Mary’s Immaculate Conception, explained by the Saints
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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.

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.

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