Dogma of faith that says that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin. Declared by Pope Pius IX in 1854, on the authority of Mat 16:19, Mat 18:18, Luke 10:16. Based on Luke 1:28, Luke 1:42. See Virgin Mary
Christian Bible Dictionary
Dr. J. Dominguez
http://bible.com/dictionary/
Source: Christian Bible Dictionary
The “full of grace”, without original sin
Mary’s holiness is related to her divine motherhood. The angel greeted her as “full of grace” (Lk 1,28). This greeting indicates that divine election has made her permanently loved by God and in relation to her mission for which she has been called. From the beginning of the Church, she has been called “all holy” (“panagia”), “immaculate”, in the sense of not having contracted or committed any sin and also for having always lived with “perfect availability regarding the action of the Holy Spirit” (RMa 13).
The title of “Immaculate”, since the beginning of the second millennium, has materialized in the reality of having been conceived without original sin. From the first moment, she had sanctifying grace. It is, then, the “Immaculate Conception”, without original sin and without its sinful consequences. This truth was defined as a dogma by Pius IX in 1854 (Enc. “Ineffabilis Deus”).
Redemption applies to Mary in a special way, since she was “redeemed in an eminent way, in anticipation of the merits of her Son” (LG 53). Thus, she was “enriched from the first instant of her conception with the splendor of an entirely unique holiness” (LG 56).
In the way of faith
The holiness of Mary, starting from the Conception, does not exclude a process or growth, since she was always responding faithfully to the new graces of God. Her faithful and generous growth was a path of faith, which is always one of darkness until reaching the vision in the afterlife “In the same way the Blessed Virgin advanced in the pilgrimage of faith and faithfully maintained the union with her Son until the Cross” (LG 58; cf.r RMa 2, 5-6).
Mary’s faith took place in the circumstances of ordinary life and in following and associating with Christ, “sign of contradiction” (Lk 2,34). Her faith was “a particular fatigue of the heart, linked to a kind of “night of faith”, like a “veil” through which one must approach the Invisible and live in intimacy with the mystery” (RMa 17; cites Saint John of the Cross). The whole of humanity, and in a special way the Church, “discovers in the “All Beautiful” the goal of her own journey” (MC 28).
Evangelizing ecclesial commitment
Mary is a model and maternal help on the path of faith and holiness, especially in fidelity to grace, to the Word of God, to his salvific plans, to the action of the Holy Spirit (virtues and gifts). By announcing Mary as the Immaculate Conception, it highlights the sense of responsibility for one’s own positive and negative actions with respect to the entire human family and to history, the confidence in the redemption of Christ who has wanted Mary as his most exalted fruit, the sense of the intercession of Mary “to obtain from the Spirit the ability to conceive Christ in her own soul” (MC 26), the importance of holiness to which all believers are called, to collaborate in the renewal and mission of the Church.
The celebration of the Immaculate Conception reveals, in the lives of Christians, the vocation of all humanity to return to the first face of the human being, more than restored by Christ the Redeemer, the victor over sin and death, in the fight against the spirit of evil (cf. Gen 3,15). “The woman” of the messianic hopes is Mary, who has come out of the fight unscathed, thanks to her Son. She is “the woman clothed with the sun” (Apoc 12,1), the Immaculate.
References Virgin Mary, original sin, holiness.
Document reading LG 59; CEC 490-493.
Bibliography J. CASCANTE, Holiness of the Mother of God, in Enciclopedia mariana posconciliar (Madrid, Coculsa, 1975) 363-373; Idem, The dogma of the Immaculate in the new interpretations of original sin Estudios Marianos 42 (1978) 113 146; S. De FIORES, A. SERRA, Immaculate, in New Dictionary of Mariology (Madrid, Paulinas, 1988) 910-941; J. GALOT, L’immaculée Conception, in Maria VII, 91 16; Idem, La sainteté de Marie, ibid., VI, 417-448; C. WELL, The Immaculate Conception, in Mary in the work of salvation (BAC, Madrid, 1974) chap. 8.
(ESQUERDA BIFET, Juan, Dictionary of Evangelization, BAC, Madrid, 1998)
Source: Dictionary of Evangelization
Or conception without stain of (original) sin. This expression negatively indicates Mary’s presence by singular grace in the realm of God’s holiness from the very first moment of her existence. It is about a truth of the mystery of the Mother of Jesus, which was maturing in the conscience of the Church through a slow journey of faith meditation and theological reflection, solemnly defined as a truth of faith by Pius IX with the bull Ineffabilis. God of December 8, 1854.
In the sphere of the Christian community, Protestants do not recognize this truth, as it is not explicitly attested to in Holy Scripture; Orthodox Christians, although they confess with various expressions the full and radical sanctity of Mary, do not accept the dogmatic truth of the “Immaculate Conception” because they resort to a different theological conceptualization to express the uniqueness of the situation of the Virgin and because of the fact that who do not recognize the infallible papal magisterium.
It is important to take into account the centuries-old journey that has led the Church to formulate this Marian dogma and try to capture and illustrate its true meaning in the context of the broader and more complex Christian truth, centered on Jesus Christ, son of Mary.
1. Development of the dogma in the conscience of faith of the Christian people and in theological thought. Interventions of the Magisterium.- The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary represents perhaps the most palpable case of the fundamental importance of the Church’s sense of faith as a believing subject and more particularly as a people who intuitively and spontaneously lives their faith. , even “against” the difficulties that theology presents. “A clear fact follows from the history of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception:
the precedence of the popular Christian sense, intuitively in favor of the Marian privilege, over theology, for a long time wavering in favor or against it, and over the Magisterium, which did not make a definitive statement until 1854” (S. de Fiores , Immaculate, in New dictionary of mariology, San Pablo, Madrid 1988, 912).
What do the biblical sources tell us about this truth? In the Old Testament there is an allusion to the woman who will crush the head of the tempting serpent (cf. Gn 3,15): in the Gospels Mary is spoken of, “full of grace” (cf. Lk 1,28): in In the Apocalypse we find the woman who escapes from the domain of the dragon (cf. Rev 12). In these three passages no formal indication of the fact of Mary’s Immaculate Conception can be seen, but only some obscure hints of it. However, the Christian people with their sense of faith, basing themselves precisely on these biblical passages and on other less relevant ones, considered and invoked Mary, the totally holy and sinless one, from the first centuries.
In the East, from the seventh century, especially with Saint Andrew of Crete, Saint Germain of Constantinople and Saint John Damascene, they began to speak of the original sanctity of Mary and to celebrate the feast of her Conception. This festival passed to the West in the 9th century and spread from the 11th century everywhere, despite the opposition of great saints and theologians. This opposition was motivated by the fact that Western theology, starting with Saint Augustine, considered Mary on the one hand as full of grace, but, in order to react against Pelagian thought that denied original sin and the universal need for redemption in Christ: affirmed on the other hand that Mary, as a member of sinful humanity, had previously contracted original sin, like all human beings, children of Adam, being subsequently redeemed by her son Jesus Christ. The greatest medieval doctors also moved along this line: Saint Bernard, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure.
In any case, also in the theological field, since the eleventh century (especially Eadmer) some reflections had begun that tried to base the theological legitimacy of popular piety. A decisive contribution in this sense was that of the Franciscan theologian J D. Scotus (t 1308), who first proposed as “probable” and then as “possible” the thesis that the redeeming action of Christ with his mother should not be considered as liberating but as a preservative of original sin. With this proposal, the great theologian maintained the universality of sin and the universal redemptive function of Christ, but pointed out a redemptive influence of Christ on his mother that was more radical, more perfect than the one he exerted on other human beings (cf. 0rd. 3 , d.3, q.1). Scotus’s proposal, assumed and defended in the theological field by the Franciscans, gradually gained, albeit with some effort, the consensus of the majority of the theological world and gave a solid doctrinal foundation to the people’s intuition of faith and liturgical praxis. that had been stated long ago.
The Magisterium of the Church began to intervene in this matter. The Council of Constance in 1438 (which was then still a schismatic) declared this doctrine to be “according to the faith.”
Sixtus 1V officially approved the feast and a mass that contained the affirmation of the Marian truth (privilege): the Council of Trent, when dealing with original sin, affirmed that it did not intend to understand in its decree the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary (DS 1516 ): Clement XI in 1708 extended the feast to the universal Church: Pius IX proclaimed as a truth of faith “the doctrine that holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved immune from any stain of original guilt in the first instant of her singular conception. grace and privilege of Almighty God, in attention to the merits of Christ Jesus, Savior of the human race” (DS 2803). Since then, the Supreme Pontiffs, especially Pius XII with the Encyclical Fulgens Corona of 1953, have intervened several times to confirm, specify and deepen the meaning of this Marian truth, also proclaimed by Vatican II (cf. LG 56; 59).
2. Foundation and theological meaning of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.- The foundation of this Marian truth/privilege is the divine motherhood of Mary. The fullness of grace with which God adorned her from the first moment of her existence finds its fundamental reason in the fact that she was destined to become the mother of the Son of God, the redeemer of mankind from sin.
To this reason must also be added that of the active cooperation of the mother…