Lily,
To the best of my knowledge none of the reformers believed that Mary was sinless. I’ve heard that Calvin and Luther accepted Mary’s perpetual verginity…which makes sense to me as well. Can you post a link that would illustrate that Marty, Calvin, etc believed in the Immaculate Conception?
At the time of the reformation, the question of Mary’s Immaculate Conception as dogma had not been settled. It wouldn’t have been something the reformers would have had much comment on for that reason and because their teachings didn’t have to deal with it in order for them to diverge from the Church on other matters.
But to me it seems like an awful long stretch to believe that Mary was sinless based on scripture. I realize that you guys aren’t sola scriptura fans but this is one of several Catholic beliefs I just don’t get. No disrespect intended, but this belief stumps me.
As Catholics we see the Bible differently from Protestants. To us it isn’t a proof text, as it is for many, especially Evangelicals. And we don’t see it as a complete history of either Israel or the early Church. It’s more like snapshots than a full length movie, if you see what I mean. The Bible, especially the OT, is filled with cryptic references and typology that are witnesses to the coming Messiah, his life, his sacrifice, his kingship, his priesthood, etc. And the same is true for Mary, but our Protestant brethren haven’t explored these things because the major Protestant denominations left the Church just at the time that Mary’s role was being more fully explored, not in only the Bible, but within the whole of Sacred Tradition. So, to those who haven’t had the benefit of learning the findings of that exploration, the Marian teachings can be hard to grasp–they were for me, too before I became a Catholic. I wrestled long and hard over them before I began to see what the Church was saying by what it teaches about her.
Your point with the belief just popping up at the year 400 is well taken. I hadn’t thought about the fact that something like this would have been in existence for some amount of time before actually becoming a widespread belief. However, we still (as far as I know) have quite a gap between the Apostles and the first evidence of anyone believing in the Immaculate Conception. I would think that this would have been a hotly debated topic and yet, curiously, we see no evidence of this for several centuries.
Questions of dogma sometimes take centuries for the Church to fully explore. Before teachings are formally defined theologians go back and forth over them, looking into them to see if they are compatible with Church teaching, if they tell us more about Christ than we knew, and what the implications of these theological constructs might have on the faithful. It can be a long, involved process that only engages some in the Church, but not all.
This article from the online Catholic Encyclopedia may help you in your researches–at least it will give you some solid information to go on.
