Why is Mary of immaculate conception

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pathway2
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Pathway2

Guest
immaculate conception is something that the Catholics believe and the orthodox do not. pleae explain why Catholics believe.
 
It might first help to know what the doctrine on Mary’s Immaculate Conception is:
"…that the Blessed Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.”

The reason why believe it is because it is true. Here is some in-depth explanation:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

 
God did not choose just any woman to be the Mother of His Son who, of course, could not assume a nature stained by sin. Therefore, He made Mary immaculate from the first instant of her life, the moment of her conception; and she remained always a virgin, because the Son of God could not be confused with any other, according to his human nature, which would happen if another child were born of the same Mother.

St Lucia - who saw the Virgin Mary and spoke to her.
 
BT3241 said:
God did not choose just any woman to be the Mother of His Son who, of course, could not assume a nature stained by sin. Therefore, He made Mary immaculate from the first instant of her life, the moment of her conception; and she remained always a virgin, because the Son of God could not be confused with any other, according to his human nature, which would happen if another child were born of the same Mother.

St Lucia - who saw the Virgin Mary and spoke to her.
Click to expand...
So, He probably thought of Our Blessed Mother when He said to His followers

“Only a good tree can make good fruit:”
 
the Immaculate Conception also reveals Jesus and Mary as a new creation and type of Adam and Eve.

Just as Adam was able to say of Eve
Mary was able to say of Jesus

" Flesh of my flesh bone of my bone"
 
Jeremiah 31:22 How long will you waver,O faithless daughter?(Eve )For the Lord has created a new thing on the earth: a woman (Mother Mary)encompasses a man(Jesus).
Because all have sinned

Mary Immaculate Conception is because She if full of Grace.

Lk 1:28 – hail full of grace[highly favored] Lord is with you
Lk 1:30 – you have found favor with God
Lk 1:37 – for with God nothing shall be impossible
Gn 3:15 – complete enmity between Woman & satan, sin
Ex 25:11-21 – ark made of purest gold for God’s word
*Rom 3:23 – all have sinned & are deprived of God’s glory
*Lk 1:47 – my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour
 
Last edited:
Both Catholics and Orthodox believe that Mary was without sin her entire life. The difference between Catholic and Orthodox is rooted first in different theology on original sin, called ancestral sin in the east. Catholics understand original sin to be the loss of the original, supernatural holiness and justness endowed to men by God and that there is inherited (but not personal) guilt (this does not mean that unbaptized babies are damned, but that is a separate discussion). The Orthodox, as best as I understand it, reject the idea of inherited guilt. The consequence is that the IC is unnecessary in Orthodox theology because Mary had no guilt she needed to be preserved from, and she lived the rest of her life without personal sin. In Catholic theology Mary would have the inherited, but non-personal, guilt of original sin if she had not been conceived immaculately.

The Immaculate Conception means that the dwelling place of God would be consecrated and pure in a more perfect way than even the original Ark of the Covenant and Holy of Holies were. It means that when Paul speaks of Christ consecrating the Church in Ephesians 5, we can understand this to also refer to Mary, who in both east and west is considered the archetype of the Church. It means that Mary was able to give her purest and completely unreserved assent to being the God-bearer, which would be impossible with any stain of sin (she may have been able to say yes, but not in perfect agreement). It means God so loved the woman who would be His mother that He gave her a special gift by applying the merits of Christ to her at her conception.
 
Last edited:
Wesrock said:
Catholics understand original sin to be the loss of the original, supernatural holiness and justness endowed to men by God and that there is inherited (but not personal) guilt…
Click to expand...
Are you sure of this? Guilt is, by definition, personal. I can’t be guilty of something that I didn’t personally do, and I’m not personally responsible for being created in a fallen state. It’d be better to say what the Catechism says:

404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”. By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence".
 
Last edited:
The orthodox have a different concept of original sin. That leads directly to a different understanding of Mary’s state of sinlessness.
 
Because (but not only) she is Kecharitomene → κεχαριτωμένη (Luke 1,28), whats means that she is the perfect, pure, brimful of the grace of god.
 
Because she is full of Grace LK 1:28 and conceived with out original sin.If the Heavenly Father is honoring Her, why not humans like you and me.
 
Certainly the mere fact that the Church says so is enough for me to believe it. But it also seems to me that Jesus would have kept the commandments to the most perfect degree possible, and how could the Fourth Commandment be said to have been most perfectly followed if one did not protect one’s own mother from an evil that he could easily prevent? So even without the definitive teaching of the Church, I would believe it.
 
Last edited:
All things that came to be, came to be though Christ. Therefore, Mary was first supernaturally conceived of in the divine intellect, then brought to flesh so that she could supernaturally conceive Jesus and give her flesh to Him. God cannot create sin, and sin is passed via conception, so a break in the vicious circle/cycle had to be made through divine intervention.
 
The question was ‘why do Catholics believe?’. Answered by the encyclical given. ‘Nuff said.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top