Boulder,
As some have mentioned, it is not necessary for St. Anne to have been sinless for Mary to have been born without original sin. The Holy Spirit simply performed a miracle on behalf of God and protected the embryo that was Mary from having original sin.
You may run up against the argument: Well if May was sinless, why did she need a redeemer in her son, Christ?
The teaching is that not only did Mary need Christ as her redeemer - she needed him MORE than anyone else, because Mary was PRESERVED from being stained with original sin by a “retroactive” application of Christ’s passion, rather than contracting original sin and then being immediately forgiven of it before her birth.
Duns Scotus explained as follows: When a person receives an abundance of forgiveness through the act of a mediator, that person is all the more in debt towards that mediator and owes to him any privilege that he or she acquires. Now this is the case of the Virgin Mary, who needed Christ more than all the other human beings. Mary needed Christ more than other human beings because she was being PRESERVED from original sin through the merits of the passion of Christ. Mary was, therefore, redeemed in a nobler manner. Above all, “it is more noble to forgive one’s guilt by preserving that person from it, than by permitting that same person to fall into guilt and than to remit that person’s guilt."
Here is an example: A man sins mortally only once and then God not only forgives him, but also preserves him from committing any more mortal sins. Then, we have another man who sins mortally, but does so more than once, and yet God forgives him every time he asks for forgiveness. Now who of the two receives the more perfect forgiveness? Scotus says that it is the first one, in the sense that God not only has forgiven him in a more noble way, but has also preserved him from falling into sin in the future. Thus he is more indebted to God. The same is true in the case of the Virgin Mary being preserved from all sin, and thus being in “debt” to Christ as her redeemer more than any of us.
For our human, simple minds, it appears at first as a conundrum: how can a person preserved from original sin be in debt to her redeemer more so than you or me? It is because the redemption was applied to Mary in such a way that original sin never stained her, whereas with us, although we achieve sanctification by repeatedly repenting and being forgiven if we truly repent, original sin stained us, baptism washed it away, but we needed Christ’s redemption and we need to continually repent because we continually sin.
You may get a response along the lines of, “that is a bunch of hogwash or mumbo jumbo”, but my way of shutting those types of people up is:
“God can do anything, and as such, he can apply Christ’s Passion, which had obviously not yet occurred at the time Mary was conceived, to Mary’s conception retroactively. To say this could not be done is to limit God - are you prepared to put a limitation on God?”
That usually shuts them up . . .
So, I asked, why do you think it is not necessary? So you think you are wiser and have more wisdom than God? Aren’t you then questioning God’s wisdom? Usually, when they cannot find any retort to this, their only reply is " it is not in the Bible"…So we are back to SS again.
