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The Immaculate Conception,
by Kieran A. Kennedy

This paper is addressed in particular to Christian friends who are not Roman
Catholics. I do not seek to persuade them to believe in the Immaculate Conception.
Rather I have the more modest aim of trying to convince them that such a belief, when
properly understood, is a tenable one. That would be a major step towards common
understanding, because I fear that many Protestants regard the doctrine of the IC as
heretical, though they may often be too polite to say so!

Among the objections likely to be in the minds of Protestants are the following:
I. The doctrine derogates from the role of Jesus Christ as sole redeemer.
II. It elevates Mary too close to God, with the danger of putting her in the place of God
in the devotion of the faithful.
III. It purports to add to the deposit of Faith something for which there is no direct
warranty in Scripture.

No doubt there are other objections, and we will probably hear about them today. I
am only concerned here with the objections of sincere Christians, and not with the
criticisms of unbelieving sceptics. Among the latter, it is not uncommon to find that
those who scoff at the Immaculate Conception also deny the doctrine of original sin -
leading to Frank Duff’s tart comment: “It seems that everyone was conceived
immaculate, except the Virgin Mary!”

The definition of the dogma
I will start by giving the wording of the definition of the dogma by Pope Pius IX one
hundred and fifty years ago - in 1854:
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.

Now, this definition removes at least some of the Protestant objections. According to
the definition, Mary remains one of the redeemed - redeemed by Jesus Christ, who is
proclaimed as Redeemer of the whole human race, including Mary. It is true that the
doctrine asserts that she was redeemed in a very special way not granted to any
other human being, but that does not detract from the fact that her salvation was
gained solely through the cross and passion of Jesus Christ.

Indeed one might say that because her redemption was more complete and perfect
than that accorded to any other human being, she was more thoroughly redeemed
than any other creature. The Immaculate Conception, therefore, so far from
derogating from Christ’s role as sole and universal Redeemer, is actually the ultimate
manifestation of Christ’s power as Redeemer.

The perfect mediation of Christ
At this point, we might note that the great medieval Franciscan theologian, Duns
Scotus (1266-1308), who more than anyone was responsible for convincing the
theological profession in regard to the Immaculate Conception, rooted his argument
for the IC in the perfection of Christ’s mediation:
Christ had, as a possibility, the most perfect degree of mediation in regard to some
person for whom he was a mediator. He had a more excellent degree in regard to no
one than to Mary.......But this would not have been unless he had merited to preserve
her from original sin.

And Duns Scotus goes on to argue, in the paraphrase given by the late Fr Michael O’
Carroll in his encyclopoedia, Theotokos:
The Trinity will not be most perfectly appeased unless offence is entirely prevented in
one case. The original fault itself is the greatest penalty and must in some one
instance be removed to show the power of the Mediator.

Whether or not one accepts Scotus’s argument, one must agree that he attributes
Mary’s privilege solely to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Indeed in the eyes of
Duns Scotus, no other human being is under greater obligation to Christ than Mary
because of the perfection of her redemption.

The wording of the dogma makes clear that this gift owes
everything to God. Mary had no hand, act or part in it other
than as the privileged recipient. When Catholics honour the
IC, therefore, they are primarily honouring God. Of course, we
honour Mary as the recipient of such a great privilege from the
hand of God, and we would think it churlish and ungracious
to God not to honour the supreme manifestation of His
redemptive activity. But we ascribe the credit entirely to God.
Indeed how could any thinking person do otherwise? Of all the
favours conferred on Mary, this is clearly the one in which her
role was most passive: she did not even exist before the
favour was conferred on her.

The wording of the definition implies that the person of Mary, and not merely her soul,
was preserved immune from original sin. The term “all stain” covers every kind of
effect that original sin could have on the human person. This is an important point,
and one that I will return to later.

Origin of the doctrine
It is harder to meet so conclusively the objection raised as to the Scriptural basis of
the doctrine. As Fr Michael O’Carroll said in his encyclopoedia, Theotokos,
“Nowhere in the sacred books do we read, in explicit terms, that Our Lady was
conceived immaculate.” Of course the same is true of several other doctrines held by
all Christians, so the question is whether the doctrine may reasonably be implied from
texts that are not fully explicit. The specific texts usually cited are Gen 3.15 (“I will put
enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed”), Luke
1.28 (“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee”), and Luke 1.42 (“Blessed art thou
among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”). Apart from specific texts, of
course, the role of Mary as the mother of Jesus throughout the Gospels - as, for
instance, at Cana and Calvary or Mary’s Magnificat - might also be drawn on in a
general way to support the privilege. One must concede, however, that there are
difficulties in interpreting some of these texts: for example, “full of grace” is now widely
regarded as a mistranslation. In the standard edition of the The New Jerusalem
Bible, a footnote explains that the literal translation would be: “Rejoice, you who have
been and remain filled with the divine favour” - not so very different to the layman, but
no doubt sufficient to keep theologians busy for generations!

Mary as the New Eve
Because of the obvious difficulties in interpreting Scripture, the Roman Catholic
Church has always placed great emphasis on tradition as a guide to the correct
interpretation of scripture. That approach is not exclusive to Roman Catholics,
however: for example, the Oxford movement in 19th century England, which was an
Anglican movement, looked to the early Fathers of the Church, in the first four
centuries or so, for the authentic exposition of Christian doctrine. John Henry
Newman, who went on to become a Roman Catholic, claimed to draw the doctrine of
the IC from the patristic teaching on Mary as the New Eve.

The image of Christ as the new Adam is prominent in the writings of St Paul, and the
image of Mary as the new Eve became a commonplace among the Fathers, starting
as early as the 2nd century with writers such as St Justin Martyr and St Iranaeus. Just
as Christ must transcend Adam, so Mary must transcend Eve. It would be
inconceivable, therefore, that Mary should enjoy lesser privilege than Eve, who was
created sinless. Fr Michael O’Carroll said, however, that few other scholars “would
go beyond saying that there is implicit harmony between the two ideas” (ie, the New
Eve and the IC).

Theological controversy
Futhermore, historically there have been many eminent theologians who did not
subscribe to the IC. The great St Augustine (354-430) certainly exerted a negative
influence on the development of the doctrine, though he himself was somewhat
ambivalent. In debate with Pelagius, he stated “except the holy Virgin Mary, about
whom, for the honour of the Lord, I want there to be no question where sin is
mentioned”. On the other hand, he was a prisoner of the contemporaneous notion
that original sin was transmitted by conjugal intercourse. Christ was immune only
because he was conceived virginally. Since Mary was not conceived virginally, later
scholars interpreted Augustine as denying her IC.

As recently as the Middle Ages, great theologians - such as St Albert the Great, St
Bonaventure, and St Thomas Acquinas - held that Mary was sanctified in her mother’
s womb, but denied the IC. It was not a case that they did not have the greatest
veneration for Mary, but they could not see their way out of the theological impasse
(how could Mary be one of the redeemed if she were always sinless?), which was
finally broken through by Duns Scotus - as outlined above. Yet debate on the subject
among theologians continued with such intensity that in 1477, when Pope Sixtus IV
approved a Mass in honour of the IC, he forbade either side in the controversy to call
the other heretical!

The sensus fidei
The Church, of course, is not made up only of theologians, however eminent! An
indispensable basis for all sound doctrine lies also in the sensus fidei, the conviction
of the faithful. John Henry Newman put the matter as follows:
In the earliest age, it was simply the living spirit of the myriads of the faithful, none of
them known to fame, who received from the disciples of our Lord, and husbanded so
well, and circulated so widely, and transmitted so faithfully, generation after
generation, the once delivered apostolic faith; who held it with such sharpness of
outline and explicitness of detail, as enabled even the unlearned instinctively to
discriminate between truth and error, spontaneously to reject the very shadow of
heresy, be proof against the most brilliant intellects, when they would lead them out of
the narrow way.

When Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) decided to take note of the increasing demand for a
dogmatic definition of the Marian privilege during the pontificate of his immediate
predecessor, Gregory XVI, and in the early years of his own, he issued a letter in
1849 to the bishops of the world. This letter delighted Newman because it asked the
bishops to inform the Pope about the devotion of the laity as well as the clergy
regarding the IC. Newman was later to write that “the spontaneous or traditional
feeling of Christians .... had in great measure anticipated the formal ecclesiastical
decision”. It is also worth noting that of the 603 bishops consulted, 546 favoured
definition, only 4 were opposed - the remainder (53) being undecided. After much
futher consultation and discussion on the wording of the definition, the dogma was
promulgated on 8 December 1854, the feast of the IC, a feast that first came into
being toward the end of the seventh century.

Associated Marian apparitions
Two major Marian apparitions are closely related to the definition of the dogma of the
IC. The first took place about a quarter century beforehand in 1830 in a convent in the
Rue de Bac, Paris, where Our Lady gave instructions to a young nun, Catherine
Laboure, for the design of what has popularly become known as the ‘miraculous
medal’. This design includes the invocation: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for
us who have recourse to thee”. It may be noted that, in a letter to Pusey on 22 August
1867 (Pusey’s birthday), John Henry Newman mentioned that it was on that very date
in the year 1845 [7 weeks before he became a Roman Catholic] that “I saw my way
clear to put a miraculous medal round my neck”.

The other major apparition, Lourdes, took place in 1858, four years after the
definition. The young visionary, Bernadette, was instructed to ask the lady she saw to
identify herself. Bernadette reported back the lady’s reply: “I am the Immaculate
Conception”. It is difficult to believe that a young girl could invent such an
extraordinary answer. I would understand Our Lady to be saying that the IC is not a
mere concept, or just something that was done to her, but is the very essence of her
being: in other words, the Immaculate Conception is the person God has made her.

Does the Immaculate Conception matter?
Does it matter much to our Christian faith how Mary was redeemed? Obviously it
matters to Roman Catholics because it is now defined doctrine. We take the view,
rightly or wrongly, that Jesus established an infallible authority to guide us in regard to
the correct interpretation of Scripture, and that authority has pronounced definitively
on the subject. But does it matter in a deeper sense: is it in any way central to the
Christian faith? I believe it is. I have already mentioned the argument of Duns Scotus
that the IC is necessary to demonstrate the full power of Christ’s redemption.

I believe also, however, that the IC has an even more central role in the Christian
faith. To my mind, the central importance of the IC lies in safeguarding the integrity of
the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the most challenging of the Christian mysteries.
To the Jews, God was so exalted above his creatures that the notion of God
becoming man never entered their consciousness. In anticipating a Messiah, they
looked, no doubt, to a very superior form of human being, but it was never part of their
thinking that the Messiah would be God. Even for Christians, the maintenance of the
idea that Jesus Christ was both man and God has proved difficult - so much so that a
denial of either the humanity or the divinity of Jesus Christ has been at the root of
most heresies.

Sinlessness the norm of mankind originally
If Jesus Christ were to take on the fullness of humanity, then he had to become a fully
normal human being. Now the truth is that we are not normal human beings,
according to the norm of humanity that was in the mind of God when he created
Adam and Eve. As created by God, Adam and Eve before the Fall represented the
norm of humanity intended by God for all human beings. With the Fall, however, we
are all marked by original sin, which in the words of the old penny catechism
“darkened our understanding, weakened our will, and left in us a strong inclination to
evil”. We, therefore, are fallen human beings - in a sense we are sub-human - and
therefore not the normal or true human being that God intended.

We know that Jesus Christ was human, because he took his human nature from the
Virgin Mary - just as we know he was divine because he was conceived of the Holy
Spirit. If the human nature of Jesus Christ were to be complete, then it must conform
to the norm of humanity established by God. Now if Mary were a fallen human being,
how could we ever be sure that Jesus Christ was fully human in the sense I stated?
To quote Newman, “none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean”. No doubt, God
Himself could do so, as we believe he did in the case of Mary. But if God wanted us
to know with certainty that Jesus Christ was fully human, then the clearest way was
that He take His flesh from a truly human being. That, in my opinion, is why the IC is
so central to the greatest mystery of our faith, the Incarnation.

Mary’s honours a safeguard of right doctrine about Christ
In this respect, the IC does not differ from many of the other honours we attribute to
Mary - in that these honours are necessary to convince us of something fundamental
about Christ. For example, when Mary was proclaimed “Theotokos” (literally, “God-
bearer” or, more simply, “Mother of God”) at the Council of Ephesus in 431, this was
done not solely or even mainly to honour Mary, but rather to copperfasten the correct
doctrine of the Incarnation, namely that the one person of Christ was man and God -
man because he was born of a human mother, God because he was virginally
conceived by the power of the Most High. The best way to express this complex truth
accurately was found to be in proclaiming Mary as the God-bearer. I believe that, in
time, the definition of the IC will come to be seen as performing a similar function in
relation to the Incarnation.

The Catholic attitude to Mary
All of the foregoing may sound rather formal and cold - as though we were straining to
exonerate Mary, or more correctly to exonerate Catholics, from the charge of
exaggeration of Marian privileges. But it would be nearer the reality of the Catholic
position to say that we can scarcely honour too much one whom God Himself has
honoured so much. We do not look on God as bestowing His favour on her in a
niggardly way - just doing the minimum needed to fit her to be the mother of His son
(and, in any event, who could set a limit on the ‘minimum’ appropriate to that
purpose?) - nor do we see Him as doing so only for the sake of His son.

Rather we see Him acting lavishly, taking delight in conferring on her every grace and
favour within the power of an Almighty God - making her as near to Him as it is
possible for a creature to be. And we see Him as enthralled with His handiwork,
loving and admiring it, and overjoyed, like any artist, when we too recognise her
splendour and praise it. We never think of Him as frowning on us when we rejoice in
the marvels He has worked in her.

Most of all, we see God as making her an active helpmate in her Son’s redemption of
mankind - to the maximum extent within the capability of a created human being. And
we look on this as a supreme example of the divine condescension - in treating us as
responsible persons and not mere pawns to be moved about only at His will. For, to
us, Mary is a figure of all that God would like us to be, and what He would like to do
for us. Every grace and blessing she received, we too can receive, though in a
different manner and lesser degree - because of her unique office. We too are
redeemed from original sin, though in Baptism rather than at conception. We too are
called on to nurture Christ within us and to manifest Him to the world. Indeed, we
experience through the profligacy of God one benefit that she necessarily could not
enjoy - namely, that having created her to be the mother of His divine son, He has
appointed her to be our mother also.

The Catholic attitude to Mary then is one of exuberant joy. Our fear is not that we may
place her too high, but that we may fail to see and acknowledge the place God has
given her. He made her an integral part of His plan of salvation, condescending to
rely on her freely-given consent. She not only gave birth to His Son, but nurtured him
and moulded him. In the plan of God, therefore, it seems to us that in seeking to
follow Christ, we do well imitate Him in His dependence on Mary.

Mary, the Church and the Mystical Body of Christ
In conclusion, perhaps I should make clear that Catholic devotion to Mary lays more
emphasis on her functions than on her privileges. As we see matters, it is the
ongoing role that God has assigned to her in the economy of salvation that makes
recourse to her a necessity, not an optional extra. And I believe it is very difficult to
grasp that role adequately without reference to the doctrine of the Church as the
Mystical Body of Christ, or if you prefer the more direct language of St Paul: the
Church is the Body of Christ.

We understand St Paul to be proclaiming that the Church is not a mere institution:
rather it is Christ Himself, continuing to live in the world and trying to operate through
each one of us [one cannot love an institution in the way that one loves a person].
Through that Body, Our Lord seeks to apply His redemption to the whole world. For
that purpose, He lives that ongoing life of His in each one of us, and extends His
mission into other lives - to the extent that we will allow, and assist, Him.

Mary remains the mother of Christ and the special custodian of the Holy Spirit. She
continues to exercise all the same functions in relation to that ‘corporate’ Christ which
she performed towards Christ during His earlier life on earth. Her Fiat remains just
as necessary to conceive and nurture Him in each one of us. Since she is always the
carrier of Our Lord, only through her can we give Him to other people.

The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ is too large a subject to discuss
adequately at the end of a short paper. I bring it up to set my own subject - the
Immaculate Conception - in context: that is to say, for Catholics Mary’s role is of
greater consequence than her privileges, and her continuing role can only be
appreciated fully through the idea of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Used with permission, courtesy Kieran A. Kennedy

About the author:

Kieran A. Kennedy is an author and an active Legionaire, serving as president of Most Holy
Name of Mary Praesidium at Holy Name Church, and a member of Queen of Peace Parish in
Dublin, Ireland. A member of the Legion of Mary since before his college days, he was a
member of the praesidium at Oxford while he earned his masters in economics, later serving
as president. Frank Duff called upon him to correspond about the Legion in college, and he
still treasures the letters from their friendly discourse. He continued to attend praesidium
meetings while earning his PhD in economics at Harvard. Through a shared relationship with
Frank Duff, he met his wife, Dr. Finola Flanagan. After taking a break to raise a family of six
children, he has participated in the Legion of Mary regularly while maintaining a professional
career in the Ireland Department of Finance, a professorship at the Economic and Social
Research Institute, and as an author. Upon his retirement a few years ago, he has continued
his work with the Legion of Mary as president of his praesidium and participated in 13 annual
PPC's in England and Scottland thus far, twice serving as team leader. He also continues to
assist with the cause of Frank Duff. Kieran has great devotion to our mother, Mary, and
continues to call upon her in all that he accomplishes.