text, and are therefore prone to error, and not the sort of thing upon which the faithful should rely as a rule of faith.

As for the common argument that she is not dead because God is not the God of the dead but the living, resort to the text shows that the context for this statement is not that of disembodied souls, waiting fro the resurrection, but those who have actually been raised:

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.
(Luke 20:34-38)

I buried my older brother many years ago. It struck me how absolute was his quietude and stillness. If he had lived again while we watched, we would have published the news everywhere and it would never have been forgotten. If one so significant as Mary the mother of Jesus had passed and then been raised in so spectacular a manner as the apocryphal stories tell, and in the presence of the apostles themselves, as I have heard the story, then why the long silence, the story not surfacing until at the earliest the third century, and even then only starting in a small trickle, and not until much later gaining in popularity?

To the contrary, if the event had happened as it was described, one would expect to find a data burst almost as big as what Jesus' resurrection actually did produce, and which is one of the key arguments for the reality of His resurrection. It got immediate attention and made an immediate difference in the lives of everyone He touched. There was no need in Jesus' case, as Catholic apologists have done for Mary, to rely on an argument from silence. His resurrection was proclaimed far and wide, even in the face of martyrdom. But for Mary, only that no one said anything about it one way or the other for hundreds of years.

So no, without an inspired text to back it up, or at least just one credible eyewitness account, we know she must have died as all flesh does, and that she waits, as my brother and many others I love also wait, for the trumpet to sound and dead in Christ to rise and forevermore be with their Lord. It is mixing up terms to say they are not dead. We do not mean death in an unchristian sense of permanent cessation, because unlike the unbeliever, we do look forward to the resurrection. But until such time as that resurrection happens, these remain what Paul rightly calls the dead in Christ:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
(1 Thessalonians 4:16)

If it is wrong to cal them dead, who are certain to be raised, then Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ has falsely called them dead, and the doctrine of inspiration is broken. But Paul is not wrong. That God is God of the Living is prospective, it looks forward to the resurrection. It does not pretend that death is not real now, while we wait, as all believers must, for the resurrection call.

Peace,

SR

He is not the God of the dead but of the living."

Just WHO are the 'dead in Christ'?