When I was an undergraduate seminarian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., one of my philosophy professors entered the Church through the RCIA process. It was a rather dramatic occasion, especially for students like myself who were college-level seminarians and paying close attention to that sort of thing. In class, he explained that for a long time he had sensed there was a God, and that he was intellectually convinced that of all the options Christianity best accounted for the paradox of a loving, all-powerful God and the tragedy of human suffering. Although he was certain that the Catholic Church had the best claim to being founded by Christ, he had delayed becoming Catholic because he couldn't wrap his mind around Catholicism's peculiarities: the all-male priesthood, for example, and papal infallibility and, of course, the specific dogma, defined infallibly by Bl. Pope Pius IX on Dec. 8, 1854, of Mary's preservation from the stain of original sin from the first instant of her conception.
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This professor of mine has certainly not been alone in the history of the Church. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the founder of the Cistercians, for example, who writes mellifluously about the Blessed Virgin, nonetheless wrote a scathing letter to the priests of the Diocese of Lyon after they added the Immaculate Conception to their liturgical calendar in 1274. Even the Church's greatest theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, argued in his Summa Theologiae that Mary was sanctified "after her ensoulment," not at the first instant of her conception.
Although I am probably disagreeing with Bl. John Duns Scotus in saying so, I would argue that there is nothing of theological necessity in Mary's immaculate conception. Granted, it was compelling for Aquinas that Mary's flesh had to be sanctified, that is, be made free from sin or immaculate, if Our Savior was to take it for His own, but there is nothing of necessity in her flesh being immaculate from the first instant of her conception, especially in light of St. Paul's statement that "all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
Indeed, another professor of mine, a few years afterward when I was studying abroad at the Angelicum University, shared with my class that the Dominican friars in Rome, influenced by their reading of Aquinas, held a vigil at the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva the night of Dec. 7, 1854, praying fervently that the Holy Father come to his senses and refrain from the proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
As history would have it, their prayers went unheeded, and the next morning Bl. Pius IX spoke ex cathedra, beginning with Declaramus, pronuntiamus, and definimus, and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was thereby elevated from a pious belief to a teaching to be held "firmly and constantly" by all the faithful. "Let him know and understand," the pope said, "that he is condemned by his own judgement; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he thinks in his heart."
And the Dominican friars rose from their knees, my professor from the Angelicum related, and the bells of the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva joined the joyous peal of the bells of all the churches throughout the Eternal City.
Roma locuta, causa finita est. Rome has spoken, the case is settled.
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It's not that the dogma is irrational. Pius IX mainly speaks about the "fittingness" of the dogma in his declaration, and there certainly is a fittingness to the parallelism of the purity of Eve, who chooses what she wants for herself, and the purity of Mary, who chooses what God wants of her. But I don't think that there is a rational argument for the necessity of the dogma. Rather than solving difficulties, it creates the need to say that Mary, "by a singular grace and privilege," shared in the merits of Christ's redemptive sacrifice on the cross in advance of the actual sacrifice. Obviously God exists outside of time and can grant any singular grace and privilege that He wishes, but it certainly shakes the devotion of any philosopher worth his salt to Ockham's razor, that is, the principle that the simpler explanation is usually the better one.
That's why I see the Immaculate Conception as the Marian feast-day for thinkers and intellectuals. The more that one studies, the more that one is liable to see the horizon of what one understands as the horizon of knowledge itself. In other words, just because it's simpler from a human perspective to predicate of Mary all the foibles of fallen human nature doesn't mean that it's the case. God has a way of confounding men and their ways, and Mary's Immaculate Conception certainly has the potential to be a confounding stumbling block to anybody who puts his "trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save" (Psalm 146:3).
At least, this was the testimony that my philosophy professor back at St. Thomas gave, as he explained why he was baptized, confirmed, and received his First Holy Eucharist despite the fact that he didn't yet understand the why or wherefore of the Immaculate Conception. What had at first been a stumbling block for this highly intelligent man became instead an opportunity to make a leap of faith, that is, to give his own fiat based on an assurance of what was not yet fully visible to his limited human intellect (cf. Hebrews 11:1).
The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, in other words, is a curb on the intellectual pride of those who have studied too darned much, myself included. It is the triumph of a pleasing fittingness, a poetic parallelism, that, from the human perspective of a theology that actually fits together, that lets one dot one's i's and cross one's t's, causes more difficulties than it solves.
Speaking of fittingness, then, I suppose that it is only fitting that the most effective propagators of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception were not so much the prelates gathered in Rome in 1854 as 14-year-old St. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France,, to whom Mary appeared in 1858, telling her, "I am the Immaculate Conception" and asking her to spread devotion to this title. Indeed, I recall that Jesus praises His Heavenly Father for hiding things from the wise and learned only to reveal them to little children (cf. Matthew 11:25).
I suppose, then, that the Immaculate Conception is my favorite Marian feast-day primarily because of a philosophy professor to whom I owe a great debt. Eventually I was able to take three courses with him--intensely intellectual courses in modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in epistemology--but what I remember most of all was his personal testimony of faith, his witness as regards his own leap of faith beyond what his human intellect could perceive, his own conquering of his intellectual pride.
That's why I see the Immaculate Conception as the Marian feast-day for thinkers and intellectuals. The more that one studies, the more that one is liable to see the horizon of what one understands as the horizon of knowledge itself. In other words, just because it's simpler from a human perspective to predicate of Mary all the foibles of fallen human nature doesn't mean that it's the case. God has a way of confounding men and their ways, and Mary's Immaculate Conception certainly has the potential to be a confounding stumbling block to anybody who puts his "trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save" (Psalm 146:3).
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At least, this was the testimony that my philosophy professor back at St. Thomas gave, as he explained why he was baptized, confirmed, and received his First Holy Eucharist despite the fact that he didn't yet understand the why or wherefore of the Immaculate Conception. What had at first been a stumbling block for this highly intelligent man became instead an opportunity to make a leap of faith, that is, to give his own fiat based on an assurance of what was not yet fully visible to his limited human intellect (cf. Hebrews 11:1).
The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, in other words, is a curb on the intellectual pride of those who have studied too darned much, myself included. It is the triumph of a pleasing fittingness, a poetic parallelism, that, from the human perspective of a theology that actually fits together, that lets one dot one's i's and cross one's t's, causes more difficulties than it solves.
******
I suppose, then, that the Immaculate Conception is my favorite Marian feast-day primarily because of a philosophy professor to whom I owe a great debt. Eventually I was able to take three courses with him--intensely intellectual courses in modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in epistemology--but what I remember most of all was his personal testimony of faith, his witness as regards his own leap of faith beyond what his human intellect could perceive, his own conquering of his intellectual pride.
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