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I guess it is because my family is protestant, but it has happened to me not infrequently that, in conversation about things Catholic, someone will tell me: “All the rest is fine [whatever we happen to be talking about], but you’ll never get me to believe that Mary is the Immaculate Conception.” I’ve formed a practice, in response to such occasions, of praying a novena, beginning that day, to the Immaculate Conception, asking for that person’s conversion in honor of she who is tota pulchra. I like to think that Our Lady harbors a special, particular affection and concern for those who have shown themselves most defiant in the face of the privileges which God has bestowed upon her.
I should also say that I’m surprised by the often vehement of the protest of these people, as though everything else might be pleasing to them in Catholic doctrine, and yet these privileges of Our Lady alone should turn them away. But why? I think the protestant creature recognizes, perhaps at some subconscious level, that Our Lady is indeed she who destroyest all heresies. Once she has found a way to their hearts, they will have been conquered.
So on this commemoration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I wanted to post the prayer, from the Raccolta, which I have been using in my latest novena; I think that it is also quite a fine prayer to use in light of our latest cause for sorrow over the Anglicans.
O Virgin immaculate, thou who by a singular privilege of grace wast preserved from original sin, look in pity upon our separated brethren, who are nevertheless thy children, and call them back to the center of unity. Not a few of them, although separated from the Church, have kept a certain veneration for thee; and do thou, generous as thou art, reward them for it, by obtaining for them the grace of conversion.
Thou wast conqueror of the infernal serpent from the first instant of thy existence; renew even now, for it is now more necessary than ever before, thine ancient triumphs; glorify thy divine Son, bring back to him the sheep that have strayed from the one fold and place them once more under the guidance of the universal Shepherd who holds the place of thy Son on earth; let it be thy glory, O Virgin who destroyest all heresies, to restore unity and peace once more to all the Christian people.
Of your charity, you might say it once with me for my family - or more especially for the conversion of the Anglicans at this delicate time when they await word from Rome.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
So, these anti-Immaculatites, they will accept the Assumption of Our Lady but not her sinless conception? The two seem to go hand-in-hand to me. If she was conceived in sin, surely she would taste death (and vice versa, mutatis mutandis)? Although I suppose, to a Protestant, there is only one Immaculate Conception, whereas there have been several Assumptions (Enoch and Elijah, possibly), so it is harder to believe without some scriptural precedent.
The doctrine seems quite easy to prove via syllogism:
1) Sin is transmitted biologically through the parents
2) Jesus was without sin
3) Therefore Jesus’ parents were without sin
Now, Protestants respond to this in several ways. First, it is posited that sin is transmitted only through the father. This mostly comes from the Old Testament which promises that the sins of the father will be visited on subsequent generations. Some Fathers believed this, as well, but they understood that the female contributed nothing to the production of new life, which is incorrect.
Or, it is claimed that Mary was not a true mother to Jesus. She was a mere surrogate mother who had a fertilized egg implanted in her. I label this objection “offensive to pious ears”.
I’m quite a bit off topic, so I’ll end with:
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria!
Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei genetrix!
Or, Clavem Abyssi, there is a third option: deny the first premise entirely. The whole idea of biological transmission of original sin is pretty weird-sounding to begin with, if you don’t have authoritative teachings to oblige you to take it seriously.
Then you might make another point: if it’s really impossible to be without sin unless your parents were, then the problem would go back to infinite regress. But Catholics claim that the Blessed Virgin was sinless while her parents were not. If you think it’s possible for her to be conceived that way, why is it not possible for her Son?
Members of my family also have trouble with this doctrine, and so, at one time, did I. What initially got me over it, really, was not so much a change in my understanding of the issue itself as a change in my understanding of authority. But remembering from those days, I think I would have cited two reasons for my skepticism.
1) There is nothing about this in Scripture. With most other doctrines, it seems one can cite at least some Scriptural passages that can plausibly be interpreted so as to lend weight to the idea. Not really true in this case. Reasoning like Clavem Abyssi’s — and I did hear that argument a few times — definitely added to my doubt. It seemed to prove, not only that the Church made the dogma up, but that she did so on the basis of some kind of slipshod reasoning.
As I say, it was just a changed understanding of authority that got me over this. I came to realize that the skepticism should really be turned back on itself; what concrete evidence could I summon either for or against the doctrine? It wasn’t something that could be solved from an armchair. At the same time, the Church does have the power to proclaim doctrine, not merely to distill it from Scripture. But yes, I think this is an issue that tests people’s attitudes towards authority. Since it is the most recent dogma to be proclaimed, and since it isn’t contained in Scripture, it’s a particularly obvious point of attack for people who don’t understand or don’t accept the Church’s account of herself.
2) The dogma of the Immaculate Conception seemed to move Our Lady, and through her Our Lord, a step further away from me. I didn’t have a terribly clear understanding of what it amounted to, being immaculately conceived. I mean, I knew it meant being conceived without original sin, but who really understands that? Original sin is such a mysterious concept. What the dogma signified to me was that Mary was not really a person much like us. She was a kind of ethereal super-human, the subject of some bizarre transformation that I couldn’t really even understand. And I greatly disliked that, not only because it made her seem distant but also because I understood that she was the link to Christ’s humanity. If she was a kind of exceptional super-human, not tortured by the same sin and temptation that the rest of us face, that seemed by proxy to diminish the beauty and the comfort of the Word having been made flesh.
Of course, I already believed that Christ was sinless, so you might have asked: why so much tougher to pull it back one generation? I’m actually not sure what I would have said to that. But I think I can identify what actually made the difference. In the first place, it was clear to me why Christ had to be sinless; it wasn’t clear why Our Lady had to be. It was obvious in any case that Our Lord had to have some element of the superhuman, since after all He was God! I understood that that was part of the mystery of how God could be come man. But two things made it possible, to some degree, to overcome that strangeness and love Christ with a human love (and not only with the sort of half-fearful awe due to Almighty God.) One was the abundance of Biblical stories concerning His life on earth. That helps us to know Him, at least a little. The other was the amazing knowledge that He had been born of an ordinary human mother. Keeping all this in mind, you can see how the dogma of the Immaculate Conception would have displeased me.
I know it’s often difficult for Catholics to understand why Marian spirituality should be such a common sticking-point for would-be converts, when to them it seems like one of the sweetest rewards, if you will, for becoming Catholic. What could be unpleasant about acknowledging that Lady who is most merciful, sweet and loving, to be our own Mother and the Mother of the Church? But before diving into rhapsodies of the sort that, to our minds, could not fail to please, we should check ourselves. Looked at in the right light, it is not so strange or unreasonable that Marian spirituality should be initially difficult. There are very few Biblical stories to help people to know the Blessed Mother. Long strings of superlatives are bewildering and off-putting to the uninitiated, and given the recipient, make them feel alienated from the very heart of their own religion. So be patient, and go gently. It isn’t the Protestants’ fault that they don’t really know Our Lady. They’ve never been properly introduced.
Just as a little fancy of mine… I’ve used this explanation a couple of times to explain why Our Lady should seem so lovable and approachable to people despite the relative scarcity of Biblical stories. My husband has taught bioethics a few times in the past, and one of the topics typically covered in the textbooks is “the role of the traditional nurse.” Apparently there are some people who think the “traditional nurse” should be replaced, I’m not sure with what exactly, but what stuck in my memory was one argument for keeping the traditional nurse. Basically, the idea is that nurses, in addition to being (hopefully) very nice, are somewhat outside the traditional power structure of the hospital. They don’t themselves have the power to make important decisions about things — who will get what surgery when, and things like that. But they do, of course, have lots of face time with patients. So they talk to patients a lot, and, as a result of their powerlessness, they can afford to be sympathetic advocates of whatever the patient wants. Doctors, because they actually have the responsibility to balance demands and to consider the patient’s long-term health, sometimes have to make harder decisions and break tough news to patients, whether “we can’t get you an organ transplant” or “your insurance doesn’t cover that procedure” or “it’s not safe to give you more morphine right now, you’ll just have to tough it out.” Those hard decisions, however, are outside the job description of the nurse. Thus, the presence of nurses keeps patients from feeling totally alienated from the hospital environment. They can feel that the nurses, at any rate, are “on their side.”
I think there’s a shadow of similarity to why Our Lady is so delightful to us. Though we know that God is our Father and shows us great love and mercy, we also know that He is just, and will deal justice to the wicked on Judgement Day. Our Lord is humble and mild, but He will also come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. So we quite properly have some fear of God together with our love. Our Lady, on the other hand, does not punish souls. It’s not her job. She loves everybody with a mother’s love, and doesn’t have to decide who goes to Heaven and who to Hell. Thus, we can look to her and implore her without any fear; she will never be anything but an advocate and an aid to us.
Anyway, this is the sort of plain, down-to-earth explanation of Marian spirituality that I’d recommend for the skeptical Protestant. St. Louis can come later.
St. Louis de Montfort wrote what may be called the best work on exactly who the Blessed Mother of God is in his book “True Devotion to Mary.”
A sample:
It was through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that he must reign in the world.
2. Because Mary remained hidden during her life she is called by the Holy Spirit and the Church “Alma Mater”, Mother hidden and unknown. So great was her humility that she desired nothing more upon earth than to remain unknown to herself and to others, and to be known only to God.
3. In answer to her prayers to remain hidden, poor and lowly, God was pleased to conceal her from nearly every other human creature in her conception, her birth, her life, her mysteries, her resurrection and assumption. Her own parents did not really know her; and the angels would often ask one another, “Who can she possibly be?”, for God had hidden her from them, or if he did reveal anything to them, it was nothing compared with what he withheld.
4. God the Father willed that she should perform no miracle during her life, at least no public one, although he had given her the power to do so. God the Son willed that she should speak very little although he had imparted his wisdom to her.
Even though Mary was his faithful spouse, God the Holy Spirit willed that his apostles and evangelists should say very little about her and then only as much as was necessary to make Jesus known.
5. Mary is the supreme masterpiece of Almighty God and he has reserved the knowledge and possession of her for himself. She is the glorious Mother of God the Son who chose to humble and conceal her during her lifetime in order to foster her humility. He called her “Woman” as if she were a stranger, although in his heart he esteemed and loved her above all men and angels. Mary is the sealed fountain and the faithful spouse of the Holy Spirit where only he may enter. She is the sanctuary and resting-place of the Blessed Trinity where God dwells in greater and more divine splendour than anywhere else in the universe, not excluding his dwelling above the cherubim and seraphim. No creature, however pure, may enter there without being specially privileged.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/montfort/truedevo.htm
I, too, am a convert. Mary was the one dogma that I had to take purely on faith when I entered the Church. What a joy and delight getting to know her has been! My firt clue was when a Byzantine priest remarked that she had to be without sin as the mere act of carrying God within her would have totally destroyed her. When you really step back and try to comprehend the raw power of God, this makes consummate sense. She had to be without sin to be able to become the Mother of God.
But, being less that God, she is wonderfully approachable to us mortals. And we may cry on her shoulder and ask stupid questions without worrying about committing the sin of tempting God.
I’m sorry, my language wasn’t precise when I said that they accept everything except for the Immaculate Conception. I was reporting the words of one of them, but this she said only speaking in broad strokes. I don’t know what she would think about the Assumption. But the point is moot, really. Unless, as Clara mentioned at the beginning of her comment, one comes to appreciate the issue of authority, one is not fully Catholic. The act of Faith is to accept everything which the Church teaches, because God has given this authority to the Church. Still and all, we do often have questions about particular points of dogma and it’s not at all a bad thing to work through them, with potential converts, when we can. So thank you for these texts and strategies!
In defense of my syllogism:
There are two ways that one can be sinless: by grace or by nature. Christ is sinless by nature; Mary, by grace. If Christ were born of a sinner, while remaining sinless, it would require a gift of grace since it would go against nature, therefore Christ would not be sinless by nature. For Christ to take on our full humanity, it means that he is not exempt from any natural laws that we are under. This problem is resolved if his mother is cleansed of sin and his father is divine - his conception would be totally natural, yet totally sinless.
Also, there are few Protestants that deny biological transmission. The Westminster Catechism, which receives the assent of Presbyterians, Methodists, most Anglicans and many Baptists, states it thus:
Q. 26. How is original sin conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity?
A. Original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation, so as all that proceed from them in that way are conceived and born in sin.
Oh, and I don’t mean to minimize the need for the authority of the Church in matters like this. Little games of logic, like my syllogism, are nothing but trifling amusements to satisfy this sinner’s curiosity. As Augustine said “I would not believe a word of the Gospel if not by the authority of the Catholic Church” and a fortiori that holds for things only hinted at in the Gospels.
Clara, I like your analogy of Our Blessed Mother to a “traditional nurse”, that isn’t concerned with payment. But be careful, because the notion of “Mary’s prayers stay the wrathful hand of her Son” is precisely what they don’t like about Marian devotion. It also misrepresents much Catholic spirituality. They also dislike the idea that Mary can convince God to work certain miracles that He would not otherwise do; that God refuses Mary nothing, whereas He might refuse us if we asked him directly.
Another argument I’ve always liked, and I think this is from St.Louis as well, is this: it is a fine thing to swear loyalty to the King - but how much more noble, humble, self-abasing, etc… to swear loyalty not only to the King, but to his servants and family as well? This may seem like a ridiculous act of chivalry, Quixotic even. But, I think, chivalry is at the heart of Marian devotion, especially for men, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that the decline in gentlemanliness in society coincided with a declining devotion to the all-holy and ever-virgin mother of God. (that would also explain my inability to stop using superlatives… :) )
To me the funny thing is that the major reformers were fine with all this Mary stuff. Luther, for example, defended both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption.