In article <May.6.00.35.55.1993.15474@geneva.rutgers.edu> Joe Moore writes, speaking of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin:  >It was a gift from God.  I think basically the reasoning was that the >tradition in the Church held that Mary was also without sin as was Jesus.  Yes.  For examples of this in the writings of the early fathers, consider:      You alone and your Mother         are more beautiful than any others;     For there is no blemish in you,         nor any stains upon your Mother.     Who of my children         can compare in beauty to these?                 -- St. Ephrem the Syrian, Nisibene Hymns, 27:8, around                    A.D. 370      Lift me up not from Sara but from Mary, a Virgin not only undefiled      but a Virgin whom grace has made inviolate, free of every stain of sin.                 -- St. Ambrose, "Commentary on Psalm 118", 22:30, ca. A.D. 388  There are many others.  >As the tenets of faith developed, particularly with Augustine, sin was >more and more equated with sex, and thus Mary was assumed to be a virgin >for life (since she never sinned, and since she was the spouse of God, etc.)  No.  We have, for instance:      Was there ever anyone of any breeding who dared to speak the name of     Holy Mary, and being questioned, did not immediately add, "the Virgin"?     ... And to Holy Mary, Virgin is invariably added, for that Holy Woman     remains undefiled.                 -- St. Epiphanus of Salamis, "Panacea against all heresies",                    between A.D. 374-377.      We surely cannot deny that you were right in correcting the doctrine     about children of Mary ... For the Lord Jesus would not have chosen     to be born of a virgin if He had judged that she would be so incontinent     as to taint the birthplace of the Body of the Lord, home of the Eternal     King, with the seed of human intercourse.  Anyone who proposes this is     merely proposing ... that Christ could not be born of a virgin.                 -- Pope St. Siricius, Letter to Anysius, Bishop of                     Thessalonica, A.D. 392  Note that St. Augustine's conversion to Christianity was in A.D. 387.  I don't know offhand when his election as bishop of Hippo was, but I'm quite sure it was after 392.  The belief in Mary's perpetual virginity originated long before Augustine's time.  We hold that it originated with the  Apostles.  Strictly speaking, however, Mary's perpetual virginity is independent of her Immaculate Conception.  Mary could have been Immaculately  Conceived and not remained a virgin; she could have remained a virgin and not been Immaculately Conceived.  >Since we also had this notion of original sin, ie. that man is born with >a predisposition to sin, and since Mary did not have this predisposition >because she did not ever sin, she didn't have original sin.  When science >discovered the process of conception, the next step was to assume that >Mary was conceived without original sin, the Immaculate Conception.  No.  It has been held in the Church since ancient times that original sin was transmitted at conception, when a person's life begins. Biology had nothing to do with it.  Prayerfully reflecting on the truth of Mary's sinlessness, and the means by which God could have achieved this, the Church arrived at the truth of the Immaculate Conception.  Thus, the Immaculate Conception is not a new doctrine, but the logical result of our understanding of two old ones.  The celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception itself was given by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84) and the Feast was made a precept feast of the Church by Pope Clement XI (1700-21).  >Mary at that time appeared to a girl named Bernadette at Lourdes.  She  >refered to herself as the Immaculate Conception.  Since a nine year old  >would have no way of knowing about the doctrine, the apparition was deemed >to be true and it sealed the case for the doctrine.  No.  First of all, Lourdes is private revelation, and doctrine is not based on private revelation.  The most that private revelation can do is enhance and deepen our understanding of existing public revelation, which ended with the death of St. John the Apostle.  Second, the "case for the doctrine" was irreformably sealed in 1854  with the ex cathedra promulgation of the Bull "Ineffabilis Deus" by Pope Pius IX.  This meant that the doctrine was formally recognized as a dogma; a dogma, by definition, cannot change and is required to be believed by the faithful.  The apparition at Lourdes happened in 1858, four years later.  The most that might be claimed is that Lourdes gave the infallible proclamation of 1854 a sort of heavenly stamp of approval, but the Church has never claimed that, nor shall she.  In Christ's Peace,  Brad Kaiser (bradk@isdgsm.eurpd.csg.mot.com)