COULD Mary have sinned?

[ConservativeOne]

Remember the Litany of Our Lady - one of the last prayers:Queen, conceived without Original Sin.

God created a human being with the Divine Plan that she would give birth to His Son, Jesus. He created this soul without the stain of sin. Do you believe God would perform this Creation, so that Our Lady would then be capable of sin afterward? Think about it. She gave birth to the Son of God. No sin - NO WAY !

 

[ppasa316]

If Mary didn’t sin why did she say in Luke 1:47 “and my spirit has rejoice in God My Savior”. Sounds like she knew she was a sinner in need of a Savior.

 

[tee_eff_em]

If Mary didn’t sin why did she say in Luke 1:47 “and my spirit has rejoice in God My Savior”. Sounds like she knew she was a sinner in need of a Savior.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception does not say that Mary was not in need of salvation. It says she experienced salvation from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb.
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

tee

 

[Unitas]

Theoretically, I guess you could say that had the capacity to go against God’s will as she had free choice. But never did she do so, her will is united with God’s.

I think that that capacity is important because that is what makes her role in the plan of redemption so important, that just as we say that through one man all sinned and through one man all are saved, the same as through one woman started our fall, and one woman started our redemption. The old Adam and the old Eve used free will to disobey God to orchestrate our fall. The new Adam and the new Eve used free will to orchestrate our redemption.

Remember folks, it all came down to that one moment where she said “be it done do me as God wills”. It was a free uncoerced and untempted decision to follow God. The beauty in it is that she had free will and still chose to say “yes”.

 

[Just_Lurking]

All the theological arguments that Mary did not sin are based on her status (e.g., being the mother of Jesus, being chosen by God, etc.) rather than on the basis of someone following her around during her life and verifying that she did not in fact sin.

Thus, it would seem to be the case that Mary was incapable of sinning due to her status, and not the case that she was capable of sinning but we know she didn’t due to actual knowledge of her lifelong actions.

 

[Yours_Truly]

Theoretically, I guess you could say that had the capacity to go against God’s will as she had free choice. But never did she do so, her will is united with God’s.

I think that that capacity is important because that is what makes her role in the plan of redemption so important, that just as we say that through one man all sinned and through one man all are saved, the same as through one woman started our fall, and one woman started our redemption. The old Adam and the old Eve used free will to disobey God to orchestrate our fall. The new Adam and the new Eve used free will to orchestrate our redemption.

Remember folks, it all came down to that one moment where she said “be it done do me as God wills”. It was a free uncoerced and untempted decision to follow God. The beauty in it is that she had free will and still chose to say “yes”.

Right. Some people seem kind of offended when they hear that Mary was capable of sin, as if this was an insult to her. Actually, it is more to her praise, since she could have sinned but chose not to.

 

[LilyM]

All the theological arguments that Mary did not sin are based on her status (e.g., being the mother of Jesus, being chosen by God, etc.) rather than on the basis of someone following her around during her life and verifying that she did not in fact sin.

Thus, it would seem to be the case that Mary was incapable of sinning due to her status, and not the case that she was capable of sinning but we know she didn’t due to actual knowledge of her lifelong actions.

And how do we know that Jesus didn’t sin? No-one followed HIM around recording His whole life - there’s 18 years there that are totally unrecorded. But we can, knowing who He is (the God-Man), logically deduce from that that He didn’t sin. So we base that assumption on His status too.

So yes, we can quite properly deduce both that Mary was CAPABLE of sinning due to her status (human and not divine), and that she DIDN’T sin, also because of her status (Mother of the sinless God-Man).

But more than that - we know of Jesus’ sinless by direct divine revelation to Paul, who passed on the teaching by writing of Jesus’ sinlessness in his epistle. We know of Mary’s sinlessness by direct divine revelation to the Apostles, who passed the teaching on to their successors, and us, orally down through the generations, until it was finally and formally expressed dogmatically in the 1840s.

 

[Just_Lurking]

We know of Mary’s sinlessness by direct divine revelation to the Apostles, who passed the teaching on to their successors, and us, orally down through the generations, until it was finally and formally expressed dogmatically in the 1840s.

This is where your argument breaks down. Your notion of sacred tradition as the oral transmission of the precise teaching that is later defined was common among Catholic theologians prior to Vatican II, but is no longer in vogue today. Vatican II said in DV 8:

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develop in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth.

It is no longer required that Catholics today believe that the Apostles knew that Mary was sinless, and my understanding is that most Catholic theologians today hold that the knowledge of Mary’s sinless nature came over time from the collective Church pondering and contemplating the incompatibility of sin as regards Mary’s status as the mother of God.

 

[Jimzz12]

Wierd question. But has lots of importance!

No.

Jesus has borrowed the flesh of his mother. Her flesh is pure as was the flesh of Christ. When Jesus died and rose again he still has his flesh, which is the still the flesh of his mother since Mary never died but was assumed into Heaven. Instead Mary is the Perfect Yes.

It therefore go like this – Jesus and Mary both have free-will but can never sin since they share flesh. There is no sin between the Mother and the Son.

We regular men are subject to the corruption of sin. As long as we are alive and our mothers are alive, we borrow their flesh. But, something seperates us still and that is sin in the world. Our bodies are temporary.

I suggest reading “MARY: God’s Yes to Man” by Pope John Paul II, “Daughter Zion” by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, and “Mary of Nazareth” by Federico Suarez. Also, “Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary” by St. Alphonsus Ligouri.

They’re all on Amazon. Here’s the ISBN’s.
978-0898702194
978-0898700268
978-1889334882
978-0895556677

Be patient with me I am not a skilled apologist. Just trying to work out of my gut.

 

[Jimzz12]

I think we struggle with this idea because we see sin as so prevalent, temptation as unavoidable. Original Sin is the tug to do things that contradict our conscience, which knows what is right and what is not. I think the best way to understand the ideas of original sin is by looking at the Son, who reveals the Father, in order to try to understand what the Father wants us to know about this.

Many people today consider that in claiming Jesus was sinless, we are in some way depriving Him of a quintessentially human characteristic, however, this error results from an incorrect understanding of what sin and indeed freedom actually are.

The account of the fall in Genesis explains how man and woman chose to realise their human existence in conscious independence from and, in opposition to God. The constant accumulation of personal sins from then on has created a universal sinful environment. Something I think we are all able to observe and attest to.

When I sin, I consciously and freely oppose my better judgement. I attempt to rationalise my decision and set up my rationalising judgement against my will to do what is right. Think about it, you can spot yourself doing it. You know that you shouldn’t but you figure out a way to rationalise it. You still feel guilty afterwards, but the rationalisation gives you the excuse to do it in the first place. The implication of this action on our part constitutes a conflict with God because we are aware (but deny) the absolute obligation to do right, which in itself, comprises an encounter with the true, Absolute God Himself.

And yet, despite this, we knowingly, willingly turn away from that obligation and serve our own, selfish, often destructive purposes…eating that one bit of cake too many that will ultimately only serve to make us feel sick.

Jesus’ sinlessness arises from a proper understanding of the nature of His mission. Msgr Romano Guardini, goes as far as to suggest that:

“In the measure we comprehend sin, we comprehend Christ; and we comprehend our own sin only in the measure that we experience what he experienced when he sweated blood in the night”.

Here Msgr Guardini is saying that we can only truly understand sin when we consider it in the light of the Passion of our Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ. It is powerful to reflect on that. In Gethsemane, Jesus sweats blood. It’s like His body is already breaking down and little wonder if you really stop to think about it—He is under the weight of the sin of all the world.

So, Our Lady was free from the pull of that concupiscence and so was much more aware of the will of the Father and therefore able to align her will with His. His will for us is all that is good and best and right for our human dignity so not sinning is not missing out on something very human, but it is being more human, fully human, properly human the way that God wants us to be.

That’s a very good point.

I was reading some Thomas Merton yesterday in between doing my lumber jacking. And, he was saying that we tend to project our self-hate unto others because sin and self-hate are so prevelant. We end up assuming that it is inevitable, and thus surrender our own lntellect and will to fight sin. It’s therefore, no suprise that we struggle with Jesus and Mary having no capacity for sin and being fully man and a pure woman. We end up saying she could have just to diminish her and make ourselves feel better. That is self-hatred. Even entertaining the thought is self-hatred – suicidal spiritually in a manner of speaking. It’s good to get these questions out there and formulate our minds. The more truth we learn, the more we develop the capacity for understanding some aspect of God (even if we cannot ever comprehend His infinite majesty).

This makes me think of the old tripe. “Give the kids condoms because they’re going to do it anyway.” Parents say this because they have a disordered desire to make themselves feel better by ensuring their offspring lose their purity. And, we know what feelings do. They pave the road to hell.

 

[Yours_Truly]

If Mary didn’t sin why did she say in Luke 1:47 “and my spirit has rejoice in God My Savior”. Sounds like she knew she was a sinner in need of a Savior.

Mary was saved in the sense of being preserved from sin. Instead of saving Mary by forgivng her of sins she had committed, Jesus saved her by preserving her from sin through the forseen merits of His Passion and death.

An example would be if a person was about to drive over a very high bridge that was falling apart. If someone ran up to them at the last minute and stopped them, the driver could respond by saying “you just saved my life”. It is similar with the Blessed Mother. She was saved by being preserved from sin; and since this privilege was due to the forseen merits of Jesus, he is said to be, and actually is, her Savior.