The world was shocked when Pope Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. While Protestants rejected the teaching outright, even many Catholics objected to the pope’s decision. Exalting the role of Mary in salvation history not only seemed bad for ecumenical relations, some were concerned that the teaching also lacked theological and historical grounds.
After all, theological heavyweights such as Saints Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas had apparently opposed the idea. The fact that this dogma was not defined for many centuries was one of the strongest arguments that it should be questioned. If this teaching was true, why was it not proclaimed until the nineteenth century?
However, the Church has been trying to understand Mary’s role since the very beginning. The difficulty has always been how to develop theologically precise statements about Mary that faithfully correspond to our understanding of her Son. Or to put it in another way, explanations of the Blessed Mother should always lead us to a better understanding of Jesus, and vice versa. For example, one of the early heresies that the Church faced, Nestorianism, revolved around the question of whether Mary could be called the Mother of God or only the Mother of Jesus. The argument was resolved by recognizing that Jesus Christ possesses both a divine and a human nature, yet is one person, not two. It is therefore fitting to call Mary the mother of that one Person, the Mother of God (see CCC, 495).
The Church answered Nestorius’ arguments about that Marian title back in the fifth century, spurred on by ordinary Catholics who had been addressing Mary as the Mother of God for centuries and were shocked that anyone would question it. Similarly, it was monasteries and bishops, encouraged by the devotion of the laity, who began the practice of celebrating a feast in honor of the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Saint Anne, probably as early as the seventh century.
When Saint Bernard of Clairvaux questioned this widespread practice in the twelfth century, he was merely asking his fellow Catholics to explain precisely what they believed when they celebrated that feast. Saint Thomas Aquinas examined both sides of the argument and appears to have rejected the idea that she was immaculately conceived. However, some say that the arguments that Thomas raised made it possible for subsequent theologians to work out what we can know about Mary’s conception and how to articulate it.
That, after all, was the holdup for eighteen centuries. What is the truth about Mary with respect to sin, even before she gave birth to Jesus Christ, and how can we express it truthfully?
In Pius IX’s apostolic constitution regarding this dogma, Ineffabilis Deus, the pope did what popes often do when they want to prove a point. He cited Sacred Scripture, Church documents, and other popes’ apostolic constitutions. But he also incorporated explanations that saints had developed over the centuries.
For example, while not all early Church fathers recognized Mary’s perpetual innocence, many did. Fathers of the Church such as Saints Irenaeus of Lyons (see no. 4 here), Justin the Martyr, and Cyril of Jerusalem, among others, described Mary as a second Eve. In Ineffabilis Deus, Pius IX echoed their statements, describing Mary as the new Eve, immaculate and incorrupt, unlike the first Eve.
Doctors of the Church had also written about Mary’s purity. When Saint Augustine of Hippo was arguing with the theologian Pelagius about the Catholic understanding of nature and grace, Augustine mentioned that Mary knew no sin (see ch. 42 here). Saint John of Damascus wrote beautifully and often about Mary, and he believed that she remained free from sin from the beginning of her life.
But it was Blessed John Duns Scotus who laid the foundation for this teaching in the fourteenth century. Scotus was a Franciscan priest, theologian, and philosopher, and an entire philosophical and theological school of thought, called Scotism, was later named after him. Like other Franciscans at the time, he strongly and publicly defended the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
In a famous disputation in Paris, Scotus was called upon to explain his position in front of papal legates. An obvious argument against his proposal was the fact that Jesus Himself had not yet been born when Mary was conceived. Didn’t the idea that Mary was sinless before Her Son was even conceived imply that she did not need a Redeemer?
One of Scotus’ points was that Mary’s sanctification after animation (when her body received her soul at conception) followed the order of nature, not the order of time. Jesus was, is, and ever will be our perfect Redeemer, and He is not limited by time. The Blood that flowed on Calvary redeemed all of us ever since the Crucifixion, but the graces from that same sacrifice flowed backward in time to bless Mary from the moment of her conception.
It would take another article (or a chapter in a book) to adequately explain Scotus’ reasoning, but his explanation overcame a major theological obstacle. Over the centuries, the idea of formally declaring the Immaculate Conception to be a teaching of the Catholic faith was proposed and discussed many times, but it never seemed to be the right moment.
However, on December 8, 1854, Blessed Pius IX, after consulting with the bishops and theologians of the world, proclaimed the following:
We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.1
Perhaps the long delay in declaring this dogma about the Blessed Virgin Mary happened for a reason. Perhaps it took centuries of great saints and ordinary Catholics, all asking for the Blessed Virgin Mary’s intercession and meditating on the words of an angel, before the entire Church was finally able to acknowledge that Mary is, was, and has always been full of grace.2
Endnotes:
1 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, apostolic constitution, https://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_pi09id.htm, accessed November 27, 2023.
2 Luke 1:28.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Happy feast. Be with us O Mary along the way – Guide every step we take.
God hates sin. It would not be possible for His Son to enter the “First Tabernacle” (which Mary was) if it had been tainted by Original Sin. Same reasoning justifies Purgatory: Nothing can come into God’s presence with the taint of sin. Even Mother Theresa in commenting on “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”: posited that at the Garden of Gethsemane when Christ took on the “sins of the world”, only His Blood could erase those sins.
Jesus…Luke 24:44 (ESV)
44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
Mary…Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
NOTHING MORE is said.
Did not say the person was sinless! Also in Catholicism we all have venial sins which we can’t avoid mostly sins of omission. Mary would also have to be perfect “divine” as well as sinless.
Great article! You stopped short of adding a fact (the BVM’s apparition to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France) four years after the declaration of this dogma by Pius IX. Her apparition and revealing her identity as the Immaculate Conception was later interpreted as though Mary came from heaven to affirm and approve the dogma has heaven’s nod. I think Lourdes the best evidence for the accuracy of the dogma that Mary is indeed Immaculate from all eternity. Ave Maria!
The Spotless Lamb could not possibly be born of a once spotted/repaired tabernacle. It too had to be without blemish. Such a simple concept actually.
Never heard this, not even in Church history classes, interesting and suppose it was a tough decision to make considering there was never definitive answers back in early centuries.
We read: “When Saint Bernard of Clairvaux questioned this widespread practice in the twelfth century, he was merely asking his fellow Catholics to explain precisely [!] what they believed when they celebrated that feast.”
PRECISION? The mixed benefit and trap of broad-brush “synodality” is the strategy of replacing necessary precision with harmonization–as between apparent opposites and even/possibly as between genuine contradictions.
Of such a pragmatic (and self-abrogating?) strategy, let’s consider assimilative and sectarian 7th-century Islam…
In mixing-zone Arabia, and under the mentioned NESTORIAN influences (a spinoff from earlier Arianism addressed clearly in the Council of Nicaea), The Qu’ran explicitly mentions Mary (“the mother of Jesus”) thirteen times, four from the early Meccan period and nine from the Medinian period (Muhammad’s final ten years following the Hejira of A.D. 622). All mentions of Jesus Christ (twenty-two times) are also very respectful, but as only a prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, not the Holy Spirit. Instead, the perception of the Christian Trinity as consisting of the Father, Jesus, AND Mary. A pagan triad like other polytheistic triads, and therefore rejected by monotheistic Islam in favor of a monolithic, inscrutable, distant, arbitrary and yet “merciful” Allah.
A dissertation by Rev. Nilo Geagea concludes a thorough analysis of Mary and the Qur’an with an overlooked VERSE (ayat) from Muhammad himself in the Qur’an: “If the Merciful had a son, I would be the first to adore him” (awwal al-abidin)” (43:81). (“Mary of the Koran,” Nilo Geagea [b. 1908], translated by Rev. Lawrence T. Fares, Philosophical Library, 1984).
WHAT, then, of our 21st-century roundtable “synodality” and its imprecise harmonizing, oriented as it is both internally to a fracturing Church (still the Mystical Body of Christ?), and externally to “everybody”? How to proclaim or at least clarify the singular Incarnation of the Triune One, again (!), and then to possibly evangelize or at least educate the maelstrom of post-modernity?
Fraternity AND doctrinal Precision? Quo vadis? Perhaps an appeal to the Immaculate Conception: “Mary the undoer of knots”…
Muslims also believe that Mary never “felt the prick of Satan” to which other humans–even Muhammed!–are subject. When the great scholar Annemarie Schimmel, a convert to Islam, mentioned the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to some young Turkish women, they were shocked to hear that other Christians denied it. The students exclaimed, “We are better Christians than those people!” I highly recommend Schimmel’s MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM for a neglected aspect of that religion.
Dawn Beutner citing Duns Scotus’ position that Mary’s conception free of sin was due to the order of nature, not time, confirms that prevenient grace in accordance with nature, meaning God’s formal, redemptive act permitting her to be conceived without sin. Aquinas would agree, not in the Immaculate Conception, which he never confirmed, rather in the order of prevenient grace given first in the order of nature [God’s formal act], although in the order of time, for example, man first makes the material decision to believe.
Although the exception I would take with Scotus is that it wasn’t necessary to argue that prevenient grace was given at ‘ensoulment’, a Gk concept related to self motivation. We simply do not know anything about placement of a soul in a being. Rather the reasoning should be that Mary was conceived without sin, meaning at the very moment of her conception. We believe life begins at conception. Not dumb life but human life. All that’s necessary is for God to redeem when and how he wills.
A remark addressing the feminine in the order of nature, is the reality of femininity as a permanent feature of the creation of Man as male and female. A woman living a holy life in this world fulfills her nature, not simply what she was taught. That feminine beauty is retained after death as evident in the strikingly beautiful femininity of Our Lady’s appearances.
“Perhaps the long delay in declaring this dogma about the Blessed Virgin Mary happened for a reason.”
Yes, perhaps indeed. Because it was shortly thereafter that Our Lady, after several days of subtle and sweet revelation to Bernadette identified herself saying, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” That moment in history in the West was just before aggressive modernizing influences would begin to produce greater catastrophic evil, including the accelerated abortion holocaust of the twentieth century. This identification is more than a revelation of Our Holy Mother’s status. It is a prophetic reminder that God’s plan for our lives, although eternal, in this world begins at our conception. A prophecy ignored by our episcopate. After all, they’ve only had 165 years to think about it.
I’ve wondered about that. Good point and rationale.
Then, the issue of being conceived immaculately was a difficult matter for theologians to contend with. Not knowing the distinction between a human life and ‘ensoulment’, this latter concept meant the placement of a soul in a living organic substance. The term as referred to in my comment is simply a presumption based on the Greek notion of self motivation, anything that moved independently of another source was thought possessing a soul, including a flower, or a butterfly. Our Church in its wisdom simply confirms human life begins at conception.
Now in reference to the presumed problem of Mary requiring redemption, the answer is no. Not in the sense of having Original Sin. Although the very act of God creating Mary from nothing, and without ever the taint of original sin, rather entirely pure, is itself a redemptive act for the benefit of all Mankind. And also, consistent with the infinite polarity of an infinitely good God from evil, and the Immaculate Dwelling within which He chose to enter our universe.
It can be said that Mary was not removed of Original Sin, rather that she was exempt from Original Sin. She was the beneficiary, inclusive of all Mankind of that redemptive act.
ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Brian, God cannot be limited by his own creation. The Apostle in Rm 3:23 is making a generalization limited to all those to whom it pertains. Your logic in consequence is that you’re requiring the Son of man incurred sin. Adam and Eve were born without sin but sinned. Nothing can prevent an omnipotent God from reestablishing a new beginning in Jesus and his mother.
Before the fall Adam and Eve were in the state of Original Righteousness. If Mary were not given the Immaculate Conception the creation of Eve would have been greater than that of Mary. During the Incarnation there was a supernatural exchange from the Holy Spirit to Mary. For the Incarnation to be an act of pure supernatural love Mary had to be able to give herself over to God freely and completely without reservation. Any sin would make the Incarnation an act of imposition and domination and not one of loving union. In the same way Christ’s Own purity made His offering on the Cross one of pure love.
This is a perfect and convincing explanation. Beautiful and succinct. Thank you.
‘ Mary was greatly troubled ..’ at the Annuciation which ironically is rather related to the Immaculate Conception as narrated in the revelations in Divine Will -( page 110 below ) how Bl.Mother was loving and adoring The Father from her ‘mustard seed’ stage, also shedding tears seeing the evils of each of us and of all humanity , pleading for The Word to descend, yet not expecting her to be The Mother – the words ‘I do not know man ‘ – not ‘knowing ‘ the fallen man , never having used her human will to rebel against the Divine Will, which has been the state of man since The Fall – even in ordinary conception with its carnal traits –
https://danieloconnor.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/the-blessed-virgin-mary-in-the-kingdom-of-the-divine-will.pdf .
Thus, words of David in Psalm 51 -chosen in the Noon Hour of Grace devotion related to the I.C . Feast – couples and all having regular ‘noon hour of grace’ devotion few times a month might help families !
The trials to bring forth the line of parents of Bl.Mother who concieves her in the PreFall mode,graces of same to help us in chastity to invoke same into our families and generations – to be set free from the evils of our times , to trust more that holiness is not only possible, that without same , search for joy and trust also becomes much harder .
‘ Holy Mary , Mother of God, pray for us sinners ‘ – to help undo distortions of the role and honor given to her .. so that she can help to make up for the gratitude and glory we owe The Father , to open hearts and lives more to The Truth that we are blessed to recieve in timely manner in and through Mother Church too, as is well narrated in the article .Glory be !
I tell my protestant friends that quite possibly the E1B1b yap+ genetic mutation and its maternal companion genes may not only carry the genius gene but also a vehicle for a unique-event self-reproduction. That would mean that not only is Jesus uniquely the only human born without human male gene contribution but that Mary’s biology is also unique in human history able to produce a child without human male gene contribution.
This is the materialist view, not the Catholic one.
Aquinas states that Mary was made immaculate “in the womb.” http://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/saint-thomas-aquinas-on-the-hail-mary-5884
Did the science of the 13th C. know precisely when conception occurred? Is that perhaps why Aquinas believed that ensoulment occurred some 40 days after conception, when the woman would have known with a fair degree of certainty that she was pregnant?
The other great saint utterly devoted to Mary and her immaculate state was St. Louis Marie de Montfort (1673-1716). His Marian spirituality is summed: “To Jesus Through Mary.” Author of classic texts on consecration to Mary, true devotion to Mary, love of eternal wisdom, and the secret of the Holy Rosary, de Montfort did not develop any theology of Mary’s immaculate conception. Nevertheless, he was convinced and wrote: “She is born immaculate/Never has sin/Tarnished her beauty” (Hymns); “Eternal Wisdom built himself a house worthy to be his dwelling-place. He created the most holy Virgin, forming her in the womb of St. Anne,….The torrential outpouring of God’s infinite goodness, which had been readily stemmed by the sins of men since the beginning of the world, was now released precipitately and in full flood into the heart of Mary. Eternal Wisdom gave her all the graces which Adam and all his descendants would have received so liberally from him had they remained in their original state of justice.” (Love of Eternal Wisdom)
Mary Immaculate, Pray for us who have recourse to Thee, the Patroness of the United States.
Cardinal John Henry Newman penned “A Memorandum on the Immaculate Conception” to a friend in the Oxford Movement, Mr. Robert Wilberforce, who became a convert in 1854. Here’s a short extract from near the end:
“Many, many doctrines are far harder than the Immaculate Conception. The doctrine of Original Sin is indefinitely harder. Mary just has NOT [italics] this difficulty. It is NO difficulty to believe that a soul is united to the flesh WITHOUT original sin; the great mystery is that any, that millions on millions, are born with it. Our teaching about Mary has just one difficulty less than our teaching about the state of mankind generally” (Philip Boyce, editor, “Mary: The Virgin Mary in the Life and Writings of John Henry Newman,” William B. Eerdmans, 2001).
Thank you Dawn Beutner. Please keep writing about the Saints, especially faithful Franciscans like Blessed Scotus, the Subtle Doctor.
46And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord.
47And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
Mary proclaims her need for a Saviour.
Mary proclaimed her joy in God her Savior. She does not proclaim a need for him inasmuch as she has already experienced Him. The angel proclaims her ‘full of grace’ prior to her Magnificat. Also, a soul with sin does not magnify the Lord but makes Him less visible.
The merit of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection was applied by God at the moment of her conception. Being omnipotent and eternal, God may do as we may not fully reason or accept. But surely we accept that God has power to make of Mary a unique and sole exception to the mass of all other humans who suffer original sin. Surely we could not have had the grace to suffer the death of a Christ child as Mary was required to do. We can not conceive of her sorrow nor her joy, bearable only because of her graced, pure, and immaculate nature and a will in perfect alignment with everything God asked of her.
C-Marie, it is right to say Mary acknowledges her need of God as Saviour. He is that even for Mary, in the meanings in which it applies to her. It is only natural and fitting for her to recognize it and attest to it. She was made to receive Him, the Saviour of sinners; she wasn’t made merely to be sinless. She depends on Him for her continued being, protection and gifts of grace and very His Presence. She also depends on Him for each advance -that imparts its mystery of perpetuity to her. She shows she is a work of His mercy but also that the mercy shown her has its own consequences.
So she is the walled garden in the Song of Songs (4), the park and the fountain; and in her Magnificat she names Who it is by “the might of His arm” that made her obedience perfect like in Sirach (24:19-21) – her Saviour Who has done for her the most unique astonishing things as He had forever vowed to do on His sacred Name.