Immaculate Conception — The Dignity of Being Mother of God
By: Vic Alcuaz
Tags: Teaching, Jesus, History, Blessed Virgin Mary, Catholic

by Father William G. Most

EWTN’s Father William G. Most authors this extensive piece on the Immaculate Conception as we celebrate this Catholic feast December 8:

In teaching that Mary was conceived immaculate, the Catholic Church teaches that from the very moment of her conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary was free from all stain of original sin. This simply means that from the beginning, she was in a state of grace, sharing in God’s own life, and that she was free from the sinful inclinations which have beset human nature after the fall.

History of the Doctrine

There are two passages in Scripture which point us to this truth.

We look first at Genesis 3.15, in which we see the parallel between Mary and Eve of which the early Church Fathers already spoke: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

The Jews saw this passage as referring to the struggle between Christ and Satan, and so the Church see in “the woman” a prophetic foreshadowing of the Virgin Mary (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, # 55).

If there is to be complete enmity between the woman and the serpent, then she never should have been in any way subject to him even briefly. This implies an Immaculate conception.

We can also reason from the text of Lk 1:28, in which the angel calls her “full of grace”. If we can validate the translation — we can, and will do so, shortly — then in this verse we can see even more strongly the complete enmity with the serpent — for God’s grace is complete opposed to Satan’s reign. But if Mary was “full of grace,” it seems that she must have been conceived immaculate.

We turn to the early Fathers of the Church. First, many, not all of them, make sweeping statements about her holiness. That could imply an Immaculate Conception.

Secondly, very many of them speak of her as the New Eve. They could have reasoned: the first Eve had an immaculate start in life — no sin was yet committed. So the New Eve, who was to share in undoing the harm of original sin, should have also an immaculate start.

However, none of the Fathers actually followed this line of reasoning. (A few Fathers even tried to find sins she had committed, e.g. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on John 21. PG 59. 130ff).

During the middle ages, authors such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas denied the doctrine. At this time, the data from Scripture and the Fathers was still not clear. In addition, the understanding of original sin was not as clear as it should have been — it was often thought of as having a positive element, instead of merely being an original lack of the grace to which God calls us.

This positive element was thought to be transmitted from parents to children through the marital act (which was itself thought to be somehow sinful, though pardoned by God), and so it was hard to see how there could be an immaculate conception. This conception had been found in some, though by no means all, of the Fathers. Now of course we know it to be false.

Finally, it was not generally seen at this time how an Immaculate conception of Mary would not take away from the universality of redemption through Christ.

After a while, however, the theological tide began to turn, and the objections which had long obscured the content of divine revelation began to be overcome. This was due especially to the work of the Franciscan, Venerable John Duns Scotus. He showed that for God to preserve Mary from original sin was a greater redemption than to allow her to fall into it and then rescue her.

Scotus wrote (cited from J. B. Carol, Mariology I, 368): “Either God was able to do this, and did not will to do it, or He willed to preserve her, and was unable to do so. If able to and yet unwilling to perform this for her, God was miserly towards her. And if He willed to do it but was unable to accomplish it, He was weak, for no one who is able to honor his mother would fail to do so.”

We also note again that behind most of the objections was the rather positive notion of original sin. If we jump ahead several centuries to the clearer understanding of original sin we have now, we can remove this objection.

Pope John Paul II epressed this understanding in a General Audience on Oct 1, 1986: “In context it is evident that original sin in Adam’s descendants has not the character of personal guilt. It is the privation of sanctifying grace in a nature which, through the fall of the first parents, has been diverted from its supernatural end. It is a ‘sin of nature’ only analogically comparable to ‘personal sin’”. In other words: It is only the lack, or privation, of that which God wanted us to have, which we should have inherited from our first parents.”

Now back to our history